Utopia - Gremlin Graphics RRP œ29.99
             (Strategy game for ST and Amiga)

The story goes that when the programmers were working on the final
stages of BSS Jane Seymour for Gremlin in the summer of 1990, they
got hooked on Sim City and decided to write their own, better,
version of the game.  Originally a medieval setting was planned
where you built your own town and then had to contend with
marauding orcs, dragons and the like and the title Fantasym was
coined. Several changes and many months later, the game Utopia was
born with quite a different scenario as it takes place in space,
on an alien planet that you must colonise and develop, and the
orcs and dragons have been replaced by an alien race who also have
their own plans for the land that you've built on.

The background to the game is that you are the commander of a new
colony, much to your surprise as, during a simulated alien attack,
the colony you were meant to be protecting had to be abandoned.
You thought you had blown any chances of getting your own command
but your superiors explained that the simulation had been a no-win
situation and that by protecting the colonists and evacuating them
rather than thinking more of your own pride and trying to keep
going, you had done the right thing. So, here you are, in an
untamed alien landscape with just a few buildings to get your
colony started, money at your disposal, colonists waiting to
settle into their new homes, and wondering where to start.

You've got a control centre already, complete with several
advisors (covering military, scientific, financial matters and
more), there are limited living quarters for the colonists, power
is being produced by solar panels and food by a hydroponics plant.
You have to work out how much to spend on other aspects of the
colony in order to keep the people's quality of life factor (QOL)
high. Laboratories can undertake scientific research, workshops
can produce goods for export, mines can search for ore and
chemical plants for fuel, tanks, armaments and spacecraft can be
constructed against possible (probable?) alien attack which you
know could come at any minute. Excess food and fuel must be stored
in special buildings or you can export them if you want. Hospitals
are needed in case a virulent plague should sweep the colony.
All these buildings and more can be constructed (if you've got the
money) and once you've decided where they are to be built,
scaffolding will go up and remain there until the building is
finished. This takes man-power so there is a limit to how many
buildings you can have under construction at any one time. Then
you'll need staff for them, which must also be taken from the
limited number of people at your disposal. Though occasionally
Earth will offer more colonists (at a price), they will also
sometimes demand scientists from your pool of workers - refuse and
you face a hefty fine.  Sometimes they'll even demand some of your
tanks which have taken much time and effort to produce, the swine
... I thought they were meant to be on my side!

Unlike Sim City which had a 2D top-down display, Utopia uses 3D
isometric graphics to give added depth and realism to the
landscape and buildings. I also found it made it a bit more
confusing when scrolling around my fledgeling colony and with so
many possible types of buildings available, it took some time to
recognise all of them and remember where you'd built them, once
the colony got past a certain size. Gone are the simple days of
Sim City where buildings were residential, commercial or
industrial ... in Utopia there are many sub-divisions within these
categories, making for a far more complex game. There are also
several different scenarios to try out, ranging from easy to
difficult and covering several different terrain types (grassland,
snow and ice etc) much as in Populous.

The controls are fairly easy once you get used to them, though
much more complex than in Sim City. In Sim City you just clicked
where you wanted a building or road and there it was; no hanging
about for construction as in Utopia. However, in Sim City you
could see the plot being gradually developed and the population
growing as time progressed so I guess it comes down to the same
thing in the end. Demolition is possible in both cases but in
Utopia there are a lot more factors to consider and to be able to
manipulate.

And you mustn't forget the ever present threat of attack; believe
me it WILL come! Defences must be organised from the start so that
you're not caught on the hop when the alien craft zoom into view
and start demolishing your creation. Sim City had fires,
earthquakes and the like which you couldn't do anything about
until they happened, just clear up the damage afterwards. In
Utopia you feel you should be able to protect yourself from attack
by creating a good fighting force ready. You should, but I always
found that they came ... they saw ... and they flattened the whole
darn place.

After playing the game for several days, I'd made progress in
quite a few of the scenarios though never enough to protect myself
properly against attack. Once the attack had come, I found it very
hard to recover from it. Then - disaster. I saved my game and my
save disk was corrupted!

At this point I admitted defeat. Utopia is beautifully programmed
and designed and has much more scope than similar games. But give
me Sim City or Populous any day. I can cope with them but Utopia,
the perfect society, was out of my grasp.
                                             Sue