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Contact with EDWARD (Environmental Defence WARDen) has been lost after an unusually massive solar flare. This is bad news as EDWARD is the computer on board the prototype warship Arachnid and it has been programmed to assume that the ship is under attack if contact is lost. Anything that comes into range of the ship will be destroyed and, in 24 hours' time, Arachnid's orbit takes it straight past Venus. You must teleport aboard Arachnid and try and shut down all the decks in turn as they are not under EDWARD's control. They are, however, heavily protected by droids.

In order to shut down a deck, you must first destroy all the droids with a quick blast from your plasma gun. They will fire back but you may be able to duck out of harm's way. Contact with the droids should also be avoided as it rapidly reduces your energy. This is unfortunate as there is no scrolling between screens and you frequently move off the end of one screen and walk smack into one of them. Dotted around the deck are some terminals that give you access to a map of your current location (top and side view). You can also try your hand at refuelling and closing the deck down, each of which takes you into a mini game.

Refuelling involves dropping a capsule through a series of sliding blocks, a sort of space frogger. The graphics here are small, and not helped by some poor scrolling. Closing down a deck can only be done when all the droids have been eliminated. Now you must enter a five bit code. You get five attempts at this and each time you are told how many of the bits have been set correctly. It is nothing more than a Mastermind variant. Close down the deck and you can teleport onto the next one.

Droids is an average sort of game, not bad for a first release but a bit uninspiring. It is highly reminiscent of Impossible Mission but nowhere near as good.