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Balls! That's what Logical is all about - coloured balls to be precise. Logical is essentially a puzzle game, but it requires some manual dexterity as well, so it may not appeal to boffins who are all fingers and thumbs.

Those who it does appeal to will find no less than 99 screens of mind-boggling action to work through, each of which contains a network of channels linking a set of wheels. The coloured balls run along the channels and slot into one of the four notches on each wheel. The wheels can then be rotated in an anti-clockwise direction and the balls sent off down another channel.

The object is to fill each wheel with four balls of the same colour, thus causing them to explode and leaving the wheel free to be filled once more. Once each wheel has been correctly filled at least once, the level is completed. This must be achieved within a time limit indicated by an on-screen 'egg timer'. Nor can balls be left to roll back and forth at the top of the screen for too long: a separate timer counts down for this very eventuality (indicated by the bar at the top of screen) and if it reaches zero before you have placed a ball, you lose one of your three lives.

The balls come in four colours: red, green, blue, and yellow. Up to four of them can be in motion at one time: this is usually more than enough to keep you doing, But it's possible in the later screens to get balls stuck in perpetual motion between two points, thus reducing your capacity to move other balls and consequently slowing you up.

To add to the confusion, later screens contain devices such as one-way routes, single-colour routes and teleporters, so you have to think very carefully about how to go about completing each screen.

Like most other games of this nature, Logical doesn't really hold any great surprises in the looks and sound stakes. The graphics are merely functional (although they are quite smart), but the inclusion of three alternative sets is a thoughtful touch.

The sound too is restricted, amounting to little more than a background ditty (which quickly becomes monotonous, but can at least be switched off) and some suitably metallic sounding effects.

Logical is easy to play - you hardly need to read the instructions - and, because everything is controlled through the mouse, it doesn't take hours to get to grips with. Masters of the puzzle genre may find it a little too easy though - on my first play I managed to get all the way to level 23 before losing my first life.

Even so, at that stage the complexity of the puzzles was already beginning to look promising, so undoubtedly the last few levels will require more than a few attempts from the average player.