by Ron Enderland

Prepare to hear the word "Blupi" a lot. Yes, it will come up in this review several times, but I think that you'll be hearing it in a lot more places, as well. It appears that EPSITEC SA, the Swiss software company, has come up with a game whose goofiness is exceeded only by its addictiveness.

Blupimania is an exercise in logic that is presented in the form of guiding Blupis, incredibly moronic critters that stumble through their little worlds in the quest to reach the purple balloons that transport them to the next level of challenges.

The game runs on DOS, so Win95ers will have to go through the dreaded shortcut process to make it run. In my case, I had to create a shortcut in the Blupimania directory, and then create another shortcut from that one in my Games folder in order to get the game to start.

Once it starts, however, it runs nicely in the full screen mode. The graphics are excellent VGA level creations. The interface is designed to be multilingual, i.e. everything is graphics driven, rather than by text commands. If you hit their website, then you'll see why. The game is truly aimed at an international audience.

So, on to the game itself. Your job is to guide the poor dumb Blupi through a series of challenges to his (her? its?) goal of grabbing that elusive balloon. Obstructing you are a variety of dangers and distractions, including walls, pits, banana peels (which turn Dr. Blupi into the psychotic Mr. Hyde-Blupi, who promptly rushes over and bursts the balloon that he so earnestly sought just moments earlier), evil robots, and doors that require keys.

It is simple enough that a child will instantly figure it out, challenging enough that an adult will be up all night trying to figure out how to make our dumb little friend walk through walls (hint: find the magic hat). Of course, it is completely nonviolent and childsafe.

Don't be fooled, though. This game is aimed at adults. Your powers of logic will be stressed to the max as you attempt to size up Blupi's various dilemmas quickly enough that the dangers won't overcome him before you act.

Needless to say, this would be easier to handle if it were written for Win95. However, the international audience that it reaches is better suited to a DOS app, so I can see the logic of writing it this way. If a 32-bit version comes up, though, grab it.

Hit the website, download the demo, get over the goofy look, and enjoy this game. My guess is that you'll be sending 30 bucks for the full program in short order.