The focal point of the game play is not action, but planning. Accomplishing an objective requires a tremendous amount of forethought, a time-consuming wiring process, and lots of trial and error. It can be disappointing when you spend an hour designing a lean, mean, fighting machine, only to find out that you've somehow wired it to spin in place or head for the nearest corner and wait for death. Then again, troubleshooting your creation and figuring out how to make it work right can often be more rewarding than nailing a goal on the first try.

The levels and objectives in the game are novel and varied. Straight death-duels between heavily armed vehicles pale in comparison to games of ice hockey and robotic sumo wrestling. Unfortunately, programming your vehicles to perform reasonably well in such events requires a lot of time with the manual or a Ph.D. in Engineering, as moving beyond the opening tutorials involves a pretty steep learning curve. I found the more advanced features to be a little over my head. Of course, the last time I picked up a math book was to swat a bug with it.

The creation of the vehicle involves a lot of micro-management, so the process is menu-based. The "action" of the game is strictly hands off. Once you're ready to test out your new toy, click the "go" button and watch your robot do its thing. The only time you have any real-time control over your toy is if you assign certain functions to a keystroke for troubleshooting purposes -- something that's not allowed in multi-player competition.

The multi-player feature of Mind Rover is something of a misnomer. While players are encouraged to download each other's vehicles to test them against their own, it doesn't amount to much more than playing the same scenarios against more cleverly designed machines. Cognitoy has dedicated a section of their Web page. (www.cognitoy.com) to the multi-player aspect of the game, which seems to be growing in attendance. If more players are encouraged to design new scenarios or components to tinker with, then this somewhat limited aspect of the game could easily become its most attractive feature. Mind Rover is a perfect game to let loose and see where players run with it.