Oh no, more Royal families with issues! However with this family, their troubles are a bit more serious than a drunken prince in a London nightclub, or a non-PC comment. King Olaf has been murdered, and his daughter, the skimpily-dressed (well come on, it IS Temco) Princess Allura is to blame, although of course she didn’t do it. Queeny (who isn’t Allura’s real mum) is blaming her for it, and has sent the royal guards out to get her and bring her back. Allura and her handmaiden Rachel have escaped the castle/palace, run into the woods and have located a dirty great mansion that Allura can hide in (presumably not the same mansion our favourite S.T.A.R.S. members found themselves in in Resident Evil).

Right, right, so this is a survival horror game right? And you have to find “emerald coloured feathers” and put them in “similarly shaped holes” to get the “hamster key” then? No! This is completely different; in fact I have never seen or played anything quite like it…

The game’s missions are set up in various rooms within the mansion, and you must kill a preset number of guards, soldiers and knights that come after you. When the level starts you are completely weaponless, relatively weak, and really just a princess with some weird new trap setting abilities. You enter the map mode by pressing ‘circle’. This brings up an isometric view of the level, which you can rotate around and zoom in and out of. Within the level you are able to lay three traps in three different locations. The traps are activated by pressing the three corresponding face buttons; ‘triangle’, ‘cross’, and ‘square’. Within the map screen you map a trap to a button, and choose where you want it. So for example at the bottom of the stairs you could have an explosion, or a bear trap, or a wall that knocks you over. You have varying options like direction things swing and fire in etc. When you are ready, you go back into the game and basically the aim is to kill the enemies by getting them to step over or go near where you set the deadly traps. They are highlighted by a coloured glowing circle on the floor, and a matching colour on screen with a button press next to it. So enemy goes near the red circle, press ‘cross’ and they get sliced by a huge swinging blade. Excellent!

Whilst your traps are recharging you can run around the level, evading attacks from the enemy. The game here controls similar to any other third person game, although camera control isn’t quite as good as some games out there, but this might be tightened up before release.

From what I have played so far it’s rather enjoyable and genuinely different which is always nice, so I look forward to playing the final game when it is released.