An interactive corporate rescue game has been developed to help train accountants and other financial professionals in the intricacies of business recovery, writes Francis Shennan.

Solve, which took Coopers & Lybrand 18 months to develop, is based on a true story. A medium-sized knitwear company is in trouble. The major shareholder, an institutional investor, is concerned and the player is summoned to take on the task of putting matters right.

The CD game contains more than 154,000 permutations and outcomes. It has 18 characters, more than 600 video clips running to more than three hours of material, and more than 100 documents to view on screen.

Players will not have enough time to view all the material. They must assess which documents are more important and which characters are most reliable and should therefore be included in the management team.

Even then they must implement plans based on the conflicting opinions of this team, all against a back-ground of continuing commercial problems. Right until the end of the game, the wrong decision could send the company into receivership.

The experience can result in a nail-biting finish as a group of business and financial journalists found when we tried the game in Glasgow last week. It is already in demand from bank managers and others who may have to deal with companies in a similar situation for real.