GOING UNDERGROUND

MAKER: CCS
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £5.95

Any adventure game that bears the name J. Sherry, author of CCS's marvellous multi-player interactive The Prince, raises immediate interest and expectation. This one drops them with a bit of a thud.

Your man, who for some reason looks like a nerd above ground but changes image below, has to recover a power gem from the evil wizard Grimblast and to do this he wanders around the Borderland plunging unto barrows. Movement is up, down, left or right on the keyboard and, if you have a Spectrum+, you'll find that you need the 5-8 keys, not the arrows, which is irritating.

The screen is a 5x5 square grid representing 0.025% of the playing area which means a lot of exploring and, unless you're a very patient mapper, very little planning. You start with a power rating, which can increase; stamina, which goes down steadily; gold, which you can use to buy food, and food which eaten periodically ups your stamina.

Along the way you can acquire swords, shields and so on. The nasties also have power rating so, when attacked, you have to make a split second decision whether to fight or run. Once down a barrow you explore the tunnels, which can be very, very long dead ends, like places to run out of stamina and die. The landscaping consists of deadly dull boxes and the mechanics are tedious plodding not very well explained (you're not told how to pick up food, for example). Feels like a bit of a rush job.

OFF THE BARROW

MICRO: Spectrum 48K
PRICE: £5.95
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: Cases Computers Simulations, 14 Langton Way, London SE3 7TL

Anyone lucky enough to have a copy of the Ultima series of graphic adventures (they're only available unfortunately for the Apple and Atari machines) will recognise this program from CCS. Written by Mr John Sherry (who, quite coincidentally, won the CCS-sponsored Cambridge Award with The Prince) it's a frantic romp around a landscape full of nasty monsters, whose only reason for existing seems to be to kill you off with all dispatch.

During Loading, you're given a chance to Load in a previously saved game, or to carry on loading in the data for a new game. Unfortunately, there is no provision, once into the game, for quitting and then going onto another saved game. After two title screens comes a screen of text, which disappears as soon as it is flashed up.

The playing screen is divided into several sections - the most important is the playing area, divided into a five-by-five matrix of squares, each one of which is four character-squares. Each of the twenty-five squares is one of several types of terrain, such as Dark Woods, Swampland, Forest and so on. In the middle of all this is your character, a little person who looks much a Norman soldier. He stays in the middle of the play-screen; as you move him around (with keys or joystick), the surrounding landscape moves rather than the man. Alongside the play-screen is a panel showing your status and what is currently being carried. Beneath all this is a message screen giving you information on what monster you have met, or what treasure you have found.

To start with, your character is in a town centre. Exploration of the rest of the town reveals a Hotel where you can rest and a Store where you can buy food (you cannot carry more than 200 units of food or 200 Gold Pieces). As you move around, or indeed, if you just sit doing nothing, your Stamina will decrease one point for each step or each few seconds spent daydreaming.

You're pretty safe in the town, but sooner or later, you'll have to move out into the countryside, and then you're fair game to all those monsters. They appear to one side of the playing area, looking suitably menacing and lope towards you, gnashing their fangs or clacking their mandibles (and sometimes both at once!). If you react quick enough (though it must be said here that nowhere in the game is there any real 'arcade action'), you can escape by pressing 'r', for 'Run Away'. This transports you away from danger. In a game which depends so much on careful mapping, this is a great pity in the early stages, it is prudent to run away from most monsters. As the chances of your winning the fight depend on the relative strengths of the monster and your character, it's obviously a good idea to tackle only the very weak monsters to begin with.

Scattered about the landscape are 20 Barrows the burial mounds of a long-forgotten race. Barrows are always in the same place, and consist of a network of tunnels. Making sure that you have enough food to make exploration of the tunnels a viable proposition, your character can enter by simply moving onto the square of skulls which denotes the entrance. Once into the tunnels, you'll find several interesting features. In certain places, you'll find treasure, while other caches hold supplies of food and Gold Coins. Also, there are the piles of X-Pills. These quaintly named items will allow you to escape a Barrow when you've had enough.

There are also Castles, which hold their own goodies, like Elfstones and so on, but are rather harder to escape from (OK, so I perished twice in Sartrak's Castle, trying to find a way out!)

Although Barrowquest is written in Basic, the program moves along as quickly as necessary. The premise of the game is to progress through the levels of experience, building up strength and treasures along the way. With the Save Game feature, this makes for a powerful and addictive fantasy game which will please the old D&Ders among us.