"A new way to generate adventure games," this book claims. It is essentially the description of an adventure creator utility, plus a full listing for a BBC Micro (which must have at least one disk drive).

A large section of the book is taken up with a listing of the Adventure Description Language (ADL) which is also available on a no-frills disk for the fainthearted.

The utility was developed at Gronigen University in the Netherlands, on a PDP11, and, it is claimed, can be converted for other micros with reasonable ease.

However, there is more to the book than just a listing. The logic behind an adventure program is investigated, and translated into terms of the ADL which consists of four parts: a map of locations, location descriptions, dictionary of words and word descriptions.

The method of operation of the ADL is explained in great detail from a highly theoretical point of view, in the style of a formal text book. Hash coding, BNF syntax rules, automata and grammars, the Warhall algorithm, and Hamiltonian paths are among the subjects covered - fascinating if you want to learn about such things, but rather irrelevant if all you want is to get on and create an adventure.

Unfortunately, the book starts off on the wrong foot, with a flawed history of adventure games, which gives the first clue that it is the work of computer academics, rather than that of proven adventure authors.

Scott Adams is credited with pioneering the micro-adventure scene (true), but by implementing the Colossal Cave adventure on a 16K TRS-80 (false).

With an explanation of why "Basic is unsuitable for writing adventure games" there is an implication that Scott's first game was not written in Basic.

Many successful and enjoyable games have been written in Basic, among them are Adventureland and Pirate, which were only later converted into machine code.

Whilst Basic certainly has its disadvantages, I always have to smile when I detect the semi-outrage of computer professionals at the "unstructured" nature of a Basic program! If it is a game, and it works, who cares about the structure - certainly not the player!

Only if you are an aspiring "adventure architect" and want to know about such concepts as "non-deterministic transition" and the "de-referencing" of variables; only if you are the sort who would sooner call an adventure map a "transition graph", would I suggest that this book is for you.

A book for perfectionist programmes - not adventure enthusiasts.