Another book about how to write games for the Amstrad, but this time it's sticking to adventure games and to the CPC 464 micro. This is a hefty tome, 232 pages in all, by an author who manages to keep up his enthusiasm right to the last page.

Like the last book, it is aimed at people who have already got a certain knowledge of Basic and who want to get on to more ambitious programming writing their own games.

Along lines which are no doubt now becoming familiar to readers of these pages, the author takes you through all the stages of designing and writing a good adventure game on your micro.

He starts off breaking down the average game into its essential ingredients of communication, commands, room descriptions, a plot and the problems. This might seem rather obvious, but it's actually important to spend time looking at the basics before plunging straight in with the coding.

The book discusses the importance of developing a good plot and how to sketch out a skeleton which will be the basis of your game, beore going on to how to build it up in modules. Chapter 3 contains several handy routines in Locomotive Basic to illustrate the commands that will come in most useful for this purpose, e.g. AND, CHR$, DATA, etc.

Other subjects covered are colour, the layout of rooms, placing objects and so on. Each chapter contains at least one module demonstrating the points discussed and providing useful routines for you to use within your own programs. There are also come line diagrams to illustrate more complicated things like octagon maps.

Finally, a complete program is provided at the back for you to start off with. It is not given with a great deal of detail, but as the author says, you should know enough by then not to need your hand holding too much.

I like the tone of this book, it is light and humorous without being empty and waffly. There is plenty to get your teeth into and at £7.95 its not a bad buy.