It is very easy to overlook a cassette with a plain inlay, especially if it is not a pre-release copy of a potentially 'big' game, and accompanied by a suitably impressive press release. By 'big', I mean a game that, good or mediocre, is going to sell well because of the hype backing it.

Lucky then that I didn't overlook Al-Strad, for I would have missed an excellent adventure. Written by Paul Gill, Al-Strad is a text-only adventure with a strong sense of humour, and a background theme of the computer games world. One of the objects is even a cassette of C&VG Game Of The Month, 1976!

Starting off in a fairly mundane forest, the adventurer is soon led into a hut with a combination safe and a lever. No points for guessing that he hasn't a clue what the combination is! Pulling the lever causes the floor to move, and he finds himself trapped in an underground computer games chamber of horrors.

The Masterchronic offices contain a pile of rubbish, while in Adducktive Software sits a wax model of Keb Tons atop a pile of men's magazines. Trouble is, there's a dead end here, and no backing out!

Outdoors the scenario ends with a river, and discovering how to navigate it comes as a bit of a blow. But there's no 'arm in that!

Thus a double dead-end appears; one, by a shiny rocket ship guarded by a fierce dog, and the other, by a pool of bubbling quicksand, for which a highly cryptic clue can be found in a nearby cave.

Soon, when all other possibilities are exhausted, the adventurer is forced into cracking the safe, the answer of which was really in his palm all the time.

Al-Strad is a series of cleverly interlocked puzzles, arranged in a well-thought out way to make the game encouragingly easy and satisfying to play at the start, but culminating in a few nasties that will have the experienced adventurer scratching, if not banging his head.