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A game you QUIT because you want to start afresh, but leaving you with the message "QUITTING GAME WITH XX POINTS" and leaves your computer locked up, is not friendly!

I always adopt the philosophy that, when a player leaves any game by entering END or QUIT, the computer should be returned to its normal state - not have to be disconnected before it is any use. And an adventure requiring a reload for another try is not nice anyway.

OK, grizzling over - is the game any good? Surprisingly, after my bad start, and prejudiced as I had become against it, I found Castle Blackstar to be a very interesting adventure - certainly better than many available for the Spectrum.

The game is text only and the machine code program gives a fast response. It has a good plot, some reasonable puzzles and I felt happier with the simple black on white text than with many a lavishly illustrated multi-coloured game.

The objective, which is fully explained in the accompanying leaflet, is to recover an orb, rid it of its evil powers and collect treasure. Points are awarded for being clever and collecting things.

The map is big and colourfully described and the vocabulary is claimed to be in excess of 200 words. Nevertheless, I found plenty of words that weren't recognised; many of them being displayed before me at the time!

Adventurers, as well as always being friendly and helpful souls, seem to be more disposed to bad language than most and this game copes with the situation in an original way by providing a swearbox - a location which fines you one object before you can escape!

If you're going to say something nasty, make sure you have a redundant object first! I can proudly claim to have beaten the swear box with some particularly foul language, but I suppose as a journalist I should have a wide vocabulary.

So there you have it - don't go down in the woods to play, don't quit, and watch your mouth! Castle Blackstar for 48K Spectrum is from SCR Adventures, priced £8.95. Versions for Dragon 32, Commodore 64 and Apple II are planned.