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Feeling that I'd really been wasting my time on Time Search, I loaded up Duckworth's other offering, Castle Dracula. I'm pleased to be able to say that this game was rather better than its predecessor, despite the extreme lack of originality in the subject matter. The program seems to have a rather larger vocabulary than Time Search, although the same points apply about presentation. Nevertheless, the location descriptions were considerably more elaborate, though from time to time they served only to underline the limitations of the program.

For example, one room features nothing save a grand piano, but unfortunately the program doesn't understand 'play' or even 'piano'. I suppose one could argue that tinkling the ivories in a vampire's castle is a little risky, but it would have been nice to hear a little night music.

The atmosphere in Castle Dracula was certainly a little more gripping than some of Duckworth's other releases, and some of the puzzles are really quite tricky. I wasn't too keen on the jokey humour that ran throughout the text, as the player is asked to wait for just 'a tickey poo', and the game responds to some of your inputs with 'Okey dokey'.

As befits games programmed using the techniques from the Exploring Adventure series (a fact you are carefully reminded of on the intro screen of each game), both these adventures are written in Basic, but I could have done with less jokes and more pokes, especially to the sound chip. If you're going to have graphics, why not have a little sound? Even a creaking door would be better than nothing.

Castle Dracula belongs to a well-worn tradition, but if you fancy staking a vampire, my advice would be to fork out an extra £2.00 for Melbourne House's Castle Of Terror. Not a game that I can recommend.