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Denis Through The Drinking Glass is a text only adventure, orthodox in construction but most unorthodox in content. You play the role of Denis Thatcher, whose first objective is to escape the clutches of Maggie and find the hidden booze at No. 10 to sustain you on your travels to the eventual sanctuary of the Gravediggers' Arms. On the way you will encounter many contemporary political figures such as Keith Joseph, Ken Livingstone and Arthur Scargill. It is great fun, provided you have the right sort of anti-establishment, Private Eye type sense of humour. Playing this made me reflect on the conservatism shown by the major software companies in marketing games. Not only are "new" arcade games usually variations in all too familiar themes, but adventure games still, in the main, seem to involve dwarfs, elves and lamp-carrying. Why, oh why, when the whole range of subjects available to novelists and dramatists could be used?

Don't expect a masterpiece of coding like Snowball or Twin Kingdom Valley though. The game structure is very simple since it is a conversion of a program written originally for the Spectrum using The Quill. This also accounts for the tangled web of GOTOs and GOSUBs which make cheating your way through this adventure actually harder than playing it straight, but at least reminds you why you paid the extra for the BBC Micro in the first place. The game also has a feature which I normally dislike in adventures - "killing" you (just ending the game in this case) without warning; for example, when you move into some new locations without carrying the requisite object. I find it forgiveable here because the save/load routine is very fast, and these and other premature ends are usually accompanied by some witty Sun newspaper headline about Denis's misfortune.

The adventure is surprisingly difficult to solve because of its unorthodox nature - you do have to think in a different sort of way. I must admit that I got stuck on the first task of finding the flask from which you must drink to get past the first ten moves. Being short of time for the review, I rang the author in desperation who was very helpful. Thereafter, you must take a drink about every ten moves to avoid sobering up - a joke which wears rather thin after a while.

One of the better features, however, is that "HELP" produces different messages in different locations, often terse and rude but usually providing an important clue. Incidentally, all descriptions and messages are in verse - as poetry it ranks alongside Rupert Bear stories, but fits well with the general atmosphere of the thing.

A final word of warning - there are some naughty bits. I had to send my eleven year old daughter from the room to try the word obviously required in one situation. Result - another embarrassing exposure in the Sun!

Dave Reeder