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Devil's Island is one of the new breed of Spectrum adventures written with the aid of The Quill. It comes from Gilsoft and was designed by Colin Smith.

Using The Quill, an adventure is not written directly as program code, so the author needs no knowledge of programming. In theory, this means that anyone with imagination should be able to design a challenging adventure, without the need to learn programming skills.

In practice, things don't seem to be working out that way - perhaps because imagination is, in any case, a prerequisite for a programmer.

To start with, I found it an adventure in itself just to load the game - it took me seven attempts to get the volume set correctly. Once the program starts to load, a picture is drawn of a skull hanging over the prison on Devil's island, setting an oninous tone.

The main aim is for the player to escape from the infamous prison complex alive. Not an easy task. The game's instructions do not help either as, when the game has loaded, it refers to the cassette inlay for extra information. This could have been useful had it been there!

So, with the barest knowledge of my mission, I set off to escape from where so many had died. I was in a little cell, with few things of interest to be seen - just a washbasin, bed and door. The washbasin seemed to be there only to enhance the realism of the game, but I could be wrong!

Once out of the cell, problems really start to mount up. There are two guards to the north and one to the south, in the cookhouse. The latter must be disposed of, but I'll leave you to find out how!

Opposite your cell, a fellow prisoner stares through a peephole at you from his cell. It is my guess that I will need to enlist the help of other prisoners in making my escape. At present, I have reached the courtyard and am trying to avoid being shot every time I attempt to return!

My one major gripe with Devil's Island is that the HELP command is no help at all. "Try drawing a map and using different words", it says!

Apart from this little annoying feature, Devil's Island has turned out to be the best game I have seen written with The Quill. This, though, does not make it a great game. I rate it as just a little better than average amongst all the dross that is available for the Spectrum.