Peter Gerrard has produced a book that fulfils several needs at once. This is not only a book on how to write adventures. It is also a guide to their history and how to solve them.

The opening chapters explain how they came into being and then go on to give you tips on solving various puzzles that you may come across. Although most of the games mentioned here are not available for the Electron, it still makes good reading.

Peter Gerrard then goes on to show you how to write adventures. The BASIC commands used are explained and short programs given to demonstrate how they work.

The commands explained in this section are only those that the author himself uses in his own adventures. Thus INSTR$ gets no mention. I would have also liked to have seen examples explaining how to program arrays in more than one dimension. In fact, I think data handling in general could have been better explained and demonstrated. However this section is still a lot more comprehensive and understandable than the comparable sections in the Acorn Electron User Guide.

The last part of the book contains listings of three adventures. The first, Underground Adventure, is very comprehensively documented. The whole program is split into the routines used in the game and then explained line by line. While I think that this is a superb and innovative idea, the ON ... GOTO and GOSUBs that these routines contain (usually to lines not shown in the routines) can be extremely hard to find.

Finally you are given two complete listings to type in.

All three adventures are available separately on a single cassette. I would recommend that you buy the cassette, tackle the adventures and then read the book! It is a lot easier to understand the routines if you can get a printout of the listings.

I would have liked to see a mini-adventure in the book. Learning how to write adventures isn't easy, and the beginner could find the size of these ones somewhat daunting. However, don't let my criticisms put you off. I think this is an extremely good buy.

Although it could have been made easier for the beginner, it must be, with its section on how to program all the routines necessary in an adventure, almost a programmer's reference book. The three adventures are also very good and, despite having a full listing in the book, baffling to play.

This book is a delight to read and use and a welcome addition to any adventure programmer's bookshelf.

Merlin