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King Theoden's daughter, the Princess Galadriel, has been abducted by the sorcerer Grima. Unfortunately, Grima was put to death by a member of the king's guard before he could reveal the fate of the princess. As captain of the king's guard, it is up to you to make amends. The Potters inform me that Galadriel is the easiest of their games and as such is a beginner's adventure.

I tend to agree as it has only 33 locations and provides a good introduction to the parlance and nature of text adventures. However, though the program holds some interest, it lacks real atmosphere and has a very limited vocabulary. Room descriptions are usually of only two lines in length and input is restricted to the outdated two word command.

For me the biggest let down is the absence of any subtlety of action - GET and DROP being the most common manoeuvres you make.

On the credit side there are some excellent problems to solve and one superb chaining puzzle. In the Summer house you have to eat something tempting and catch something less tempting to feed to a toad. Then - parodying The Princess and the Frog - you must kiss the toad.

The problem doesn't end there as you must now search for an antidote to toad poisoning!

I must admit that I am not overly fond of magical adventures - I even found Level 9's Red Moon somewhat boring. The random use of so called magical words doesn't call for much use of the old grey matter nor does it constitute real puzzle solving. To that end, I found the over use of magic in such a small adventure more than frustrating.

The Potters seem to have an aptitude for devising excellent puzzles but fall short on text compression and hence atmosphere - surely use of Mode 4 is a loss of valuable memory.

It is a shame, because I feel that Galadriel had the makings of a super little adventure but remains under-developed.

At £2.95, it remains a bargain and may provide some hours of enjoyment for the true novice.

Pendragon