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Heartland continues the storyline which seems to run throughout nearly every fantasy and adventure game. A once peaceful land has been ravaged by war. It's the old story of good versus evil. What makes this particular idea so inventive is the way you become involved, and the way you can put things to rights. You come across a book which chronicles the war. As you read it, you become aware that it is far more important than a mere fairytale. But, as you near the final chapter... the pages are missing.

It is your task to enter a world which contains the pages, and collect the correct ending. Yes, another twist! There are two possible endings. If you finish the book, so evil wins, terreible things will happen, and the Heartland will be sucked into a whirlpool of very frightening events indeed. You have to collect the Light pages, which contain the cheery ending to the story.

Essentially, the game is presented in the same manner as many other Spectrum programs. The Mikro-Gen series of Wally games springs to mind. Animation is flawless. You take the role of an odd-job style character, all togged up in a smart manservant's uniform, complete with top hat. As you walk around - hand-holding onto your hat - the little guy will swing his arm and stride about most convincingly. Now, that hat is pretty useful, in fact. When assaulted by a member of the 'other lot' (who presumably want to see evil triumph) you can sling it toward them, to defend yourself.

The ugly problem of attribute clashes rears its head once more in Heartlands. Despite the fact that most of the colour use is quite simple, and safe, sometimes colour will get "washed out" of the background scenery when you jump over it.

The sound isn't all that good, so I'll tell you about the more interesting points which have been included.

When you have found the book (nicely drawn) you can start hunting for pages. These drift down the screen - should you be lucky enough to find one - before bouncing off the bottom and floating back to the top. There is a wide variety of monsters that you have to avoid or destroy. Zombies, knights, wizards and even spacemen pop up in the appropriate area.

Once you have collected the pages, they will be assembled into the book. An egg-timer runs constantly at the top of the screen, to indicate how much, or how little, time you have left. There is also a large skull and crossbones type thing to show how much energy you have left.

At the end of the game you will be told what percentage you have achieved, and how many pages you've collected.

Heartlands is really very good.