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The beautiful Esmerelda has been captured by the evil Cardinal (boo, hiss!) and is being held to ransom somewhere in the outskirts of Paris. The one-eyed hunchbacked bellringer of Notre Dame, Quasimodo, who is in love with Esmerelda, decides to try and rescue her from the cardinal's clutches. First though, he must escape from Notre Dame cathedral, make his way through the sewers of Paris before finding and challenging the cardinal and making off with the girl. Can he do it? Of course he can, especially with you playing Quasimodo.

The game looks very similar in style to Ocean's previous adventure, Never Ending Story. There is a large background illustration which is superimposed with pictures of up to six objects that Quasimodo can carry as well as drawings of the major characters. Graphically, the game is superb and the illustrations will be its major selling point. As an adventure though, the game is decidedly limited.

Location and object descriptions, although fairly short are well done and quite amusing. You start off Chez Quasimodo, a semi-detached hovel with all the charm of a sewage farm. As you wander round, you soon find a variety of books with titles such as Zen and the art of guillotine maintenance, 101 ways to cook frogs' legs and bell ringing for the deaf. The vocabulary is extremely limiting though. The game only understands 36 verbs and, as ten of these are directions and others are synonyms such as get and take, you will see what I mean. Standard adventurers words such as "examine" are not supported at all.

There is also a distinct lack of things to do, especially at the start. There are several guards standing around, intent on attacking you. If you fight back, combat can continue for many rounds until one of you dies and I go fed up of typing "attack guard" twenty times before moving one to find yet another guard.

If you are a newcomer to the noble art of adventuring, then Hunchback: The Adventure might be just what you are looking for but for anyone with a bit of experience, I feel that this game may well prove to be a big disappointment.