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Level 9, arguably the producer of the best adventure games in the UK, has done it again. Lords Of Time is a sparkling addition to its stable of winners, with more than 200 beautifully described locations and a repertoire of witty ripostes to even the dumbest instruction.

The game's theme involves nine evil Timelords who have maddled with Earth's history so that they can rule eternally. Father Time recruits the player (that's you) to travel through time and put an end to their dastardly deeds by collecting nine 'symbolic objects' which, he assures you, can repair history. On the way there are, of course, plenty of valuable knick-knacks to be picked up, ensuring a comfortable retirement for the weary time-traveller.

The game is divided into nine time zones - nine separate adventures in different periods of the Earth's past and future - interlinked in that objects found in one zone are needed to solve puzzles in another.

There are some useful additional features - for instance, longer phrases can be entered, such as 'Give drink to bartender'. This makes the game more realistic and gets away from the endless repetitin of 'Take' and 'Drop'. Also, if you want to know more about an object before you pick it up, you can examine it and get a more detailed description. This might range from the cryptic (Examine candle - 'wax') to the helpful (Examine suit of amour - 'Just your size!').

Full marks to Sue Gazzard for an ingenious and entertaining game design, and to Pete and Mike Austin for its excellent implementation. Response time is fast and - most important - you can restart the game without re-loading an initialisation data file (other game writers please note).

Oh well, back to the keyboard - yes, I confess, I haven't actually cracked Lords Of Time yet! Now where did I leave the Galactic Groat? Was it on the ice-age glacer or in the Tudor hedge-maze?