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Second sons have a lot to be jealous about, especially if their father is the King and it is the first born who stands to inherit everything. It Is therefore easy to see why Prince Nemesar started dabbling in the Dark Arts. It is also easy to say that King Jonna should have paid rather more attention to his son and less to affairs of state. Whether that would have stopped Nemesar from killing his mother in cold blood and stealing the Mindstone is doubtful.

Such was the power of the Mindstone that several people, including Walpron the Wise, had visions of the future that chilled the very soul. King Jorma aged fifty years overnight and urged his elder son, Prince Kyle, to do all in his power to find Nemesar and recover the Stone or else the lands of the Teia would be destroyed.

Nobody was sure what the origins of the Mindstone had been - a gift from the gods or part of the original fabric of the Earth itself. Others deemed it worthless but, nevertheless, it had remained in the hands of the rulers for centuries and each king in turn had used the Stone to promote wellbeing in the land and destroy evil. Now that it was in the hands of the forces of evil, Kyle was only too aware of what the consequences might be and it was with some trepidation that he set off on his quest with his three closest friends, Merel, Quin and Taina.

Mindstone is an icon-menu-driven adventure in which you control the four main characters as you go about your quest. In order to succeed, you will need to fight battles, cast spells, haggle and trade with merchants and other travellers and maintain the health and strength of your party. The screen is divided into two main sections, the top third being a graphic illustration of your current location complete with some animation, whilst the bottom two-thirds is used for entering your commands. The animation is vaguely reminiscent of Valhalla with the four members of your party (or those still alive) on the left of the screen and any other characters on the right. Combat involves your chosen person walking slowly to the right and exchanging a few token hacks with his adversary. The graphics work well enough but can hardly be described as mind-blowing.

Controlling your party can be done in one of two ways. You can either use the keyboard which is the taster method or you can use the icons. As time plays no part in the game, I imagine that most people will prefer the latter method. The five icons are pictures of the four main characters and a compass. Selecting the compass icon is used for moving the party around (each location gives details of its exits) whilst selecting a character leads to a menu of potential actions. The initial choice is exit, action or attack and the second or third choices lead to further menus containing a wider choice of actions. When you select a character, you are also shown pictures of any items and spells being carried (four and one maximum, respectively). There are two values that you should also keep your eye on. These are strength (useful for combat) and psyche (needed for spell casting).

The action menu gives you a list of twelve further choices - exit, drop, use, buy, trade, pick up, examine, militate, look, drink, dig and eat. Most of these are self explanatory with the possible exception of meditate which is used to increase your psyche level, although you need to have a psyche ring to be able to use it. Examine describes any ob)ect present whilst look tells you about your surroundings including any other characters present and what they might be interested in. For example, a pixie may have something to sell you for 66 gold pieces (all gold is communal to the party) and it is then up to you to decide whether or not you want to buy (sight unseen), and if so, how much to offer. Your offer may then be accepted or rejected accordingly. If you meet a trader, he doesn't accept any old rubbish that you want to palm off on him, but requires a special item. Again, it is up to you to decide whether or not to go through with the transaction.

The options available from the 'attack' option are fewer and include the manipulation of spells. You can exit back to the main menu, attack using your weapon, get a status report on that character or pick up, drop or cast a spell. A spell can be cast as often as you want providing that you have sufficient psyche. Casting depletes your mental powers drastically but these can be recovered - a cave with a snake in is a good place to look for the appropriate ring.

Items and spells can be bought, traded or more commonly, just found. Certain locations emit a sort of warbling noise when you enter and either a small hand or half a chessboard appears very briefly under the picture. This indicates that an object or a spell is present and can be picked up by a character provided that he is not already carrying his maximum allowance. One of the many problems that you will have to sort out is which character should carry and use which object. For example, Kyle tried opening a locked door with a set of thieves' tools (note the spelling all you at the Edge) and had no joy, whilst Taina had no problem.

The items and spells that abound are many and various. Drums, magic rings, food, orbs, clocks and lumps of lead are the sort of things left carelessly lying around but you can buy skeleton keys, garlic and silver arrows if you have the readies. The spells include fireball (find something cold to use it on), open, light, destroy and restore which heals wounds caused in battle. The alchemy spell can, usefully, be used on the lump of lead for a certain monetary advantage.

The game plays very well. Indeed. there are just enough commands to give considerable variation and interest without over-complicating things. The icon-and-menu system is very easy to use and the game itself is highly addictive with plenty for the first time player to explore. Making a map is advised, together with lists of what items are where. Not everything has a use and there are plenty of people and creatures just waiting to rip you off or trade a really valuable item for something which proves to be a red herring. A brilliantly executed game which will appeal to adventurers and non-adventurers alike.