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There'll be no more romantic moonlight nights if the gods of darkness have their wicked way. All that stands between them and the complete conquest of Earth are the life-giving rays of the moon Fulax. A suitably evil plan is soon hatched - rather than simply waiting until pollution and acid rain completely cut off these rays, the Dark Ones create the Black Moon Septerios. Once this has completely eclipsed the life-giving moon, Earth will be completely at their mercy. In advance a snake monster is sent to Earth ready to attack. It's your standard one hour to save the planet scenario, albeit given a unique twist by being a dodgy English translation of a scenario by Idea, an Italian software house with minimal astronomical knowledge (who's ever heard of the moon Fulax?). Moonshadow is Idea's UK debut though, and there's plenty more C64 product lined up.

Anyway, before anyone can say, "Who can save us now?", a muscular hero steps forward to do just that. Venturing into hell's caverns - where the evil snake has temporarily taken up residence - the athletic hero leaps across the platforms and steps which link the many flick-screens. He is constantly under attack from various evil creatures which can be killed by throwing daggers at them. More powerful weapons, including swords and axes, can be found along the way - as can other useful objects: keys (to open locked doors), energy potions (replenish energy lost from contact with creatures), on-screen maps (showing all the screens visited so far) and magical items to destroy larger hazards Up to six objects can be carried simultaneously - the cursor keys are used to select which one to use.

Searching for essential keys and magical objects to make progress constitutes the bulk of the gameplay, with little else to do other than fend off the various creatures. It's all fairly playable though, with some decent graphics and a good moody soundtrack. The main flaw is the single life and lack of continue-plays - probably to compensate for a relatively small play area.

It's so annoying to have to keep restarting from scratch all the time. Mapping is essential as the on-screen map is tiny and confusing. Noting down the locations of energy potions does enable you to get much further into the game, but I still found it frustrating.

This is an odd sort of game, in places it really shines with a neat control panel featuring a nice eclipse graphic complete with parallax scroll stars. The enemy creatures are quite good too, the soundtrack is reasonable and the various objects you have to control are imaginative and varied.

On the other hand, though, a single life isn't much and it gets irritating always restarting. It's the sort of game where just a hit or two can be critical; normally a sign that the game isn't that big. Moonshadow certainly falls into that category; a smallish single-load arcade adventure, it's still fun for a while and there's a couple of nice puzzles structured so the maze seems bigger than it is. But overall it's just not big enough or spectacular enough to stand out in the Nineties.

Presentation 70%
Nice A2 poster. Attractive status panel but unfortunately no continue-plays.

Graphics 62%
Fair amount of variety, nicely animated creatures.

Sound 70%
Atmospheric continuous soundtrack plus okay effects.

Hookability 71%
Single life is initially off-putting but urge to see more is quite strong.

Lastability 62%
A tough challenge, but continually retracing your steps becomes tiresome.

Overall 65%
An enjoyable but limited arcade adventure.