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In Mystery Of Munroe Manor, I found a most unusual Adventure. Music accompanies the title page and continues whilst the background story is unfolded. This tells of Lord Munroe, the famous Adventurer who, on returning from Egypt, has strangely become a recluse in his West Country manor. The story is authenticated by graphically displayed front pages from The Times and Guardian of 1903. Perhaps this gives away the age of the author for, when I started reading it, it was known as the Manchester Guardian.

Just as well, then, that I was assigned the role of a Times reporter following up the story.

I was transported to the drive of Munroe Manor after dark. The eerie music continued as, across one of the lit windows, the figure of a man could be seen moving. The door opened and a shaft of light crept out. I went in and the door closed behind me, creaking forebodingly.

Unfortunately, the tension that had built up collapsed as this point, for there was a 12-minute wait whilst the main program loaded.

I found myself in a dimly lit hallway, stairs just visible disappearing up to the left and a door on the right. There was a mirror on the wall opposite. I looked at it and read a message written in blood. Dramatic music accompanied the image of the writing on the mirror.

As you may have gathered, Mystery Of Munroe Manor is a graphics and text Adventure, with a picture at every location. These are drawn with such rapidity that the response compares well with many a non-graphical Adventure. The pictures are detailed and colourful, too.

What lets the game down is the text. A short list of common words and abbreviations is provided in the inlay, and discovery of other words is left to your logic. The standard response "UNABLE TO TRANSLATE - TRY AGAIN" does nothing to help the player find the right ones.

I eventually got stuck halfway up the stairs, where a section had rotted away becoming apparently unpassable. A lengthy session spent trying to cross it led nowhere. Neither jumping nor mending was possible and I got caught up in a sequence of "CAN'T GO THERE" and "UNABLE TO TRANSLATE." Unfortunately, the latter was also the response to my plea for help and I decided that either my powers of logic or the vocabulary was extremely limited.

Perhaps I was just not in tune with the vocab., which is a pity, for a game that had excited at the start, disappointed before I got very far.

Mystery Of Munroe Manor is from Severn Software for the Commodore 64, priced £8.50.