A new wizard stalks the plains, calling forth mighty and ferocious demons that refuse to yield to all but the bravest of adventurers! His name is William Quinn (well, they can't all have names like Zargon Dragonslayer), and he's a man with a mission.

Having already crafted the mighty L.A. Adventure (Zzap! Megatape, Issues 87 & 88), he's back with the equally evil Nightmare, a fun-packed outing that plays like a dream! [Someone rust his axe - Ed]

You're roused from your slumber by a distant clap of thunder. Blinking yourself awake, you rub your eyes and peer round your room... something's wrong. It's tidy! Either you're losing your marbles, or that cheese sarnie you ate while watching The Late Show on Beeb 2 is giving you nightmares. (If you're unsure which, note the subtle clue in the title of the game). Either way, you won't rest peacefully (or indeed at all) until you find the missing garbage and return your room to its former postapocalyptic state.

As you've probably gathered, this isn't an adventure for people who take themselves too seriously. Fans of Clive Wilson's ZZZZ will find the brilliant atmosphere immediately to their liking, but the problems don't suffer from the same degree of obscurity. Instead, the author's created a brilliant dream world which is just close enough to reality to make sense of, yet far enough removed for you to totally immerse yourself in. The title is misleading - this game's not a horror story, more like a fairy tale. You'll see bushes that grow as soon as you water them, a wall of death that flings the hapless rider into the sea, right next to a partly submerged bus (remember 'Holiday On The Buses'?), and as for that desert tower...

The game is huge for a one-parter, and is packed full of things to do. No location is wasted, but its significance might not be immediately apparent. There's some backtracking involved, but it's not too much of a chore - you feel glad you've worked out what that thingummy was for, rather than irritated at having to move about so much. The offbeat puzzles are some of the most imaginative I've seen in a long time, and the sense of humour is beyond reproach (e.g. if you try to FLUSH TOILET, you're told "The handle is covered in shi... [long pause] ...is covered in something. I wouldn't touch it!".

And the negative points? The program is a little rough around the edges; for example, there's a rather unpleasant spider in the bog: to retrieve the object he's sitting on you need to kill him, then MOVE his corpse - if you try to GET it instead, he comes back to life and kills you! There's a few spelling and punctuation errors in there too, and a proper score system would've come in handy.

Nightmare is a fun adventure, and is much improved from the pre-release version I saw a month or two back. A little more play-testing would've been a real boon, but even as it stands, it's a great game.