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Firstly for this month's ZX81 software review, some adventures from Artic. Three of Artic's adventures have been given attractive boxes and more interesting titles (they were formerly known as Adventures A, C and D) for marketing by Sinclair as part of their fast expanding software range.

For the benefit of readers new to computer adventures, a brief explanation of this type of role-playing game will not go amiss. An adventure is a game in which you explore strange new worlds with your computer in the comfort of your own home. As the introduction to the Artic games puts it, during an adventure "the computer acts as your puppet and controls your senses". Plenty of imagination, patience, and some lateral thinking are necessary if you are to succeed. An adventure is a game with an object - to enter a castle, rescue a princess from the clutches of an evil wizard, and escape with her to safety, for example.

You move from one location to another and there are objects along the way, some of which should be collected as you will need them later on. Hazards of one sort of another abound, and you will need to overcome them all. Each location is described by the computer, and you instruct it with short phrases such as 'GO EAST', 'GET KNIFE', 'USE TORCH', etc. The computer then provides an appropriate response such as a new location description, 'I can't' or quite often 'I don't understand'. It is a good idea to make a map as you proceed to stand any chance at all of retracing your steps to safety.

All the Artic adventures are written in machine code and are very fast; response to commands is practically instantaneous. They each have an impressive large vocabulary of over 100 words. The programs are long, and take 5.5 minutes (Adventure A) to 7 minutes (Adventure D) to load.

Planet Of Death (Adventure A) has about 20 locations and a similar number of objects. You are stranded on an alien planet, and the object is to escape by finding your space ship which has been captured and disabled.

You really are in a strange world of the imagination. There are caves, a prison, a lift (but the buttons are rather high, and where does it go?), guards and green men, and much more besides. There is also a maze, a feature common to many adventures and which, as usual, I found very quickly. Once that happens in an adventure I quit and start again, making sure from then on that I stay well clear of the maze at all times!

In Ship Of Doom (Adventure C), your ship, whilst on a reconnaissance flight, has been drawn by a Gravitron Beam onto an alien cruiser. Your aim is to free your ship by pressing the control button in the main computer room. You commence in your ship, and begin by moving into the airlock of the alien cruiser. This is a long adventure with some 40 locations - a radio room, robot factory, weaponry, cold room, graphic bar, an android conversion room to name a few.

There are also about 40 objects including a sonic screwdriver, infra-red spectacles, even a body frozen in ice and a beautiful android girl. I won't go into too much detail over what can be done with her, suffice it to say that she is programmed for satisfaction - some parts of this adventure are definitely for adults only.

There is the odd spelling slip in my copy of the program, (exits become exitw in the log room, for example), but nothing is seriously wrong. In some places the program is surprisingly flexible, it accepts both the instructions 'turn' and 'rotate', for example, although some other commands have to be infuriatingly precise. In all the Artic adventures you can speed up data entry, by typing 'N' for North and 'Y' for yes, for example.

All the Artic adventures are extremely absorbing. They can also be very frustrating; it is possible to spend a whole evening stuck in one small area of the game, unable to solve a problem that will allow you to move further. However, some time later and after giving up all hope of completing the game, the answer will hit you in a flash of inspiration and you can move on - until you reach another seemingly intractable problem a few locations later. An adventure can takes days to complete!

Both Adventures C and D are very long and incorporate a cassette routine with which a partly completed game can be saved or loaded at a later date - a very necessary feature.