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The land of Arulan lies under the spell of evil forces and with his dying words Kynah vowed that this land shall be freed from its curse. As the player of the game, of course, the task falls onto your shoulders and you must wander through the perils of a 3D world in your search for "he who mocks us with the shades of time".

Control is achieved by using a joystick to move the animated hero and the keyboard to determine the reactions to the predicaments that he meets. Almost every screen has an evil creature lurking there ready to do battle and drain your energy, indicated by a red and green bar below the screen. If you manage to keep your energy up in the green area gradual recovery is possible. In practice this recovery is so slow that the only way to stand a chance of completing the game is to find the location without an attacker present, pop the kettle on, make a cup of tea and on returning to the computer, you may be able to complete a few more screens.

Apart from hidden traps and secret doorways to search for, some of the locations also have chests containing items which may be of use. Some of the items are obviously useful such as the crossbow and quiver, but some are less obviously beneficial. In this latter category is a horde of penicillin which can be used frequently to restore your energy level and thus avoid the necessity to go out and buy yet another box of tea-bags.

Monsters can be fought and killed if you have amassed enough experience points or you can try pleading with them for mercy. In my copy of the game, trying this course of action invariably caused my character to flash his sword around in a very unsubmissive way!

Assuming that the concept of graphic adventures is to create a plausible computer world, then Shades fails. As you disappear off one screen, you reappear in the middle of the next and not the edge as you might expect. With the aim of the game being to despatch the Shades back to their dark world, my wish is that they take their software with them.