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One hour forty minutes is not a lot of time. It appears to be even less when you are in charge of a band of cutthroats, renegades and misfits attempting to rescue the kidnapped Ambassador Kryxix from the evil General Zoff and on the general's own starship Zoff V. Your commando force, the Enigma team working for Empire, must rescue Kryxix, capture Zoff and destroy the ship. And you only have 100 minutes to do it in before plans of the new type of starship Shadowfire fall into enemy hands.

The team is six strong and have a wide range of skills from unarmed combat to lock-picking. Apart from Manto, who is the only one on the team with transporter ability, everyone is a formidable fighting machine. Each character has four main statistics that govern how they will perform. These are agility, strength, stamina and weight allowance. As characters weaken throughout the course of the mission, they can recover with time, but you don't have much of that to spare.

The game is entirely icon-driven. The three main screens are objects, movement and battle. Your first task is to arm and equip the party and then transport some or all members over to the enemy ship. Objects can be picked up and dropped, activated and readied for use. Not everything that you need to succeed in your task is present at the start of the game. Some objects have to be found in the starship. Once aboard, you can start moving people around. The movement screen displays arrows pointing in all directions. A solid arrow indicates a possible exit. There is also a description of the surrounding area. Some areas require colour-coded keycards to allow entry, a large part of the game is taken up with trying to dispose of the enemy forces before they do likewise to you and this is where the battle screen is selected. This allows you to attack, defend, scan an area, or, if absolutely necessary, run away. One nice feature of the game is that it is very logical. Thus, you can find weapons in the weapons bay. The enemy forces are also well marshalled and your best tactics will be those of hit and run rather than pitched battles.

Shadowfire first came out about a year ago (it has only just been converted for the Amstrad) and caused a considerable stir as it was the first time that an icon-driven game had been seen. There have been many attempts to copy the style, but few have been anywhere near as successful. Still one of the best games around.