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Taskset started life in the arcade business, many moons ago, programming those machines you pump your 10p bits into in the arcade. Their early philosophy was to ensure that no-one could beat them when it came to click musical effects and rip-roaring action. Something rather different is required for adventures, so I loaded up Souls Of Darkon considerable interest.

I'm afraid to say, however, that the game didn't quite live up to the expectations I had of this excellent company. Darkon is a text and graphics game that enables complex inputs - but unfortunately it goes one step further and actually demands complex inputs! You really do have to choose your words with extreme care, and this isn't made easy by a program which, while it will last its (small) vocabulary for you, refuses to accept, say, "Examine droid" but instead expects "Examine Komputa droid".

Sometimes this is just plain annoying, but at other times it can be downright misleading. Discovering a barrel of mead while carrying an empty bottle might prompt you to fill the bottle but "Fill bottle" gets the reply "There's nothing to fill it with", which might well put you off - without discovering that if you type "Fill bottle with mead" you'll actually achieve your aim!

Other shortcomings include some careless text formatting - trying to give something to the guide, for example, gets the reply "You guide says he does not want it" ... and so on.

The aim of the game is to free the land from the evil Darkon, which isn't startlingly original, and I must say that after a while I lost patience with the tortuous input requirements and uninformative responses. This is a pity because the design of the game could have been better exploited - you get a convenient graphics window (but poor graphics), a loyal robot companion (who is hardly ever mentioned and is apparently totally unresponsive), and a painstakingly redesigned character set (which isn't very readable). Perhaps some more care and attention, plus better instructions as to how to address other characters and use the various commands might have helped as well. Meanwhile, though I'm always pleased to see someone else entering the adventure market, it's a pity that this game didn't sound a louder trumpet for the new arrivals.