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I sometimes wonder how I manage to keep this job of reviewing adventures! I don't seem to get very far into a lot of them, and this goes for Stranded, a graphical adventure for the Commodore 64 from English Software.

Perhaps I am asking too much when I expect to find logic, plus all the clues necessary to allow me to apply it. Obviously the player of Stranded will need more than that.

Stranded sets you on a strange planet, following a stab in the back aboard your starship Excalibur where, as special agent Sid (!) of the S.A.S. you are on course for Earth.

So far, so good, but this is where reading the inlay stops and the adventure starts. After a couple of hours playing, I was only two objects better off and had visited a mere eleven locations.

The word EXAMine is a recognised prompt to "study an object or area" said the instructions. It did describe the objects I was carrying, but most references to features described in an area were just not understood by the program. HELP did bring some replies - such as "Isn't it tree-mendous here?" in the forest. Since TREE, MEND, REPAIR, FOREST, CLIMB, BRANCH and many other words did not seem to be in the vocabulary of this somewhat inarticulate game, I could only conclude that either (a) I was as dense as the trees, or (b) the HELP reply was a quirky joke to be understood only be someone on the same wavelength as the author.

I later discovered that I could climb a tree in one forest location, but not in an almost identical one. If this is deliberate bafflement, then the author is going the wrong way about it - anyone can devise cheap illogical tricks like that. On the other hand, it could be half-hearted programming.

I got help at a spaceship guarded by a robot - "Be destructive" was the clue. Where have I heard that before? Oh yes - in a logical game! Suspecting I needed a weapon, I tried GET GUN - "Don't know what that is".

Well, in real sci-fi you wouldn't use an ordinary gun, I supposed, so I tried GET LASER. "I can't see that here" - had to be, didn't it?!

The response time is fast, the graphics are rather good and the whole thing speed-loads - a bonus for any Commodore tape game! - even a disk load on a Commodore takes ages!

A pity that I am so excessively dimwitted as to rival Lord Flathead himself. Those similarly cursed might well consider they had wasted their money, had they bought this game.

If you already did, and are stranded on a barren plateau of illogic, try widening your horizon by pressing SHIFT LOCK, then RUN and depress Play on your datasette.

The screen will go blank and the tape will roll. Release the SHIFT LOCK, press RETURN and the program will go bananas! It suits it well!

It will start to draw a new location and when finished will think better of it and warp you into a time machine. All this won't do you any good, except to take you where you might have got, had you not been so dim in the first place! At least you'll get a few more pictures for your money!

Stranded, if that's what you wish to be, is from English Software for the Commodore 64.