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"Hail dragon bottom biter!" "Greeting oh slime-eating nostril sack" "Prepare to die, loathsome worm pit, seeker of the Key." "Please don't blast a not-at-all-nasty keeper of a pig sty, oh wearer of the purple robe." No, I have not gone completely crazy. The above is a typical conversation in the long awaited Swords And Sorcery game from PSS.

Adverts for this game first appeared over a year ago, promising something totally new in the field of graphic adventures. The past twelve months have been spent in adding extra bits, refining the data compression techniques and generally improving things all round with the end result being a menu-driven, 3D graphic, real time combat adventure featuring artificial intelligence with the promise of networking and further modules to come! In fact, there is so much to describe in this game, it is difficult to know where to begin.

Starting as a novice adventurer, your original idea is to find the various bits of the Armous of Zob which was unmade by its creator aeons ago. The chance are though that you will be sidetracked en route and pursue one of the many other quests within the game. How your character develops during the course of the game depends entirely on you. If you fancy the thud and blunder approach, then there are plenty of opportunities for you to develop your fighting skills. If reciting cabalistical rhymes is more your cup of tea, then magic abounds too, or perhaps you enjoy picking a pocket or two. Be warned about specialising though. If you hack and slash your way through the dungeon, you might find that you have forgotten how to cast that vital spell at the appropriate time and vice versa.

The screen is divided into five main areas. Top left is the 3D view of what you can see, be it corridors, doors or monsters. Top right is a map of your surroundings, but this changes to a status display on request or during combat. Below these two windows is the text display which gives details of where you are and any spoken insults, etc. Next one down is the message display which tells you what you are holding, what is happening during combat and what the effect of a spell is, both on you and on your opponent. The bottom line is the menu line which is used for entering your commands.

Considering the complexity of things, control of your character is really very simple. Keys 1, 2 and 3 turn him left, move him forward, turn him right, whilst keys 8, 9 and 0 move the menu left, select an action from the menu and move the menu right. Occasionally, you will have to enter passwords from the keyboard. A joystick can be used, but is not recommended.

The menu line displays a list of the actions available to you. You can move left and right through the menu, your current choice being highlighted in a different colour.

The main menu consists of six different actions:

Hit
This is for use in combat situations. See the appropriate section later in the review.

Magic
Gives you a list of spells available to you. Selecting one of the spells will cause it to be cast, providing you have enough magical power left to cast it. Initially, you only know a fireball spell.

Handle
This includes pick up, drop, wear, take out and hold. Choosing one of these options gives you a list of objects that can be handled. For example, if you open a chest and select "take out" you may get a list of bottle, sandwich and gold which were in the chest to begin with.

Act
This menu allows you to do the following: disarm a trap, pick lock, open, close, smash, eat, drink, taste, jump as well as get a status report and save your current position.

Talk
Not every creature that you meet is automatically hostile and you have the opportunity to try and take to them in one of the following manners: greet (which can be friendly, neutral or hostile), warcry, bribe, grovel, insult, threat, boast and command which lets you try the effect of words such as surrender, go away, stand and deliver, evaluate this item or give me information.

Note: Do not try talking to monsters during combat They won't listen but will continue to hit you! For each bit of conversation, an appropriate phrase is generated, the likes of which can be seen in the opening paragraph of this review. The vocabulary is large, and some of the insults are choice.

Use
This attempts to use a magical item. It does not work very often. Or, at least, not for me it doesn't.

It won't be very long before you see a shadowy figure looming up before you in the corridor or you barge into a room only to be confronted by an evil-looking critter. You can try talking to them which is great fun but you soon realise that quite a few of them don't pay you the slightest bit of attention, so you might as well smack them up straight away, which you can do by selecting "hit" from the menu.

When you engage in combat, the map is replaced by your status display. This includes amongst other things the amount of damage you can take, your current attack and defence modes, and those of your opponent. Basically, you select your means of attack from the menu and then your means of defence. The monster does likewise and the results of the first round are computed. This continues until one of you is dead.

The method of attack depends on what weapon you are using. If it is your hands, you will only be able to punch your opponent whilst a sword lets you hack him and a spear lets you lunge. Defensive manoeuvres include standing your ground, dodging and using your shield. You can also opt to use magic if you have enough magical power as can your opponent. A word of warning here. Monsters can and will attack you from behind or the side. If this happens, a message flashes up in the message display box.

Amongst the monsters that you will come across are gargoyles, catmen, night graunts and wasp warriors and that is only on level one! As you progress, so does the nastiness of the enemy and you will start to encounter hell hounds, ice phantoms, gorgons, shapeshifters, black monks and demons. Some monsters can use magic spells; some use poison or breathe fire. Some can only be destroyed with magical weapons. All are potentially lethal.

Every character has a certain spell power which is modified throughout the course of the game. Casting spells costs a certain number of points which can be regained with time. Your ability to cast spells increases with practice. You can also use potions which can be identified by tasting them. Amongst the spells on offer are fireball, heal, paralysis, strength, escape and death ray. There is no guarantee that any particular spell will work.

Taking the corridor immediately to the right of your starting position, you just about reach the two doors when the world seems to open up in front of you. Yes, you have fallen down a pit - one of many littered around the dungeon, ready to survive. In order to pass a pit, you must jump it. This is a skill which has to be learned so you will have a high failure rate to start with but eventually, you will be able to jump over them, as well as sensing where they are. Rumour has it that a ring that aids jumping can be found somewhere near the start.

Other areas you might come across in your adventures are teleporters, shifting walls and magical barriers.

Up until now, there has not been a great deal to persuade you to go down into the dungeon. Everything seems intent on killing you. However, once you say the magic word "treasure" to an adventurer, all thoughts of danger seem to disappear.

Apart from the armour that you are searching for, there are magical swords, rings, potions, brooms, horns and crowns. The crown is especially useful as it helps you detect if an item is enchanted. There is the usual supply of gold around.

Perhaps you will be able to persuade a monster to tell you what a treasure is - perhaps by bribing him and then asking him to evaluate it for you. Of course, he may not know or he may just like to you but then again, the treasure might be cursed and harmful to you anyway.

Treasure is frequently hidden in chests and these may be trapped or locked so you will need to keep your thieving abilities up to scratch. Just because you are in a room does not mean that you will automatically be able to see your treasure. It may be hung up on a wall or behind a door and you can only see it when you are standing next to it. This means that all rooms must be searched thoroughly before leaving them. Life as an adventurer is not meant to be easy.

As you can imagine in a game of this complexity, there are an awful lot of variables floating around. Some of them are available to you but to complicate matters, you are not told what they are! When you call up the status display, you get a selection of information about your character: your character's name, the number of hits that he can take (when this reaches zero, you are dead but you do recover from your wounds with time and there are healing potions to be found). The next lines down show your current magic level, attack and defence modes.

Below that are ten "magic numbers". These represent your skill in various attributes. The only problem is that the programmers have decided not to tell you what they mean - you have to work them out for yourself. This you can do by finding and using various magical artefacts and seeing what effect it has on one of the numbers.

For example, if you find a magic sword and one of the numbers changes, you might decide that this number had some bearing on damage done on your magical ability. There are some clues in this article as to what these attributes are - usually skills that have to be learnt or that would change as you become more experienced.

The first few times that you play the game, it will seem like a nightmare. You will be looking at the wrong part of the screen. Messages will flash up that you don't have time to read. You will stand around while monsters beat the living daylights out of you.

You will fall down pits. You will get the menu commands fuddled. You will not be able to manipulate objects as you want to and life will be generally unpleasant. But slowly and surely, things start to fall into place. You remember where the pits are, win a battle or two and find the odd bit of treasure and suddenly, you have this great urge to get to the next quadrant, the next level or the next bit of armour.

Not that it's easy, but then being a hero never is. And if your character should manage to achieve his quest, you can transfer him into the next scenario several more of which are promised by Christmas, including a village where you can sell your treasures or trade them in for something more useful (who wants six magic swords after all?).

There is also the promise of a networking system whereby you and a friend can hook up your Spectrums to each other and go down the dungeon either trying to help each other or as deadly rivals.

All this is possible because of the MIDAS (MultI-Dimensional Animation System) kernel system developed by PSS. By keeping the house-keeping kernel of the program the same, new sets of data can be read in to give a totally new adventure.

Swords And Sorcery represents the most sophisticated Dungeons and Dragons-type game yet seen on a cassette based micro. As for the future modules, I can't wait!