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Temple Of Terror is another in the Fighting Fantasy series of adventures, based on the Puffin paperback of the same name of Ian Livingstone.

Starting at the shore of a river, you are immediately threatened by the drunken crew of a nearby boat. Prudence suggests making off over the rope bridge conveniently nearby, but the adventurer's instinct warns that there must be something useful aboard the boat.

A trip across scrubland, and a welcome rescue by a helpful eagle, leads you to the desert. With parched throat, you arrive eventually at the gates of the city of Vatos, where your quest really starts.

Here you must find five dragon artifacts, before the evil Malbordus gets there.

But first you must get in, and here is a problem with a serpent guard, which exemplifies a limitation in the game's vocabulary, and poses one of those problems where the solution is not hinted at, has to be plucked out of the blue, and is most unlikely to be hit upon by the player, even though simple.

It's such an unfair problem that I will break a rule, and tell you outright that the answer is: KICK SAND AT SERPENT.

In the context, GUARD is the noun and SERPENT the adjective, yet only the adjective is recognised and sand, although obviously present in a desert, is not mentioned.

A lack of alternative vocabulary is also apparent back at the boat and bridge - ENTER and GO are the respective command verbs, with no alternatives of BOARD and CROSS allowed.

The guard problem would have been unforgiveable had there been no BOM (Back One Move) and QSAVE facilities, as one false move causes instant death.

However, these rather unfair difficulties are somewhat mitigated by the fact that different approaches can be tried time and again using BOM, with very little effort.

On into the city, and exploring the labyrinth of underground corridors, where you'll encounter a variety of monsters.

The instant graphics that accompany each location are quite effective here, portraying the creatures in a colourful fashion.

The text, on the other hand, is somewhat lacking, and not always logical. "Not a visible exit" is a phrase all too often seen when, quite clearly, either there is such an exit, or one can be seen!

For example, it is entirely artificial to bar exits in this way in the middle of a (visible) desert, and in a chamber in which "a ladder leads up", CLIMB LADDER moves you up, whilst U itself is not allowed.

There are a mixture of problems in Temple Of Terror. Some are easy, some are not so simple, whilst others require pot luck. Many are of the hack and slash variety - simply finding methods of killing the nasties outright, whilst others require a little more thought and a bit of plotting.

Altogether, this is not a bad adventure, but it lacks that subtlety and cryptic quality seen recently from Adventure Soft in Rebel Planet and Kayleth.

Marred, but not ruined, by the sort of shortcomings reviewers have been complaining about for years, Temple is not up to the standard we've come to expect from those masters of adventure at Adventure Soft!