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The Code is an adventure game offering a prize of £2,500 for the first player to decode the secret messages found during play. Thus the codes are like treasures which must then be worked on to enable the player to claim the prize. There are a number of consoldation prizes worth £25 as compensation for those not first to the post.

The setting is a secret military establishment and so I, as a secret agent, set about gathering the coded clues. The game is text only, and a lot of it there is too. The location descriptions read almost like a book but, in trying to use any of the information displayed, I discovered that, from the adventure point of view, they were empty.

A caretaker's office is described as being more like a lost property office, housing shelves of umbreallas, gloves, boots, etc. Taking one of these objects is not possible. The description goes on... "There are a number of ways out. Are they lost passages collected here with everything else?" Unless I am completely missing the point, much of the text is banal.

Another room is lined with matching shelves containing boxes "meticulously labelled". READ LABEL, I typed. "There's no writing on it" came the reply. Well, I ask you!!

On visiting the washroom, well fitted with baths, showers and cubicles, the game dared me to waste my previous time in answering the calls of nature. So I tried. "I beg your pardon?" came the indignant response. Why bother with a washroom? There was a row of cubicles on the south wall and, after failing to either have a bath or a shower or anything else and being unable to ENTER CUBICLE, I tried moving south, only to be told I hadn't the key for level 2. Wow!

For some reason, the lights kept going off and on and a message told me how useful a torch would be. But there didn't seem to be one around. So I just waited through the blackouts until power was magically restored.

Accepting the fact that there was little around that could be manipulated or examined to any effect, I proceeded to expplore. I was attacked by an enemy agent - obviously a ripe candidate for early retirement, judging by his markmanship.

On one of these occasions, I got a bit fumble-fisted with the Spectrum keyboard (who doesn't?) and accidentally typed Y to restore a saved game. As I didn't have one, to avoid reloading the whole program to restore the prompt (not that there is one - another case of "hunt the missing cursor"). I started played the main program tape in, hoping it might give me a "Bad Save" message and return the prompt.

How wrong I was! It put me back to the start of the game but this time, lying in the security room instead of the usual gun, was - a torch! And it happened every time.

I asked Kevin Plunkett, the author, if I was missing some vital command in trying to do something with the various features described in the rooms - in particular, the shelves and boxes. "Oh no!" he exclaimed. "The instructions tell you that nothing is what it seems. We watched adventurers play this at the computer fair, and they all did the same as you - tried to examine everything everywhere! We had a good laugh. There's nothing there!"

Ha ha. How very droll. Many of those people, no doubt, had played real adventures with some depth, and expected more.

Although the game has a number of good features, such as a quick response and well-written text that is grammatically correct, it just lacks any imaginative flair. What with the shooting bouts, bombs going off and lights up and down all the time, this could claim the prize for being the first text-only arcade game.

The Code is for the 48K Spectrum from Soft Concern Ltd.