Addictive quest

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Take a portion of Citadel and mix it with a touch of Jet Set Willy and you end up with the latest, budget priced arcade adventure from Atlantis.

The rules are simple: You take the part of the youngest son whose aim is to recover the golden figurine, a family heirloom, which has been stolen by the evil wizard Morthond.

The game controls are left, right and jump and these suffice to get you around the 57 rooms of the wizard's castle, picking up and using objects as you go.

The castle is populated by the mutant servants of Morthond and these move around the rooms. Bumping into them will reduce your strength, as will collisions with spikes or water. Your energy can be replenished by using the items of food which have been left scattered about the castle.

If you manage to keep up your strength you will have to cope with the problem-solving parts of the game. Without giving too much away, you will need to find something hot to melt the snowman that blocks your path and don't try to use a boat while it has a leaky hull. The trampoline will have a number of uses, but great care will be needed to do things in the correct order.

Experienced arcade adventurers will not find these puzzles too much to cope with - in fact they could be an ideal introduction for the novice.

The skills of timing needed to prevent loss of strength present much more of aproblem, because your character has incredibly fast movement. This leads to the one major snag - there are many places where one false move causes you to fall into a pit from which there is no escape.

Death comes quickly in these cases, and I would have liked a Citadel-like routine which moved you to comparative safety. To get the "You Have Failed In Your Quest" message after along session of adventuring is a bit too frustrating!

Despite that one criticism, The Golden Figurine is addictive and fun to play. It is well worth getting for your Christmas stocking.

Rog Frost