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Magic used to be plentiful. That was when the moon shone red and radiated its power over all the earth. Gradually however the amount of magic present began to wane as the sun bleached the moon's power away. Things became so desperate that the magicians decided to create a red moon crystal of Baskalos whilst some magic still remained. That they were successful is now well known and the story of their achievement was written down in the annals of history. People still clamour for the story of Red Moon. But time passes and prosperity has returned to the land.

When the crystal was created, the best of the remaining magicians were appointed as guardians. Under their care, the red moon crystal slowly gained in power and magic spread throughout the and again. Myglar was one of these guardians and he too looked after the crystal carefully. But as the years passed, so Myglar took to thinking and the subject that preyed on his mind most of all was that of his own mortality. The thought of dying terrified him and so he began to divert the power of the crystal away from the land and use it for himself in his search for immortality. The power of the red moon is now quickly diminishing again. The only way to stop it from disappearing altogether is to defeat Myglar and take his place as guardian. And that is why you are standing, somewhat nervously, outside the House of the Red Moon.

The Price Of Magik is the latest release from Level 9, Britain's premier adventure producers. Such was the response to Red Moon (it won several awards), that adventurers everywhere have been awaiting this release with considerable anticipation, especially as the Brothers Austin claim that they have improved their data compression techniques even further and crammed even more into the game. There are over 200 locations to be explored, all of them illustrated together with about 150 objects and creatures to be discovered and manipulated. The program boasts a vocabulary of over 1,000 words so that you shouldn't have too much trouble in finding the mot juste.

Magic does not come easily to you - in fact, you start off knowing exactly nothing. Very reassuringly, the instructions inform you that in order to succeed in your quest, you must know everything. This involves you learning some eighteen spells before you can seek a final confrontation with Myglar. In order to cast a spell, you must first of all know its name (no great surprise here) but you must also possess that particular spell's focus. This is an object from which the spell draws its power. In general, the object is connected to the spell so that there is not too much guesswork involved. For example, there is a spell that heals any wounds that you may have incurred in combat and the focus required is a herb. There are hazards involved in using magic though.

Every time you cast a spell, you age magically by a year. This in itself is not too serious, but it does have rather disastrous consequences if you reach the age of one hundred. Don't despair too much though; there is a way of magically reversing this aging process. The acquisition of magical ability is connected with a loss of sanity. You start off perfectly sane but, as you progress through the game and learn more about magic, your sanity decreases. This is used as a method of scoring - there are no points to be gained for finding treasures or defeating monsters.

The creatures found in the game are many and varied, ranging from bats to werewolves, slugs to ferrymen. Some you will need to fight, some are best left alone and others are needed to help you although they may not do this willingly. Combat is initiated by typing "kill mummy" or whatever. The program assumes that you are using your best weapon from any that you might be carrying. Each party has a certain number of hit points and a successful hit reduces this value. When the total reaches zero, the creature (or you if you are unlucky) dies. A word of warning here. You are likely to have to fight a creature several times over as they keep coming back as ghosts to haunt you!

Mapping the game is very straightforward, not least because all the location descriptions tell you where the exits lead to. The only problems that I encountered were negotiating the different floors of the house and finding room to draw in the secret doors. Strange, isn't it, how the piece of paper that you use for mapping is always the wrong shape and the passages soon take you straight off the edge of the paper with acres of open space in the other directions! A nice feature of the game is that it is very easy to get into. You are not stuck in the same few locations until you solve a specific problem. After a couple of hours playing, I had well over 120 different places mapped on assorted bits of paper. That was about all that I had done at that stage as the game itself is fairly difficult. I kept coming across situations where I knew what I wanted to try but didn't have the appropriate spell. What an excellent way of making sure that you play the game again and again.

The vocabulary is very large at over 1,000 words and the parser is on the whole excellent but there are one or two little problems. Most of the time, the program only looks at the first four letters of a word but there are occasions where you need to type out your word in full. For example, you start off outside the front door of a large house. On the door is a large knocker in the shape of griffin. If you type "exam knock" (which you need to do), the parset assumes that you are trying to knock on the door (in other words it is using "knock" as a verb rather than a noun which is what you intended). This is rather unfortunate as knocking on the door is not exactly beneficial to you as it summons a monster.

The other problem with the parser comes if you use a word which is not in the game's vocabulary. Sometimes you "wrong" word is sufficiently similar to another one in the game and you get a message to the effect that you can't see a XXXX here which spoils things slightly if you haven't come across the XXXX yet.

Adventurers are split down the middle when it comes to arguments as to whether or not a game should have graphics. Fear not! Whatever your tastes, The Price Of Magik caters for them with two versions of the game on opposite sides of the tape. Take your pick from a text only version with expanded descriptions or choose to have every location illustrated. The pictures are fairly simple but are bright and colourful and have the advantage of being drawn very quickly if you are moving rapidly around previous explored areas. This is due to the multi-tasking system used. There are not really any extra clues to be derived from the pictures although some of the objects illustrated do play a part in the game's later stages. Personally though, I much prefer the extra atmosphere created by the text version.

There are several ways to save your position for a later date. Ramsave stores your current details in memory for as long as the computer is switched on. For a more permanent record, there is the usual save to tape facility although you will have to use the dreaded Lenslok system when you want to restore a game. Incidentally, it is the up and down cursor keys that are used to adjust the large letter "H" not the left and right keys as indicated on the screen. One very useful feature that I had not come across before was the "OOPS" command. This, as its name suggests, is for when you have typed your instructions and the outcome of the action has shown that your judgement was somewhat lacking (I got my head cleaved in when an axe fell on it!). Using "OOPS" allows you to go back a move and so try something different. For those of you with 128s, this facility can be used some sixty times consecutively but I can't believe that any ZX Computing reader would be stupid enough to type in sixty silly commands!

There is a lot to this game and it is one that will keep you going back to it as you attempt to crack it. As with all Level 9's games, all serious adventurers wil want it in their collection. At only £9.95 to become a sorceror, The Price Of Magik has got to be good value for money.