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Recently re-released by Big Sky software, Time Thief is a disk-only text-adventure written by Don Macleod. The game arrives on one disk and is divided into two parts: 'Shadows & Light' and 'Ironhand'. The plot surrounds a company who deal in 'Timeshare Travel' - a fascinating concept where you borrow time from your old age to use on your holiday. So if you're 18 you might want to 'use' your 77th year now, on a time-travelling holiday, rather than later on when you might be too ill to enjoy it! You'll die at a younger age (say, 40), but by the wonders of Timeshare would still have 'lived' your full life span.

This process was working quite successfully until people start returning from their time travel crippled, maimed and so on. Top academics suspect there's a time thief and one of them, Jocasta, travels to a time an dplace where they suspect it's happening. When she disappers, it's your turn to risk life and limb.

Time Thief is a tour de force in C64 adventuring. Probably the most amazing aspect of this game is sheer amount of text with minimal disk access! Now why couldn't Infocom do that? Don's combination of The Quill utility and his own machine code routines is amazingly efficient.

The game, which mixes fantasy and SF very successfully, oozes atmosphere and will reward careful examination of objects with flowing and elegant prose. Although Time Thief uses The Quill, and therefore only allows the basic two-word input, you shouldn't be put off because the game design never really exposes this limitation as two-word inputs are all you ever need anyway.

With a wide range of puzzles (some comparatively easy, others pretty tough), beautiful text descriptions and responses, plus all the atmosphere you could wish for in an adventure, this is an essential purchase.