Once loaded you'll find your man inside a maze. OK, so there's nothing new with that, but have you ever been in a maze when you've been equipped with a ray of light that shoots from your eyes killing everything in its path?
As your man moves around the maze, monsters appear from the 'poof chambers'
which are situated at different points in the maze, usually right in your way. Never mind, don't forget about your light-firing eyes.
There are five different monsters in the maze and all of them are well-animated. The nasties are a squirming snake, a creeping spider, a rolling ball, a fluttering butterfly and a 'spastic spark'.
Not all of the monsters appear on the first level and so you must get to higher levels before you see the whole bestiary.
When things get too hot, or there's no route through the maze, you can enter a
'zoom' chamber and you'll be teleported vertically. The monsters will be left
behind, fuming - they can't use them.
Another way of beating the monsters is to freeze them by pressing the 'space'
bar. For five seconds, they're sitting ducks while you scurry off to a safer spot. Of course, your power to freeze the nasties is limited - to three times - you get one replacement freeze spell every 50,000 points. Some players may feel this facility is a cheat, but it'll appeal to the ruthless and the cowardly.
Of course the maze is abundant with the obligatory treasures. And don't forget to pick up the keys which you will need to get out of the mazes. All action in the game is very smooth.
The monsters wriggle and roll as they chase you and when you reach the edge of the screen even the maze scrolls smoothly along with you. In fact, the quality of the graphics in this game is very high and you'd probably have great difficulty finding a game on the Dragon with graphics to match.
You will have to travel through 11 different levels of the game before you see the touchstone mentioned in the title, a pleasure I have yet to enjoy.
Probably one of the best games around for the Dragon. And an excellent arcade-adventure by any standards. It's good to see that this machine has the same games potential as other popular micros. Well done, Microdeal.