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Willow Ufgood, the nicest Nelwyn in town, has a bit of a problem with a enchanted child he found in the river one day. Elora Danan, as she's called, is destined to spell doom for local witch queen, Bavmorda, and so Bavmorda has despatched her army to hunt her down and bring her back. Now he has pledged to protect the child, Willow has no choice but get involved in the rebellion against Bavmorda's tyranny, which leads him and his rebel compatriots through seven sub-exploits.

Each section can be played in sequence, as a quest, or you can choose to practice any of the seven separately.

First up is a run through the dungeons with virtuous midwife, Ethna. This takes the form of a 3D maze, the screen showing a view of each dungeon, with exists leading in any of four directions. Dawdle over choosing your exit and one of Bavmorda's knights appears and carts you off to the nearest cell. Similarly, if you make a wrong move and walk into a cell, you are given no chance to escape, and the door closes behind you. So it's back to the start for another go. Oh, well...

In the next section, Willow has to go through woods teeming with soldiers and Death Dogs, armed only with three magic acorns which turn anything they hit to stone. This has to be about the weakest subgame ever, featuring garish graphics, jerky movement, very ropey collision detection and sluggish controls.

Reach the crossroads and you're faced with two cages, one holding a disgraced but basically friendly warrior, Madmartigan, and the other holding Death. Using your skill, judgement and a tossed coin, you have to choose a cage to open. Why bother?

Aged sorceress Fin Raziel has fallen victim to Bavmorda's magic and, if you want to recruit her in the next stage, you have to change her from a possum back to a human. You do this in three stages by picking sets of three tunes from a panel of thirteen.

A tad more exciting is the trip through the ice caves which comes next. You get a view down a tunnel which you are speeding down on a makeshift sledge. Well, I say "speeding", but the graphics give more of an impression of lurching down it in short skids. Anyway, the ice caves are in fact another maze, and you have to find your way out before you impale yourself on the icy spikes at the end of every tunnel. Adding to the challenge are the very sluggish controls, which mean you have to start a turn down a side passage approximately three "jerks" before you reach it!

The battle between General Kael and Madmarigan is next, consisting of a garish and very slow "Hunchback-style" run along the battlements of Nockmaar castle, followed by a jerky sword fight which seems to require little in the way of skill.

If you can get this far, there is also a duel in sorcery between Bavmorga and Willow, which takes a similar form to the tune-choosing in part four.

The programmers have tried to recreate the key scenes from the film... with little success. There is such a dependence on luck in every part of the game (even the swordfight!) that it just isn't enjoyable to play. The practice option seems like a good idea, but because all the mazes and spells don't change until you reset the whole game, you can find the routes through the dungeons and the ice caverns (after many fruitless and tedious attempts) and then romp through them in quest mode and make the whole thing seem pointless.

Apparently, a C64 version is also in the works. Mind you, if Mindscape can't use the facilities of an Amiga to produce a good game, the chances for that version don't look good!