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A new game for the BBC series of computers is rare enough and, no matter what the content, we all have to be pleased to see a new company taking the machines seriously - Omicron Technologies are taking their work very seriously.

Let's look at what we're dealing with here. This isn't another shoot-'em-up variation, it's not Pacman or platforms, this is a full blown role playing adventure. Not only that, we're talking graphics digitised from video and sampled sound, though you do need sideways RAM to get all the goodies.

The basic story has a Dungeons and Dragons feel, as you would expect, and I won't go into it here. Simply, you have to collect nine pieces of a pentagram to prevent the end of life as we know it. Let's get going.

The game arrives on five discs. This is not as irritating as you might imagine and a couple of swaps will get you going. We start with the Home Town disc and our first task is to decide who we are. You can choose from sorcerer, archer and warrior - each comes in both genders - and that decides the graphic that represents you in the game. On selection you get a breakdown of the character and a picture. I must admit, technically clever though the digitised pictures are, I should have preferred drawings - the sorcerer looks like a rather surprised Tom Hanks. Here, you also get the "Vegetarian Option'; I'll leave the vegetarians to try that one out.

Finally you get to select sideways RAM and off you go to the first map. There are four maps or counties, each on a different disc and, as each one contains more that 150 locations, it will be a while before you need to swap. You move around the map using the cursor keys but Omicron have not made life easy by letting your cursor do the walking - you can only move to adjacent locations. Pressing Return puts you into a location which may contain a puzzle, a monster or nothing at all. Each location is a 'widescreen' scrolling area.

If you find yourself in a combat zone, and you'll soon know, you get to fight the nasty monster. There are seventeen varieties to choose from and you use a combination of hacking, shooting, parrying and throwing to beat the beast - negotiation is not an option. As you fight, you get to see yours, and the respective monster's, power drain away; when all the power is gone it's 'Game Over' for the loser. At the end of the combat zones you reach the shop where you can use some of the 200 gold pieces you started off with to replenish your power.

Each character type has things called career points. What this indicates is the state of your particular ammunition. You start with ten points and each time you cast a spell or loose an arrow you use one point. So, you can't go out, Arnie style, with your twenty-rounds-a-second repeating crossbow; you need to take care. Each time you kill a monster you gain a career point - you can buy more but they're very expensive.

The combat, however, is not what it's all about. Strewn about the place are various objects that form long and sometimes complex linking puzzles. You know the sort of thing; you must get past the bull but you need a rope to tie it down, a trader has a rope but wants a gem for it and so on. Sometimes you not only need objects but there will be something to fight as well. There are also word puzzles, some of which are dead straigh forward while others are cryptic.

At the end of these strings of puzzles you will find bits of the pentagram, once you have found all the bits on a map you will be given the password to take you to the next. This continues until you have completed them all at which point you will be treated to something rather special.

Of its type this package is at least very good. Of its type on the BBC nothing I have seen comes close and it's very sensibly priced. You certainly need to take the game quite seriously; the puzzles are long and involved, you'll need to take notes. You can only re-enter the game at the start of a given map, so you need to be able to complete each at a sitting. As moving around the map can take some time you need to think carefully about the order in which you do things. You can only carry up to three objects and, as there are 150 individual puzzles to solve don't expect to do it the first time. This approach is helped by the fact that puzzles are always in the same place and, as far as I could tell, so are the objects needed to solve them.

Technically it's a great achievement, although the sound doesn't contribute much and, if the art work is a bit dull, well, let's see what they come up with next.