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Back a millennia or so there was a rumpus among the gods of ancient Egypt. The great god Set foully murdered the thief of all the gods, Osiris. The story is well known and the search for the fourteen parts of Osiris' body (Set dismembered it) could well make a good adventure plot some time. For the present we have to make do with CRCs Book Of The Dead, which deals with the trials and tribulations of Set's son Kteth.

After the murder, Osiris' son Horus avenged his father, defeated Set and also banished Kteth to the world of mortal man. As Kteth is innocent of any crime he still has many friends among the gods. He learns that the mysterious Book Of The Dead will enable him to return to the home of the gods. When Horus, still mad with anger, hears of his quest, he inflicts Kteth with a crippling disease. Kteth will die unless he can get the aid of a friendly god poste haste.

Book Of The Dead is a two part adventure written using Incentive's Graphic Adventure Creator and is available for CPC machines on cassette or disc. You play the part of Kteth in his search for survival. The initial problem is staying alive long enough to find someone to lift Horus' curse.

You awaken in a busy market square with no possessions and about 50 moves before you die. Mapping the locations is fairly simple and an initial SAVE is worthwhile as RESTOREing a saved game position is quicker than dying and starting from scratch.

Graphics are simple but well implemented, although sometimes the change in colour intensity between adjacent locations is a little dramatic. The vocabulary does not seem to be very large, so there are times when you may nave to search for the right input.

The puzzles vary from easy to moderately difficult and most of the objects found have a fairly obvious use. Travel in town can be severely restricted by the random appearance of some drunken muggers. They will deposit your battered body on the local rubbish dump.

Each time this happens you lose a few valuable moves in returning to where you were. This loss could be crucial, so SAVE on the occasions when you collect the least muggings. This is a middle of the road adventure with a reasonable story line and could provide hours of playing time. It is not cheap (cassette £19.95) and for this reason will probably be judged harshly in comparison with some budget games on the market.