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Time is of the essence of the Chronoquest series. In part one you discovered your murdered father's time machine, Explora, and used it to travel through several temporal planes to find his killer. With that task completed - you did finish Chronoquest I, didn't you? - you're all set to return to 1922.

Unfortunately, Explora's engine overheats and burns up so much fuel she's unable to complete the journey. Instead, the machine transports you to the deck of a ship in an era completely alien to you.

Checking Explora, you find her tank empty and set out on to seek sufficient metal to fuel the trip back home. Luckily, only one location away lies an anchor embedded in the sand of an idyllic beach. However, fuelling Explora with the anchor only takes you so far through time, quickly bringing you to the conclusion that more than one time zone requires exploration if enough metal is to be found to reach the 1920's.

In fact, there are 13 time zones to "click" your way through - "click" because Chronoquest II, like its prequel, is fully icon-driven - and every nook and cranny of every zone needs exploring to ensure you miss nothing that may help you return safely.

The screen displays a brilliant, beautifully detailed graphic of your current location complete with interactive characters and objects. Several scenes feature animation but it's not exactly breathtaking stuff.

Below the graphic window is a panel for text messages. Character speech is vocally synthesized as well, but it requires so much extra disk swapping that you have the option to turn it off. The musketeer's accent is so OTT that you need to refer to the text to understand him anyway.

At the bottom of the screen sits the icon panel with options such as Talk, Listen, Give, Get, Drop, Use, Examine, Retreat and Advance. There is also an SOS icon through which Save, Load and Exit are accessed.

The first attempt at Chronoquest II may be perplexing, even for hard-bitten adventurers, because the control system takes a bit of getting used to. Pointing and clicking on every pixel in the hope of finding something useful isn't exactly edge-of-the-seat stuff. And only having Advance and Retreat as movement options can be frustrating. However, once you've explored a few screens, chatterd to the natives and picked up the odd metal object to fuel Explora for another time zone, the control system becomes secondary to the enjoyable pursuit of finding a way back home.

Most puzzles are trial and error (although some "shots in the dark" have fatal results) and, providing you have the correct item in your inventory, finding solutions is a matter of manipulating objects and characters until something interesting happens.

Chronoquest I was very successful and, with its detailed graphics, sampled sounds and intriguing plot there's no absolutely no reason why Chronoquest II shouldn't follow in its footsteps.