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This is one of the simplest adventure games I have ever experienced. It took me just over one hour, including mapping time, to complete it.

The idea of Colditz Adventure is to escape from the castle with certain objects vital for survival. You can escape without them but you die by getting lost or starving or meeting some other fate.

The 'problems' I encountered were no problem and required little or no thought to solve. The messages give you such heavy hints that it would be difficult to miss the point. You may have to run through the plot twice to finish, but if, like me, you are cautious, you'll be all right.

The screen layout is fairly good. You are told where you can go (in the nicest way) and each direciton is in a different colour. Directions may be entered as single letters, although you don't seem to be able to abbreviate nouns. Another niggle is that words were chopped up when a line was full - even IS was split on one occasion.

The screen is quickly cleared and updated after every move, a nice touch which keeps everything neat.

There's a 'save game' facility, but I don't think it will be needed. The routine to save is very quick; there are only about 35 things to read or write.

Apart from one or two spelling mistakes the program is well-written in Basic and response is fairly quick. A bit of thought could have reduced the size of the program a little. However, for the Basic adventure writer there are a few good routines here.

To sum up, good for beginners or programmers, but a little too simple, and it should be more user-friendly.