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The new Magnetic Scrolls adventure, due to hit your local computer stores within a few weeks from now, will be very different from its three predecessors. Set in the real world of today's Stock Exchange, you'll find no wizards or dragons, no guardians, and not even a single subterranean labyrinth to explore. Instead, the victim of a frame-up, you'll be out to save your own skin in a world of intrigue and corruption. In fact, Corruption is the name of the game.

There are only fifty locations in Corruption, and about 28 graphics. You might think graphics reflecting a world of offices and City locations might be a bit drab and uninteresting - Anita Sinclair certainly did, and was dreading the outcome. They spent a good deal of time 'swanning around London' with a camera, in search of suitable location shots to hand over to the artists. Alan Hunnisett and Richard Selby, were not too keen on the subject pictorially, it seems, but have turned out what Anita now feels are the best Scrolls' graphics to date. A new departure is the inclusion of a few 'situation' graphics.

Corruption concerns insider dealing on the Stock Exchange, in which you become the chief suspect. A newly appointed partner in a firm of brokers, you find yourself in your new office on the first day of your job, being welcomed by David Rogers, the senior partner. Leaving you to settle in, he disappears, and it soon becomes apparent that he is up to no good. But you don't realise quite what it is, until the long arm of the law is clamped firmly on your shoulder, and you end up in the dock.

The first time you play the game, you won't be able to save yourself. To achieve this, you have to play it through a few times, watching people, talking to them, and gathering evidence to clear your name.

There are about thirty characters in Corruption, and you can interact with about fifteen of them. Some of those you will early on in the proceedings, are Margaret, your secretary, Hughes, the company lawyer, Theresa, David's secretary, and Barbara, the cleaning lady.

During the game they all go about their daily business - that is to say you will find them at different places, doing different things, at different times of the day. One move on the computer moves the time, displayed at the top of the screen, one minute forward. As you come into contact with them, it pays to determine their attitudes towards each other, and their opinions about other characters.

The form of speech is limited to asking someone or telling someone about something. Depending on its relevance to the plot, you either get a reaction of information that will help you, or else a catch-all answer, something that is fairly sensible in context, but not terribly helpful.

A very useful command in the game is FOLLOW. If you are tracking someone's movements, FOLLOW [name] followed by a series of RETURNs, keeps you in the same location as the character under observation as he/she moves from place to place. By building up a picture of people's movements, and finding key documents and a few other objects, you eventually get a pretty good idea of how the frame is being set up.

From then on you have to devise a way to thwart it - not an easy task, for it seems that there are enemies everywhere. However, you might find you have some unexpected friends, if you've done your groundwork thoroughly.

To successfully complete the game, you must be thoroughly mean and unscrupulous - or so I'm told.

Rob Steggles, author of The Pawn, has spent most of the past year writing Corruption. But both he and Anita Sinclair are very concerned that people don't rush out and buy Corruption purely because they enjoyed Magnetic Scrolls' last adventure, Jinxter. "Jinxter was a very humorous game, with manipulative type problems. It doesn't follow that if you enjoyed Jinxter, or even Guild, you will enjoy Corruption."

The last thing Magnetic Scrolls want is for gamers to spend their money and be disappointed. They see Corruption having a limited appeal amongst their traditional fans, and possibly a much wider following among business users of computers. Having said that, it doesn't necessarily mean that you won't like the game.

Rob's enthusiasm for Corruption shows though. "It's a completely different type of adventure," he explained. "And Hugh has worked wonders making it possible." Hugh wrote, and continues to be responsible for Magnetic Scrolls' parser.

Since the Scrolls' parser already shares a top-of-the-league position with Infocom, one might have expected Hugh's day-to-day parsing activities to have been confined to the continual process of maintenance and marginal improvements. However, to see why he has been so heavily involved, it is necessary behind the different nature of Corruption, compared with other Magnetic Scrolls titles.