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Mike Gerrard fumbles around in the darkness of Dorcasia, in search of a dozen ways to die

"Success depends on good fortune and a lump of meat." No, this isn't subtle propaganda being put out by your local butcher, but one of the messages you get to explain why you're dead yet again in The Runes of Zendos, the latest animated adventure for the Spectrum (£7.95) from Dorcas Software, whose earlier Oracle's Cave proved so popular. But death comes in a variety of ways - in fact as there are twelve adventures in one, it comes in an almost infinite variety of ways.

The mid-ground between adventure at one extreme and arcade at the other is a rather hazy area, but this animated effort is definitely at the adventure end of the market. No need for a joystick option, it's keyed-in commands all the way.

Any adventure with the word 'runes' in the title tells you that it's going to be set in some mythical land, whose peaceful existence has been or is about to be threatened by some evil power. In this case the land is Dorcasia, and the evil power belongs to Zendos the wizard.

The problem? Perpetual darkness. Where do you confront Zendos? Deep within his mysterious and magical castle. What's he done? Trapped the spirit of each month of the year in a runic hour glass and hidden them all. What do you have to do? Seek and destroy. How? By reading, deciphering and incanting the mysterious runic inscription round the base of each hour glass.

When you load the game up you automatically begin with adventure one, discovering that "You are in the January hallway where you find a skull and crossbone key". At any point, though, if you want to go to one of the other adventures you simply type ADVENTURE TWO (or whatever) to take you to the appropriate hallway. You can't leave an adventure half-completed and return to it, however - if you go back to adventure one then you begin again in the January hallway. You can, though, save your progress to tape or Microdrive at any stage.

The top part of the screen is given over to the graphics. You, the hero, seem fetchingly clad in a romper suit, which doesn't altogether inspire much confidence in your fighting abilities. Beneath the picture is room for up to seven lines of scrolling text, and another couple of input lines for you beneath those. To move around, you press the initial keys for left, right, up and down, toddle along or climb ladders as appropriate. The movement is reasonably smooth, but slow.

Each room you come to will present you with a new object or objects, though the majority of them have some obstacle in the way - dragons, dwarves, cooks, butlers and even singing birds. For example, taking the key from that first room and climbing up brings you to a room where a nimble, cheeky elf is guarding a tiny stone tablet. The commands that re understood allow you to ATTACK ELF, if you wish, or GREET ELK if you're feeling more friendly, or even GIVE KEY TO ELF if you're in a really generous mood.

In the top left of each screen are two figures showing the relative strength of you and the other character. So the approach you take depends on that, and whether they appear friendly or not, what weapons you have, whether you have any other objects that might appeal to them, and so on.

You start with 25 units of strength, and 25 of provisions, with a luck factor of 10. To build up your strength you can eat your provisions. As you proceed you'll find edible objects lying around: apples, cheese and sandwiches, for instance.

Runes works in adventure fashion, in that if you want to get past the bird whose shrill singing pierces your ears, you have to get the ear muff from somewhere else. You also soon learn that ticking clocks are to be left well alone. The size of each adventure area is not enormous, about eight rooms or so, but you need to play through them all in order to pick up clues, which you also get from reading assorted scrolls and parchments.

Other clues are obtained by making a reckless assault on some powerful individual - death is never in vain, as you're frequently told what it was you were lacking, such as the kump of meat mentioned above, or the corkscrew when you try to get past the butler.

You must start piecing these together, and working out which keys open which trapdoors and gateways. The problems aren't tricky, for the most part, but making sense of everything is another matter.

It's a game that younger players would get a lot of pleasure from, and the graphics are quite well done, especially in the fight sequences. There are also a few amusing sound effects. The avid adventurer might demand a little more, but I found myself happily engrossed in it for a few hours.

One glaring problem, though, is the lack of a REDESCRIBE or LOOK feature. By the time you've seen off a beast, the location description will have scrolled off the screen and it's all too easy to forget what it was you were originally after - the graphics aren't that good, and daggers and swords ten to look similar.

The only solution is to leave the location and come back again, and that means a lengthy wait.

These snags apart, The Runes of Zendos is still one of the more successful attempts at animated adventure.

Rather more complicated problems are to be found in the land of Valhalla, as reader Richard Henriques of London SW16 has discovered.

Richard's question was "What do I do to find the quest objects?"

So far he's mapped out an 8 x 8 grid, and surmised that the bottom right-hand quadrant is "Valhalla". All I can say is that the completed map is a 9 x 9 grid, and Valhalla itself is a single location in that grid. If you say where the first quest object is located then that gives the game away completely, but you can make helpful general advice - such as stock up on food and wine to keep your strength up.

Any you can't carry or eat and drink yourself, summon a good character to carry for you, then summon them again when you want to get the food or wine off them. This also applies to weapons - and even the quest objects. Stay on the side of the good guys... end of this week's sermon.