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There is something decidedly forbidding about the forest in which you find yourself. Something is amiss, you can feel it in your bones. The nearby village is deserted too. The feeling of gloom is heightened as you reach the river's edge and encounter the skeletal ferryman.

Across the river lies a castle, with a moat guarded by a hungry underwater monster, and its drawbridge up. Once inside of its halls and chambers are strangely deserted, save for the proud and beautiful figure of a young woman, quietly crying to herself in her bedroom. As she gives you advice and a warning, she slowly fades into invisibility.

Will you be able to lift the curse on the village by defeating the evil that lurks within the castle walls?

Dragon Quest has the familiar screen layout of a picture at the top, and a text window, on suitably ageing parchment, below it. This area is only five text lines deep, and without the ability to enlarge it by moving the picture out of the way, the lengthier description must be paged through at a 'press any key' prompt. An adventurer's natural instinct to examine everything thoroughly, and then search once again for good measurem means frequent use of the 'L' command to review the text.

At each change of location, the appropriate picture is read in from disk, and although this is not too lengthy a process (certainly a lot faster than in Sierra adventures) it can be a little frustrating when retracing one's steps. However, subsequent visits to a location merely name the room, thus cutting out the full description and avoiding having to page through it. Background sound effects accompany each picture too and add to the atmosphere of the moment.

The parser is none too sophisticated, and seems naturally at home with two word commands. In some cases its messages are annoying, obviously being designed to cover a number of situations. For example, trying to pick up an object that you can't always gets the reply "You don't need that", irrespective of whether the object requested is already in your inventory, not in the current location, or not a recognised word, and even if the object mentioned is a useful one. However, it works well enough once the messages system is understood.

Throughout the game, the text has a light humour to it, poking fun at typical adventures and adventure rooms. In all cases it's well worded and eminently readable.

It may not be exactly an original name for an adventure game, but Dungeon Quest suits the game admirably, conjuring up nostalgic memories of some of those good old classic adventures of bygone days. An obvious candidate for comparison is the old Melbourne House classic, Classic Of Terror, with the strangely sinister village - which, even back in those days, had sound effects and music too. Not that Dungeon Quest is old hat though, either in the sense of technology and techniques, or in storyline, for it runs on an Amiga, has sound effects in stereo (if you're got suitable equipment) and some excellent graphics.

Dungeon Quest is a welcome return to the more traditional type of text adventure with graphics.