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The old wizard Krugan is annoyed because the Heart of Lore has been destroyed. The despicable Plogthor is responsible, and if he recovers the bits there's going to be big trouble. Andy Hutchinson attempts to placate Krugan, foil Plogthor and eat an entire Chinese meal using only his left foot and a toothpick

Fantastic lands and fairytale creatures are alive and well in Enchanted Lands. In fact, life has never been better for the wizards and monsters who do battle every day. However, something has gone terribly wrong and the Heart of Lore - the source of magic which kept the land of Damiran happy - has been shattered into 100 pieces.

You're Krugan, an elderly wizard, and you've been chosen by the elders to retrieve the magic which made up the Heart of Lore and restore life to its old happy state. This involves you battling with legions of spiders, beetles, fish and mummies. You must use all your magic skills to defeat them and return to the village in one piece.

Enchanted Lands is an advanced platform game in which you have to explore all six levels and capture the lost fragments of magic. The landscape scrolls as you make your way to the end-of-level exit and you must search all areas if you're going to find anything.

Grassy knolls, verges and rocks are the standard landscape features, but take a trip up a tree and you discover a whole new sub-section. Doing so is easy: ropes hang from trees, and large flowers give you a petal-up, catapulting you into the air and enabling you to scale sheer walls. Clouds forn bridges between sections, and there are caves and tunnels that conceal a treasure-trove of power-ups and magic.

There are, however, plenty of vicious creatures in Enchanted Lands, and they're all wizard-killing monsters with death wishes. Most common among these are invincible beetles - they jump when you do and quickly reduce your energy. Scorpions are quite predictable opponents: they wander up and down at regular intervals, and so do the dragonflies. Nastier opponents include spiders who drop down on your head and mummies who stick with you like flies to mouldy dog poo.

In order to progress you must collect all the potions you can find. Most of these are hidden and you flush them out by firing at their hiding place - usually a tree or a rock. As you gain more and more magic you can use better and better weapons - there's a total of nine to choose from, varying from the bog-standard spark to the highly amusing smash bomb. You can make these more powerful through the use of potions which are mixed together at the end of a level - just in time to use them against the particularly large and nasty end-of-level monsters.

When you first see the smoothness of the scrolling in this game, you could almost swear you've sat down in front of your TV instead of your ST. Krugan climbs and leaps his way around the game with amazing fluidity. Jump up and the whole screen smoothly scrolls with you. What's more, there's an amazing sense of free movement, caused by the way the game lets you clamber all over objects, rather than leaving them as parts of the very attractive backgrounds.

Colour is used to great effect. Bright, well-designed creatures complement the very detailed backgrounds, and the animation is as faultless as the scrolling. Sound is internally generated, but well up to par and not intrusive enough to ruin your concentration while you play.

Phew! Enchanted Lands is an extremely addictive game. It's very easy to get into but nigh on impossible to put down. Every facet of the game oozes playability. You've got to be nimble on your feet and rapid with your Fire button to beat the end-of-level creatures, but it's a joy to go leaping around the screen because it's so smooth and fast.

The difficulty weighting of the puzzles is excellent. The first level seems hard, but you soon realise that you've actually been eased into the game and are ready for some real treats on the later levels.

It's very hard to fault Enchanted Lands. The only niggle is that you have to keep pressing the Spacebar to enter the game and leave screens - surely pressing the Fire button would have been better.

A couple of ex-emo writers programmed Enchanted Lands and they certainly knew what they were doing. They've produced an enjoyable, absorbing platform game with more twists than a pig's willy warmer.