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The legends tell that one of the greatest love stories was the one that Arlett and Jarlac lived in the lost kingdom of Tyramat. Happy as they were they did not realize that with their love they had raised the envy of a dark sorcerer named Ott, who was in love with the beautiful Arlett.

Before the rejection of Arlett, Ott enters into anger and decides that, if Arlett is not his, she will not be of anyone and turns Arlett into a stone statue. As soon as the news reaches Jarlac, he goes in search of his beloved. He finds her petrified, but in her hand she shows the solution to his spell: a heart of stone.

In this run 'n jump, hack 'n slash platformer, to return Arlett to her human form you must collect 13 fragments of a heart and the lost parchment containing the spell of Topo that are scattered throughout the 60 screens of the kingdom of Tyramat. You search high in the trees and underground for them running and jumping everywhere. Once they have been collected, Jarlac will be able to break the curse that has petrified his beloved Arlett.

Armed with a huge sword, Jarlac means business. Enemies appear every time he enters a new screen. There are huge Skeletons that rush at you, spider looking creatures called Aranna that crawl on the surface of the platforms and Flying Sisu that make your life very difficult if you don't wait for them to come towards Jarlac. All of them are pretty easy to kill but you need to strike them before they touch you and drain away all your life energy.

Every time you kill an enemy it adds more to Jarlac's magic power. This is critical to the gameplay so that you can unpetrify the hearts when you locate them. If you don't have full magic then you can't unpetrify those hearts. A heart turns red in colour so you know it has become unpetrified. You can build up the magic by killing enemies and go back to the screen before where the enemies respawn and kill them again. There is nothing difficult at all, it's just good old hack 'n slash platform gaming. Each time Jarlac picks up a heart, an indicator will light under the magic bar.

When Jarlac's magical power is at its maximum, he will be able to use magic, which will wipe out all the enemies on the screen and also demolish the hearts in it. The Topo Scroll contains the only spell that, together with the power of the 13 hearts, can return Arlett to her human form. While enemies are plenty, Jarlac faces many other obstacles to be wary of including rivers of burning lava flowing underground, they look too long to jump over but Jarlac will not be stopped, the only way to survive and find his true love is by jumping over them, any contact with the lava will kill Jarlac instantly. Large spikes are found everywhere and must be jumped over to continue your quest. In some screens you will find water, this has a healing effect on Jarlac and will recharge his energy. If Jarlac falls from too great a height between screens he won't die but it will remove much of his energy bar.

The music is outstanding. That tune is as cool as you could want when playing a game like this. Your sword slashing Jarlac sprite is huge so are your enemy sprites, making a grand impact on your enjoyment of the game. Good colourful graphics with a good variety of the CPC's palette has been used. Building up your magic powers to unpetrify the hearts ensured a lot of slashing and hacking, that's what you want in a game like this. The recharge in the water is a terrific innovation too. I enjoyed the exploration; you could uncover new sections in all directions and the jumping high into the trees and then travelling underground made the game interesting. The shooting skeletons in the underground section kept the game challenging.

While not taking a great deal away from the game I didn't like that you can't jump and slash and you can't kill the enemies that are touching you. The latter means your energy is drained way too quickly. It was frustrating, yes for sure, but like I said they don't take away a great deal from the game but they may have enhanced the playability if they were included. Perhaps five lives instead of three would have made it more enjoyable.

There is no doubt the game has its failings, but as they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. At first play I was negative towards it, but Jarlac grew on me and I have enjoyed it much more than I had originally thought I would. Not hack 'n slash platforming at its best, but Jarlac has some awesome tunes, colourful large sprites, is a lot of fun and sure is a cool game to play.