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In the beginning there was nuffin', then these gods zapped into existence and said unto each other: "'Ere, John, wouldn't it be a laugh to make some mortals and stick 'em on a planet?" and thus was created the world of Tessara. Having done their bit of model-making they grew bored and one said unto the others, "Right then, last one in the pub buys the drinks." One god, N'Gnir, got left behind, because he was asleep and missed out on the drinks.

OK, so I lied a bit about the scenario, but that's close enough. You're on a mission to god (though your name is not Elwood) and must awaken him. To achieve this you have to travel through the eight kingdoms looking for clues to his location and finding objects to aid you in your quest.

The action is viewed in 3D from your eyes as you wander over the huge landscape. A panel at the bottom of the screen shows what objects you're carrying in your inventory, weapons, gold, experience and weapon currently selected.

There's also a compass, clock and stamina indicator which gradually decreases until the time comes for you to die.

The background to the game is provided by an on-screen book which you flick through and the pages turn smoothly to reveal the plot and history of Tessera. In the game itself everything is viewed in a fairly simplistic 3D and animation is poor, but everything moves around smoothly and quickly. Sound in the game is just simple effects and explosions and the only tune is played when the game is loading.

Let Sleeping Gods Lie is in essence a typical computer adventure, finding objects, solving puzzles, helping people and generally doing adventurish things. What makes it different though is the 3D aspect. It makes mapping much easier and the lack of Command Line Interpreter means that you are never told "You can't do that".

Gods is similar to the Freescape games from Incentive. The 3D is not as good, but the improved speed does help considerably. Problems are of a similar nature although there is more character interaction than blasting to solve the problems.

It's a nice idea that's executed well, but falls short of excellence due to the time you spend travelling and the number of bad guys you must kill.