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Awesome graphics, a brilliant storyline and gameplay that leaves the rest of the field standing make Loom one of the best graphic adventures of the year. Andrew Hutchinson pulls on sandals, grabs his magic staff and checks it out...

A world stands on the brink of apocalypse and young Bobbin Threadbare represents its only chance. Bobbin is the only surviving member of the mystical guild of weavers who wove the fabric of reality itself. A malevolent power threatens that reality, so Bobbin sets out on a long journey armed only with his magical powers to find his friends and stop the forces of evil from destroying the sacred Loom.

You take on the role of Bobbin and direct him around the landscape. To move you simply point where you want to go on-screen and click the mouse button. Clicking on doors enables you to enter rooms or buildings. If an object needs to be manipulated then click on it with the left mouse button.

Loom is played entirely with the mouse and doesn't require any text input. The cinematic opening sequence introduces you to Bobbin, his family and his dilemma. A messenger asks Bobbin to report to the elders of the guild for a little chat. It transpires that he's been blamed for the chaos which has descended on the planet and as a result he is cursed.

The elders punish Bobbin's stepmother by turning her into an egg, but before they can deal with Bobbin himself, a bird flies into the sanctuary (straight through the plate glass window) and turns everyone into a swan - everyone, that is, except young Threadbare. This is where the adventure proper starts and you have to try and rejoin your guild while saving the world in the process.

Spellcasting is your most powerful weapon and spells take the form of musical tunes. The game is played in one of three modes: practice, easy and expert. On the easy level, when you point at an important object such as a pot, notes are echoed onto your staff and their letters appear in a box, enabling you to cast a spell at anything you like. On the harder level you only hear the notes and have to play them back from memory along the staff.

At the start of the game you only have eight notes to cast spells with, but as you become more experienced you can pick up new notes. The more notes you have the more spells you can cast.

One of the first problems you come across is a dangerous whirlwind. Click on the whirlwind and listen to the four-note sound it makes. This is a twist spell and if you play it backwards, the whirlwind goes away.

What sets this game apart from so many of its peers is the superb graphics. Right from the loading screen it's obvious that an incredible amount of time has been spent getting the visuals right. Long smoothly linked sequences give an amazing impression of depth and highly-detailed close-ups of characters impact vital knowledge about spells or the way forward.

The internally generated musical tunes that make up the spells, however, hardly sound magical, and the jaunty tunes which play throughout the game get incredibly annoying very rapidly.

Loom is definitely an eye-catching game. The smooth-scrolling cartoon-like graphics and the cinematic opening sequence are absolutely mind-blowing.

But while Loom may be the most flawless example of the graphic adventure genre, it's also one of the shortest. Anyone with a modicum of common sense and an IQ bigger than their shoe size should be able to complete the game within three days. It's an excellent introduction to the world of adventures on the ST, but hardened adventurers are likely to be disappointed.