It is 1932, and Bertie Hall is a hapless gambler who has lost all his money on the GGs and refuses to work for a living. This has led to something of a financial crisis so he resolves to visit his rich aunt Agatha, a lady of staunch Victorian values, at Maddingly Hall to sponge off her for a weekend.

This is the intriguing background to the new Minerva graphic adventure, again from the CPU of Chris Cullen, the man responsible for Battle Tank amongst other things.

The plot thickens when we discover that Bertie's childhood sweetheart, Veronica is also at the Hall along with several doddering aunts and uncles as well as an eagle-eyed butler who sees and knows all.

Our hero decides to try to regain favour with his aunt, who disapproves of his irresponsible lifestyle, to get her to write him back into her will and leave him the money with which to woo the lovely Veronica.

It's a convoluted background, I know,but what of the game itself? Well, not a lot actually. This is the author's first stab at an adventure and, frankly, it shows. It is written in Basic which should mean a slower but more sophisticated parser. This is not the case. The speed is fine but the game is of the VERB NOUN class of adventure and sometimes not even up to this since it has a very limited vocabulary.

Impressively, every single location is illustrated (instead of just the usual few pictures) but sadly, at the cost of using sprite-based graphics which get re-used all over the game. I think the Forsythia shrubs proliferate in almost every outdoor location!

The objects in the game are sparingly detailed and do not stand up to detailed 'examination' - just producing the standard 'you notice nothing unusual' response. There are no pronoun routines to allow use of 'it', 'them' or 'everything'.

Having said all that, it is unfair to compare this enjoyable game with more expensive, coded and converted games such as Fish! or Jinxter, and Maddingly Hall has a quaint charm about it which will provide a welcome diversion to the less fussy adventurers out there, who don't mind the occasional "I don't understand..." message.