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"Wrenching the controls to port caused the ship to keel over and drop sickeningly out of the purple rain-clouds. Glancing at the orward view-screen, I could make out the far mountain range piercing the shroud of the perpetual thunderstorm. The deeper hued purple of the cratered plain rushed skyward as the retro-rockets cut in, causing the ship's hull to shudder uncontrollably.

Spying a small clearing lying at the foot of a large rock-strewn defile, I kicked the rudder and applied lateral thrust until the ship grudgingly lurched into the shadow of the overhang. With a final roar of triumph the engine cut and allowed the support struts to sink into the purply sands of Doom. I had returned."

Having previously survived the acid rain of the planet Doom, only a fool would return, but who could ignore the distress signal of the space cruiser Galapoxi? The ship was carrying the Earth's Ambassador to Flux, and somehow it had been forced down over the dreaded planet. In the short time available before your ship is destroyed by the metal-rotting rain you must overcome the obstacles and rescue the Ambassador from her captors.

In this sequel to Countdown To Doom, Peter Killworth has managed to squeeze a quart of fun and puzzles into the BBC's pint of memory. Peter has again disregarded the opportunity to include an over-clever command parser, and instead opted for small answers to big puzzles. You will find that, in general, dropping, throwing and waving are the order of the day without any superfluous subtleties. However, this does not mean that things are any the easier for the player as the problems are as convoluted as ever.

To tighten the screw, the game appears to include more than a few red herrings. Inserting objects which have no purpose is one way of confusing the player, but Peter has taken the dishonourable step one stage further. By permitting the player to use a useless object in what appears to be a useful manoeuvre, he thereby convinces the player that the object is bona fide, but in fact takes him further up the creek. In addition, the game is required to be played in the correct sequence of moves, as failure to arrive at a certain location within a set number of moves will also seal your fate.

The game does not permit you to EXAMINE objects, and this I personally find annoying. I have heard and appreciate Peter's argument that such fripperies are not required, but I don't agree. With a disc-based database to which this game has access, there is the space to provide a more friendly interface between the player and the adventure. If I am holding an object such as a computer and the game does not understand EXAMINE COMPUTER, SWITCH ON COMPUTER or USE COMPUTER I start to get resentful. I realise that if I bide my time, sooner or later in the game there will arrive a time where the appropriate use of the object in question will become more obvious, but before that happens a novice player will have stamped the obdurate machine into a pile of silicon chips with frustration.

Return To Doom contains all the humour you would expect from Peter, and again his 'engineering bent' lends credibility to the puzzles. There is a Montypython who will gobble you, and a Stereo Rock monster who will grind you up. For the faint-hearted a built-in hint facility has been included from which you may request a series of increasingly obvious clues to any problem.

It should be mentioned that the game does contain a bug which surfaces if you should die at certain locations. On being asked if you wish to start a new game, the program crashes with a "Not Found" message if you reply 'Y'. Generally speaking, the disc handling routines are unfriendly. When attempting to reload a saved game there is no way to even obtain a list of the saved files from within the program, and should you find yourself in such a position, there is no elegant way to recover. Equally frustrating, the program will crash if you mistakenly confirm that the program disc is in the drive when in fact your saved game disc is still resident.

This game is one for the experienced player. Individually the puzzles are not too difficult but when woven into a web such as this you will need to be prepared to restart continually from square one, and re-examine your logic repeatedly to ensure that all your basic assumptions are correct.