Return To Doom is a recent release from Topologika. Unlike other games from the same source, this is a new adventure and not a conversion of an old BBC Micro program. It is available for both CPCs and PCWs, but it is available only on disc.

Written by Peter Killworth, this, the second adventure in the "Doom" trilogy, follows on from Countdown To Doom, which was a race against time to escape from the inhospitable planet of the title. Return to Doom brings you back to the planet on a rescue mission. A spaceship with the Ambassador of Regina has crash-landed on Doom.

With the lessons learned from that last visit still fresh in your mind, you manage to land safely rear the site of the crash. You must find the survivors and get them off the planet to safety.

Using a similar operating system as before, you will quickly find that there are no commands to examine, search or look more closely at your surroundings. Everything that may be useful is included in the location description.

The parser accepts multiple inputs and the use of "all", but is not always very bright at interpreting your intentions. An early example of this is finding a door that you cannot open. You try "knock on door". The response is that this is not understood and only later do you learn that "knock" is all that is needed.

In a devious series of barely related puzzles, location after location as something stopping progress. Often you must use an object you have found elsewhere to solve the present puzzle. This immediately suggests that there is an optimum sequence in which the problems should be tackled. You must learn by your mistakes as these could frequently change the course of events.

With only a limited number of objects available, using them is a simple matter of elimination. But later the going gets really tricky. Should you get stuck there are a number of excellent on-screen hints. Check the instructions for a number relating to that puzzle - there are 88 of them. Type in "help" and you will be asked which number hint you require.

There may be a series of clues for any given puzzle and there is a warning when the most significant one is about to be given. Accessing these clues is perhaps too easy, unlike the Magnetic Scrolls system where you have to type in an extensive code before you are given anything at all.

But Return to Doom is difficult if played without using the hints. The faults in the parser are not so much its classical dependence on a combination of verb and noun inputs, but the basic error on the part of the writer to foresee obvious uses of recognised verbs with recognised nouns.