It may be wishful thinking, but there seems to be a resurgence in thud and blunder games at the moment. Dungeons And Dragons is as popular as ever and HeroQuest - both the board game and the ST version - was a huge hit.

Shadow Sorcerer is firmly in this mould. It's an icon-driven game in which you explore a fantasy world populated by elves, orcs, monsters and estate agents. You command four heroes in "a real-time environment". You take a band of refugees to safety, and kill as many monsters as you can. There are also puzzles and traps. To win, you must keep the refugees safe, wipe out most of the creatures and solve some puzzles.

Everything is mouse-controlled and very complicated it is too. As well as movement on two scales of map, there are magic items, spells and weapons to consider, so you need to plough through rainforests of manuals.

Shadow Sorcerer is initially all but penetrable. It's an official D&D adventure, which makes it unnecessarily complicated, but if you're au fait with Dungeons & Dragons you could enjoy this game for months - it's definitely big enough. The graphics and speed are both well above par too.

1. Can run on single-sided disks
2. Runs quickly and has good graphics but there are occasional tedious bouts of disk mungeing.
3. Not as playable as HeroQuest - it's simply too complicated.