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Minerva has certainly been busy lately. Four new games in a couple of months, and this is one of its best yet. Talisman, by Andrew Catling, is a beautifully smooth arcade-adventure which features large sprites and complicated object-based puzzles. It combines elements of the Beeb games Imogen and Spellbiner but looks and sounds far better than either of these. Flickering has been banished and a clever slotting together of graphics taken its place, which manages to disguise the fact that they are separate blocks with extreme ease.

The plot runs as follows: The evil Baron steals the sacred talisman, shatters it into six pieces and hides them in various inaccessible extremities of his castle, which happens to be infested with the usual hordes of supernatural undesirables. You have been despatched by the King to recover and repair the talisman, and give the Baron and his cronies a ticking off.

The wizard whose role you take is able to cast four different spells and with the right ingredients, he can alter his form and species. This has its advantages and its drawbacks. He can become a mouse (who can reach into small place, but cannot jump) a bird (who can fly, but is unable to manipulate objects) and one other creature I will leave you to discover. The fourth and most powerful spell is that of teleportation.

Your wizard, in his rather fetching purple robe, can carry two objects at a time. The player then pauses the game in order to make use of these objects in various ways, with the help of icons.

All the game's graphics are impeccably drawn, and well masked, allowing objects, scenery and characters to interact, passing in front, behind and even through each other, creating a marvellous pseudo-three dimensional effect.

If I have any criticisms, they would be that the edge-detection routines are a little inaccurate, and that too few sampled sounds have been used, perfect though the current ones are. Otherwise, this is a real Minerva cracker and will sell like hot-cakes.

I could give you some hints, but instead, I'll leave you to study the scrolling message which contains a couple. If I were you, I'd start saving up your pennies to buy a copy of Talisman.