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Skara Brae is in ruins following its destruction by the Evil One. You are charged with restoring it to its former glory by seeking out and destroying the Evil One in this, the third Bard's Tale adventure.

Being an FRP game, of course, the first thing the player must do is to gather a band of adventurers. Here there is a choice of a ready-made party contained on the Character Disk, or the option of creating a set of characters to suit the player. Each character must be assigned a race, sex and various attributes such as strength, dexterity, intelligence and constitution. The relative value of the attributes is decided by the roll of a dice. If the player does not like the mix, he has the option of trying again.

When sufficient characters have been created, they can be saved to disk and then a party of adventurers can be made up by selecting up to seven from those available.

Setting out from the refugee camp in Skara Brae, our brave band now heads into the wilderness to seek out the Evil One. A rather featureless area, the wilderness does have a tavern, a shrine or two, and the ruins of the old city. Set out as a grid of squares, movement is always in the forward direction, using the 'I' key, with direction changes effected by turning through 90 degrees, using 'J' and 'L' to turn left and right, respectively. As the party moves, the perspective picture in the graphics window reflects the change of position.

Mapping is aided by hitting '?' when the text window at the top of the screen to right of the picture informed the player how many paces north, south, east or west of the Refugee Camp, the party stands. A difficulty here is that wrap-around is provided, so that if the party moves west of the western boundary it finds itself just inside the eastern boundary, and similarly with north and south.

It's from this small area of Wilderness that you teleport to the seven dimensions in your quest to vanquish the evil God Tarjan. There are seven key locations scattered about, and it's from her that you begin each task that the Review Board sequentially sets you. In the first, for example, you have to find Valerian's Bow and the arrows of life in the dimension of Arboria, which is depicted in the gatefold packaging as a very green place, so obviously you have to teleport from a leafy area.

Monsters confront the party occasionally, who have the option of advancing, fighting or running. A different fight mode can be assigned to each member of the band. Then the fight begins, with a commentary on the battle given in the text window. A successful fight will result in each adventurer getting a share of gold, and possibly a weapon or two.

Initially the monsters are a bit of a push-over. Vipers seem particularly weak, and the only really deadly ones my party encountered were a couple of pumas. However when approaching the ruins of the city and entering the dungeons of the Mad God, a whole new set of ferocious beasties appeared and killed my stalwarts off one by one until the sole survivor had little option but to flee. If he could have escaped the dungeon and found a friendly neighbourhood shrine then he might have regained some of his friends by paying for a reincarnation job on them. But then again perhaps they just weren't worth it!

Once mapped, the game becomes a lot easier to play, and can be time-wastingly addictive!