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When the Army of Dark Forces slaughtered the people of the Land of Winds, only a few escaped with their lives and fled to safety. Among them was Jane, who soon after gave birth to a son, Alexander. Fired by the story of his people's fate, when Alexander grew up it became his homeland. This is where you come in, taking Alexander's role.

The game plays from a first-person perspective with the main view at the top of the screen together with a compass, your health and armour levels along the bottom. Here you also find the weapon you are currently holding and the ammo supply. A tap of the SPACE bar brings up the map of the region in the upper two-thirds of the screen.

What can you expect to find hidden in the maze while trying to escape? Nothing good - all manner of nasty creatures lie in ambush. Grotesque looking evil trolls, killer bees and huge monsters that resemble very scary Vikings are vying for your blood, so there's plenty to keep an adventurer on his toes. You won't need to bloody your bare hands from the outset because you start off armed with what looks like Poseidon's Trident, though this multi-coloured weapon is so much more fashionable. Progress through the maze to find other weapons, such as handguns, in various boxes so you don't have to get too close to rid the place of its infestation.

Aside from collecting weapons you have to find your way out of each maze and of course the monsters are out to get you. They aren't shy when it comes to making their presence known, jumping out in front of your face, though there are the odd ones who enjoy creeping up from behind. The scary sound they make when they're attacking really adds to the atmosphere. It's similar to the noise you hear in the game Aliens when there's something close by that wants to eat you. The audio effect is combined with a flashing red screen while whatever is attacking tries to have you for breakfast. It makes for a very terrifying time indeed.

The Dark is a brilliant achievement in gaming for the Spectrum. The large sprites, smooth scrolling and large levels are something to be applauded, especially given that it's squeezed into 48K of memory. It's easy to see why The Dark is often compared to the likes of Doom and Quake as you'd be hard pushed to find anything close to either of those games on the humble Speccy.

Sound is minimal, aside from the speech during the intro, but it's used well. You could say that maybe it is a little on the tough side but then, we all like a challenge, don't we?

This game stuns you from the start by reading out the backstory, even on a 48K machine. It's an impressively smooth and colourful FPS with a pleasant balance of key-finding and monster-shooting to progress. The drawback is that the detailed sprites don't scale well, meaning that the larger monsters pop up in your face before you can react. When you can see something in the distance, aiming to shoot it can also be a problem as you turn in too big a step, and there's no strafe control.

Nevertheless, it's a novel experience on the Spectrum and well worth checking out.

Control keys: Q, A, O, P, M, SPACE = map
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Sinclair
Keyboard play: Very responsive
Use of colour: Excellent. Used to great effect on those huge sprites.
Graphics: Large, bold, bright sprites - awesome
Sound: Simple, but put to good effect
Skill levels: Tricky
Lives: One
Special features: Currah microspeech
General rating: A well-deserved Crash Smash!