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Set in a modern American campus you play the part of a technology student setting out to write 20 pages for an end of term paper. Everyone else has also left things too late and the computer terminals in the dormitory building are all in use. He struggles through a raging blizzard to the computer building to use one of the computers there.

The adventure starts with you standing beside a very state of the art PC, on which you hope to get your paper finished as quickly as possible. All the computers are networked, so you should be able to call up the work you have done so far and edit in the final passages.

After logging in, your paper appears on the screen, but has been strangely corrupted. As you try to read more of it you feel yourself being drawn into another place - a place where some demonic ritual is being enacted.

Eventually you pass out, to come to back in front of the PC. Was it just a bad dream? Were you really somewhere else?. Or was it a vision of what is to come? After all, there have been quite a few mysterious disappearances around the campus recently...

Your screen is now showing complete garbage, but a friendly hacker on the terminal next to you, will help you sort things out. Unfortunately, your work has been lost, but he reckons that there has been a link up with some data from the Alchemy Department. Perhaps you should visit them to find out if your files are accessible there.

The George Underwood Edwards Institute of Technology may be a new campus, but some of the buildings have been built on or around older structures. As the blizzard is now worse, you are forced to use the underground passages that link the new buildings.

Below ground, rats are the least of your worries, and some of the things you find make your heart beat so fast it would challenge the clock rate of that super PC back in the terminal room.

Solving the adventure is no easy task. There are several ways in which to come to a sticky end, and the puzzles are up to Infocom's best, with some pretty devious Ibut fiendishly logical) solutions.

Of course you must try and find and end the lurking horror that is eating at the vitals of G.U.E. Tech. To this end a number of everyday objects will help you - there are also more unnatural items such as glowing stones and living-dead hands - vital to give an ending that leaves you alive but shaken.

Sadly only disc versions are available for the CPC and PCW. Infocom's adventure system has been thought highly of for years, although I have always had reservations about the parser and the continual disc access on nearly every command.

There is no doubt that their games are of a very high quality, both in story line and packaging.

There is plenty of text to read and it sets the scene and maintains the atmosphere very well indeed. Sadly it also encourages you to examine things that are not included in its vocabulary, so you can get some pretty strange responses at times.

In the terminal room there are many signs, posters and banners on the walls, READ SIGNS gets the response "How do you do that with a signs?". Synonyms are sometimes conspicuous by their absence, try SWITCH ON PC and you get "there was no verb in that sentence!". You must use TURN ON instead.

I do not often criticise cheaper games for similar aberrations but when you pay more than £25 for what are supposed to be among the best games in the world, I feel that some improvement should have been seen over the course of several years.

There are other discrepancies. Multiple commands may be typed in. But take care: W, N, W will work and so will W, GET COKE. But GET COKE, GET CARTON will only get "You used 'get' in a way that I don't understand".

On the other hand, commands separated by full stops or THEN work perfectly. It may be easy to find fault with Infocom games but the faults are easily recognised and avoided once you are playing.

The old Infocom magic will still keep you glued to your computer as you try to fathom out what to do next.

I found some difficulty in starting when I wanted to use the PC. You are asked for a login code and subsequently for a password. The login code required, is found on the plastic Student Identification Card supplied with the game and the password is at the back of the Guide for Freshmen - the first letter is a U and not a V as it appears in the booklet. If you are held back by something locked BTL UIF IBDLFS BCPVU ISZT!