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In a fantasy world, a village in the woods is under attack by demonic creatures. A young man throws himself at them armed only with a rusty sword, but while he is fighting, the mysterious invaders kill his father. Eager to avenge him, the young man goes to a nearby monastery; his occupants, he thinks, could help him train to make him able to defeat demons more easily. But something is not right. There are strange rumours about the monks, and then, why didn't they come to help the villagers when the protagonist rang the bell for help?

Nevertheless, after some initial resistance, the young man gets to speak with the abbot, who teaches him the first spell, the fireball, and assigns him some tasks to perform, before admitting him to the awakening ritual of the great green dragon. As the protagonist will discover at his expense, all that glitters is not gold...

These are the first events in which you are involved in The Order Of Sleeping Dragon, a surprising adventure and exploration game with role-playing touches. The young main character - whose name is unknown - will have to face hordes of monsters and interact with various non-player characters to complete his mission: avenge his father by wiping out the dark threat once and for all.

The game unfolds by guiding your alter ego through various environments: the village, the woods, the convent, the city and so on. The graphic representation is colourful, but rather sketchy, and the one-character-block-at-a-time movement, necessary to keep pixels and attributes together, is not smooth. Moreover, sound is almost non-existent. Despite this, The Order Of Sleeping Dragon is an extremely engaging title, able to excite the player and make him/her plunge into the setting from the beginning. In addition to the main mission, in order to advance in the story, or even just to gain experience points and level up, you will have to tackle others, ranging from cleansing a cemetery from ghosts, to obtaining and delivering certain objects.

The inventory gathers spells, potions, food, weapons and, at a certain point, a very convenient key, which allows you to open the numerous chests scattered throughout the game world.

Moving on to a higher level, your vital energy will be brought to a new maximum quantity, and your offensive ability will also improve. The monsters to face, in fact, will initially fall under your blows easily enough, but later on they will become more and more resistant. Some of them attack from a distance by shooting spells, others charge at close range. If you die, you resume the action from the current section, with a minimum amount of life force. Killing monsters will also give you experience points.

Hotkeys can be assigned to certain objects, so you can employ them immediately. In this way, spells can be quickly recalled, even if sometimes, especially when you are surrounded by multiple enemies, the presence of so many controls to deal with ends up being somewhat uncomfortable. This is perhaps the only real defect of a title that is still excellent in terms of playability and atmosphere, and belongs to a genre not very often seen on the Spectrum. Play it, and you will hardly be able to put it to one side before you've reached the end!