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It's taken three years, but at long last it's arrived in the Beebug dungeon. In the hands of Spectrum owners, The Quill has produced a long line of adventure games, many of which have been notable successes. This product is the first truly professional adventure writer which I have seen for the BBC Micro and Electron and it lives up to all my expectations.

The aim of The Quill is to enable users with limited programming ability to write a full size machine code adventure. This is achieved by menus, which enable the user to fill up tables of data which The Quill will act upon. The final game can then be saved and run independently.

Most adventures consist of a basic set of tables and 'flags' which control the movement of the player and the game's objects. It is relatively simple to automate the collection of this data from the user and formulate it into these tables. Where the difficulty arises for programmers and automatic writers alike is the creation of the logic code.

Somehow the game needs to 'know' that it must not allow the game player to 'Open the Green Door' unless firstly, 'The Dragon is dead', 'The player is carrying a copy of Beebug' and 'He is wearing a gold sequinned evening gown'. To this end The Quill provides a list of sixty words which are shorthand commands to cover most eventualities. (Including Beebug Adventurers who wear gold sequinned evening dresses!). Using these words, the user may construct a set of rules which he wishes the game to obey during the playing of the adventure. A bonus of the word list is that it can also serve to provide ideas previously unthought of by the user!

To ensure that you are not restricted in your game, The Quill also accepts any of the normal '*' commands in its list of logic statements (e.g. *LOAD). One further addition is that it accepts JSR commands, permitting you to jump to any machine code subroutine you may wish to include. By this means the only restriction to the complexity of your game is that of your own imagination and ability. By following the step-by-step instructions in the fifty page booklet, you will be able to construct a small game in a few hours. A larger game which may normally have taken months to write will now only take weeks.

And what of that bugbear of all adventures - graphics? The Quill advertises itself as text only, but in this respect it tends to undersell itself. True, it has no facility to help draw screenshots but I suspect most owners already possess such a utility. To include these graphic shots within Quill adventures requires very little ability (I managed it in one hour!), so be wary of dismissing The Quill for this omission. Should you feel you must have this option built-in, I'm assured that a graphic addition is on its way for the autumn.

At any time during game creation you may run the game under diagnostics. This option has a panel displaying the values and states of various flags above the normal game display. This display enables the user to watch how the logic operates. Technical advice is also on hand for registered purchasers from Gilsoft.

All worthwhile software takes some time to master and this is no exception. However, this is a well thought out package and the long line of commercial games which have been produced from it for other machines is proof of its ability. I have little doubt that we will soon see a growing list of 'Quilled' adventures appearing for the BBC Micro. Perhaps that adventure game you always wanted to write is now ready to be created?

Adverts for The Quill and the Graphic Adventure Creator from Incentive Software are currently appearing in magazines. Like many of you, I am eagerly awaiting a copy of the Graphic Adventure Creator to test its claims. Will The Quill be mightier than the coloured, fibre-tip pen? Watch this space!