The Tom in question is visiting a castle in Scotland with his mum when she is kidnapped by a ghost. Luckily, though, another friendly ghost by the name of Sir Arrow takes care of Tom and promises to lead him back to his mother. You take the role of Sir Arrow and have no direct control over Tom himself. He follows you to most places, except when there's a ghost about, and then he runs off. In this case you have to call him back with the whistle. The castle is made of many horizontally-scrolling levels connected by stairways and is full of monsters, ghosts and objects. These objects may be weapons, food for Tom (not too much or he's sick), a comforting teddy bear or various other useful items.

When you read the manual, it gives you the impression that this is a huge, complex and involving game with many little details. When you play it though, it's a bit disappointing. The graphics are small and not very well animated, the sound is annoying and the gameplay amounts to little more than leading Tom around and fighting monsters. Worst of all, the game sometimes crashes for apparently no reason! This shouldn't happen in a completed game and almost renders the whole thing totally unplayable. For all its faults, Tom And The Ghost isn't a bad game, just not quite "together". With a few tweaks it could have been made into something really special.