Underbeings Of Croth is an old adventure, originally released by Maridan Software around 1985, and now revived by Dragonfire. Loading, as usual from cassette, is very slow and the loading screen is not very inspired.

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However, when the adventure is loaded you are treated to what must be one of the best screen presentations of any adventure. The text is set out on an old piece of parchment and scrolls nicely up the screen as inputs are made. The drawback to this is that if you forget your surroundings "LOOK" has to be typed to remind you of the scenery. The instructions state that input can be in sentence form, and it took me quite a while to work this out, as you can not "do one thing AND do another", instead the word THEN has to be used between the two actions.

This proved to be very useful as I played it more and more, though you have to be careful with your inputs as you have to wait for the computer to go through the two separate actions before you can make another move. Another touch I liked very much was the automatic putting of a capital to the first letter of your input and small ones to the others. This generally gave it a very professional appearance and is very pleasing to the eye. The instructions claim that 165 words are understood, and I must say that I got less "I don't understand"s than usual.

As for the storyline, you play the part of an explorer trapped initially in a cage over a pit somewhere underground, and have to find treasures and then escape. There are some nice touches during the adventure, and not being too outrageous for you to have to do in order to escape, although you are presented with some ticklish situations. A word or two of warning: take careful note of what is at each location. There is an ape-woman at one location, and I returned to this location having completed another task, and no mention was made of her. However, I did what is expected and lo and behold she was there. Be careful not to dawdle in certain locations, as I have lost my life this way several times. The story has a very outlandish setting and some very awkward problems which can, however, be solved logically. One major drawback is that the BREAK key is not disabled, and I have completely lost the game several times and I have to admit that I'm one of those people who rarely saves their positions in an adventure game. (That reminds me - Ed)