Robico Software has a number of successful adventures for the BBC computer but only marketed one previous adventure for the Amstrad CPC, Rick Hanson. This was a reasonable game, with good puzzles, but has rather repetitive location descriptions.

However, Robico's second offering is something quite special. Like Rick Hanson, the Village Of Lost Souls is text only, but there is plenty of it and there are more than 200 locations to explore. There also seems to be an enormous number of objects to find and potentially manipulate.

The action takes place in the medieval setting of Albion, a world where magic is still widely used. Only those gifted with the Talent may call on these powers and its use is strictly controlled by the Order of Saint Leofric.

To ensure that magic is only used for the good of mankind, each Talent is regularly examined by a member of the Order's Inquisition. The underlying fear being that contact with the arcane might corrupt the user in mind, body and soul. Saint Leofric, the discoverer of the Thirteen Realms of the Arcane, found that twelve of them were moderately safe but that the thirteenth was a realm of disorder, a true Realm of Chaos. You play the part of Nathan, Inquisitor of The Order of St. leofric, You have been sent by the ruling Council of Twelve to investigate reports that the Lord Talent of the village of Dinham has been attempting to open a portal into the forbidden Thirteenth Realm.

You must help the Rector of Dinham destroy any window that has been opened to that dreaded realm. Transported by magic (what other way is there to travel?) to a ring of giant standing stones just outside the village, you begin to explore. Roofs are torn off, homes deserted, strange claw marks everywhere, animals torn and humans lying dead, even a child's doll used as a macabre pin cushion. All that meets your gaze seems to be tainted with a great evil.

Birds steal your possessions and roving bands of dogs run off with things that you are sure would have been useful. If only you could have picked them up in time! Almost everywhere in the village is the smell of smoke: surely somehow you could put out the flames, and save someone from being burnt alive.

If all this seems to be a complex problem to solve - you have only just touched the start of it, Village Of Lost Souls will give you plenty to get your teeth into. Plan ahead and allow plenty of time to get to grips with this one. A great many locations are accessible right from the start, with nothing to impede your progress other than the programmer's rather warped directional sense. Yes, this adventure suffers from my one pet hates, totally illogical spatial organisation.

This becomes apparent within a few moves, when you travel north from a mill to a cottage. To return to the mill you must go west. This is confusion for confusion's sake, and detracts from the real purpose of the adventure.

If this was all, it would not be so bad, as it only means a few extra lines drawn on the map.

Unfortunately the village also has another snag that will catch the unwary. Many locations are reached by going IN to a building, on several occasions the interior takes up much more space than you have between already-mapped areas on your carefully drawn map.

This business of needing to insert two (or more) places where you only have space for one, is not restricted to indoor locations. This sort of problem can be partially solved by drawing separate little maps for each special area. Of course you will not know in advance whether a location needs such treatment. This can lead to unnecessary frustration - programmers please note.

Mapping in these circumstances is very important, even more so in this case because of the large number of items that may be of use later.

If you do not already do so, it is worth keeping a separate list of all you find. You may very well see a pattern linking some of them that will suggest a future course of action.

There is plenty of text to read, and because of this you may find that examining objects mentioned does not get as many useful responses as you would like. Persevere, EXAMINE is a powerful tool in the village.

Village Of Lost Souls was written some time ago, but has been re-written incorporating a more modern parser that will accept multiple commands, the use of ALL and BUT, OOPS (or OG - go backwardsl and a ram save/load facility.

HELP produces a long list of possible verbs (but not all and TLONG/TSHORT will give long or short location descriptions. If a command is not understood the responses are pretty bland, and some fairly obvious, but incorrect, actions are not catered for. This small drawback is amply made up for by the quantity of descriptive text and the challenge the adventure offers.

There is a steady undercurrent of perverse humour, and although it is not an easy game to solve, even a novice adventurer will find plenty to explore and puzzle over.

If you are really stuck, Robico has a hint sheet that will finally end those sleepless nights. Even with the game's sometimes strange sense of direction, Village Of Lost Souls is well worth the effort required to puzzle out its innermost secrets.