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Following Dracula and Frankenstein, when you have a reputation like Rod Pike's, can be no easy task. Whereas his previous adventures were based on the original novels by Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley respectively, this time the storyline is his own. The central character is a werewolf, which, of course, you get to play, but not all the time. For those not in the know, a werewolf is a man by day, but has the nasty habit of turning into a flesh-hungry wolf at night.

As the adventure starts, you have just awoken from a heavy sleep, and become distressed to find your doublet tattered and bloody. Strangely you don't seem to have cut yourself. But when you discover that the crowd gathered down the lane has found the naked body of a local girl, you begin to put two and two together - and so does the crowd...

Escaping the crowd is your first problem, and this gave me great difficulty. There are a number of constraints in the program that force you to carry out certain actions that, although relevant, are not entirely a necessary prerequisite for the task you wish to perform. And, although the vocabulary itself is not much of a problem, the way the words are strung together sometimes is.

Once through this, you are on your way to finding out what makes a werewolf tick, and to learning the terrible truth about yourself. You journey far, and find it difficult to control your passion for blood. But this you must learn, or the game will end - usually with a gory picture.

Onward you journey, and before long the player changes roles, to become the beautiful maiden Nardia, walking along a path one night. Nardia discovers a handsome stranger lurking in the shadows. Fascinated, she strikes up a conversation with him, and finds he is tired and hungry, having journeyed far without food. So she invites him back to her place for the night.

The stranger soon falls asleep in her bed. Nardia is willing, and so is he. Oops - there goes another throat!

Eventually Nardia becomes kidnapped by a gang of evil wolf-hunters, and as Wolfman once again, you must rescue her, for now you love her dearly, and eventually reach a secret monastery, which holds your salvation - if one exists.

As in Dracula and Frankenstein, Rod Pike treats his character with great sympathy, portraying him as a wretched human tortured by a cruel quirk of nature, unable to resist his evil desires when the wolf in him takes over. The text is very dramatic, and quite horrific in places.

The few pictures in the adventure are digitised, and full-screen in size. Added by CRL, these do not differ a whole lot from those we have seen before. Like, for example, a dead head on its side with blood oozing from its mouth, all too obviously comprised of small rectangles! Two version of the game are on release: one with a 15 certificate and the other rated at 18. The only difference is in the graphics. In the 18-rated version (which I have not seen) you get an animated decapitation scene.

Wolfman was written with a Quill modified by Tim Gilbert to accept four word input, and comes in three parts. As well as being available from stores, Wolfman is to be bundled with Dracula and Frankenstein and offered as a trilogy by the Home Computer Club.

Dracula and Frankenstein have had (and still got) a strong following among CU readers. The adventures have more than once been compared very favourably with Infocom adventures. In Wolfman, Rod Pike's touch is getting surer. Wolfman is a sure-fire winner. He has done it again - only better!