Producer: CCS, 48K
£5.00

In a hidden gorge through the Mountain of the Golden Lion, lies the forgotten ABYSS. But brave and foolhardy adventurers like you sometimes strive to cross it, their sole aim to destroy the many evil monsters that lurk in the shadows, waiting for the next meal to come strolling across the many bridges in the ABYSS. Scenario over, the game begins. The screen presents you with a yellow grid, each crossing point being a lurking place. Movement is done by the cursors until you encounter a monster. These tend to offer you a range of problems, like the Ogre who can't get his sums right - can you in 15 seconds? Or the arcade sequence where you must hit five falling spiders before they reach the cave floor. Added dangers are creaky bridges that may collabpse under you. By no means a traditional D&D adventure, but certainly one for quick thinking swots with 'O' levels to pass! Good value for the price and not at all easy.

Producer: CCS, 48K
£5.00

In a hidden gorge through the Mountain of the Golden Lion, lies the forgotten ABYSS. But brave and foolhardy adventurers like you sometimes strive to cross it, their sole aim to destroy the many evil monsters that lurk in the shadows, waiting for the next meal to come strolling across the many bridges in the ABYSS. Scenario over, the game begins. The screen presents you with a yellow grid, each crossing point being a lurking place. Movement is done by the cursors until you encounter a monster. These tend to offer you a range of problems, like the Ogre who can't get his sums right - can you in 15 seconds? Or the arcade sequence where you must hit five falling spiders before they reach the cave floor. Added dangers are creaky bridges that may collabpse under you. By no means a traditional D&D adventure, but certainly one for quick thinking swots with 'O' levels to pass! Good value for the price and not at all easy.

PLUMBING DEPTHS OF A TESTING PUZZLE

Abyss for the 48K Spectrum is a simple graphics adventure which is designed to test your refelexes as well as your mathematics. The idea is that you must cross a series of rickety wooden bridges over an Abyss surrounded by monsters which lurk in the shadows.

Each time you cross a bridge you are presented with a challenge which you must overcome before proceeding to the next bridge.

The test might be negotiating a maze using a complicated set of keys, avoiding giant rats, recognising a word in a split second, or doing some mental arithmetic before your time runs out. The sequence of the tests changes constantly and you need to be able to think quickly. If you play the game a few times, the answers will be increasingly easy to find, so it does not offer endless scope.

Nevertheless, it is a lively puzzle, with amusing responses from the computer, although in one case we suspected that it threw us into the abyss in spite of a correct answer.

Abyss is available from Cases Computer Simulations, 14 Langton Way, London SE3 7TL. It costs £5.