Label: Matand, 29 Moorland Road, Michelover, Derby
Author: M. Holmes
Price: £2.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Gary Rook

Dome Trooper is excellent. It's Quilled, like so many independent adventures, but it has a highly original plot which is both well thought out and executed.

The Illustrator has been used to provide graphics that complement the adventure, and the author has made clever use of the special features such as the Flash command - at one point, a huge CocaCola sign flashed on and off above a futuristic equivalent of Piccadilly Circus.

It is the far future: humanity seems to have become divided into two factions, the people who live in the domed cities and the evil barbaric hordes who infest the desert outside.

You know enemy agents within your beloved city have been told to poison the city's air and water supplies with a terrible drug that will kill everybody within days.

So here you are, armed with your trusty blaster, standing on the edge of the desert outside City Dome Alpha. What now? Well, you could bodly stride into the desert and take on the enemy on their home ground... or do what I did, which is turn tail and zip back into the safety of the city. Anyway, there's enough exploring to do inside the city walls to keep any adventurer happy for ages!

Inside the city you find just about what you'd expect - people and buildings. You can zip about by using the transporter system, which acts like a lift and takes you to different levels of the city.

On the top floor there's the hydroponic gardens where the city's food supplies are grown, tended by robots. Then there's the main living areas, filled with bars and low dives and gun shops and restaurants... The people you meet seem to be scared of you. Either that, or they want to shoot you.

Dome Trooper proves that, with help from The Quill and The Illustrator and with a generous helping of imagination and hard work, it is possible to put out good adventures for a reasonable price without plagiarising other people's idea.

SUPPLIER: Matand Software
MACHINE: Spectrum 48K/128K
PRICE: £2.95

It's the 28th century. and the world's population has expanded to such a degree that it has been decided to relocate the people living in the overcrowded cities into massive City Domes.

To allow for the construction of the giant domes, existing cities have been demolished and deserts formed between the domes.

Most people were happy with the relocation. However, there were a few who disliked the change, and were allowed to start new lives in the desert.

The 'Desert Rebels', as they were known, soon tired of trying to live from the desert, and turned to crime to survive.

This is where you step in. You are a Dome Trooper based in City Dome Alpha. Your job is defence of the dome against the rebels, who plan to take over an entire dome and use it as a stronghol.

They intend to do this by injecting a poison into the dome's water supply.

The text display offers a choice of standard Spectrum character set, or a far neater futuristic set. Having made your choice, you find yourself outside the dome. Movement to any of six city levels can be made from a nearby transporter, at the press of a button.

Many of the locations have no relevance to the game. Other more important locations, however, do include some nicely and quickly drawn graphics, which add to the atmosphere somewhat. These are also well-described in the text window.

The most annoying thing, though, is that for some reason I could not discover, the city's reactor blows up after 51 inputs! However hard I just could not do anything to prevent it. Can you do better?

Mail Order only from: Matand Software, 29 Moorland Road, Mickleover, Derby DE3 5FX.

First out of the box is - Dome Trooper, £2.95 from Matand Software, 29 Moorland Road, Mickleover, Derby DE3 SFX. It's got a well thought-out storyline set in a future where most people live in domed cities, except for rebels who live in the vast deserts around them. Instead of being on the side of the rebels and out to infiltrate the city, you're a dome trooper - your job is to find what the rebels are doing and stop them doing it!

There's a nice use of graphics, and I especially liked the cute robot and the buildings with flashing Coca-Cola signs. Even so, it's a pity the pictures are so constantly re-drawn, and the numerous spelling mistakes don't help either.

Just inside the city walls there's a transporter disk to take you to any of the city's six levels, each with different functions, the most interesting and dangerous being Level 4 where the people live. As a dome trooper you're not very welcome there, and you'll have to decide what to do with the various characters you'll meet.