Spectrum Cassette: £2.99

Culture can be a dangerous thing. In A Harvesting Moon the player and his parents are visiting Moreton Manor, an old country house situated in spacious grounds amid rolling woodlands, when an enthusiastic warden closes a portcullis too quickly and cuts you off from your family.

Your task is to explore the house, find a way back to Mom and Dad and stop a strange psychic disturbance spreading.

The first problem with A Harvesting Moon is that many objects in it can't be EXAMINEd. Things placed around the game suggest they should be looked at more closely - the pavilion in the middle of the maze, the litter bins and the scarecrow, for example - but no extra information is given (except that the scarecrow is made of straw) after an EXAMINE attempt.

This means a lot of guesswork on the player's part as he tries to figure out what the writer wants him to do with these elements, and because the parser is so small it's no fun. The graphics are typical 'add nothing to the game' material, and the whole adventure is rather on the silly side.

Life without my fictitious parents soon took precedence over finding them again as the screen went blank.

On the reverse side of the cassette is a very old adventure called Faerie. This is full of magic, mystery and frustration and deserves to be given away free...