In great contrast Imperial Software's Curse Of The Seven Faces (the other adventure reviewed here), this game is a highly professional affair, even though it's a straight conversion from an original adventure on the Commodore 64. The scenario isn't particularly original or even interesting, but the story on the back cover of the cassette is told with such flair that all but the most hardened adventurers will sit up and take notice! I won't go into all the sordid details, save to say that it involves you saving a kingdom from the shadow of evil. The usual stuff!

On starting the adventure, you're greeted with a splendid picture; in fact many of the locations have accompanying graphics that appear instantly and add greatly to the whole atmosphere. However, the descriptions are often too short, particularly where there's no picture to feast your eyes on.

Despite fancy graphics and a few other innovations, an adventure stands or falls by the strength of its puzzles, and the flexibility and quality of response to your, hopefully, imaginative commands. Heroes Of Karn is a definite success in this context. The responses are varied and entertaining, and the puzzles are tricky and, in some cases, rather obscure! For example, I eventually managed to get past the Barrowright by attacking it with a Bible - which didn't seem the most reverant thing to do at the time!

Although Heroes Of Karn supports a few commands five or six words long, it's predominantly a standard adventure. However, I'd recommend it to anyone fancying a crack at a 'classic', especially if you've got a few long evenings to spare while you try and solve it!

Publisher: Interceptor
48K Spectrum
Price: £5.50

I loaded up Heroes of Karn from Interceptor with trepidation. I found the earlier program Jewels of Babylon about as exciting as Eastbourne on a Sunday night. Fortunately, the new adventure is a different kettle of fish, though with some reservations.

The setting is pretty typical - the mighty heroes of the title have been overwhelmed by the dark forces of chaos and magically imprisoned in various forms. You, a stranger from a world of thinking machines and the like, must rescue them from the thrall of darkness and restore them to their true likenesses. I'm unsure about the thinking machine bit but we all accept a modicum of poetic licence now and again, I suppose.

The game is a graphic adventure and there are some very smart pictures sprinkled around the locations - probably not as many as in the original CBM 64 version but beautifully drawn nevertheless. However, pictures still do not make an adventure.

You start in a field in a deserted landscape. Problems appear quickly and it is not too long before you run into what is undoubtedly the first of the metamorphosed heroes - a frog no less, who can be transformed in the time-honoured way after you have disposed of a particularly irritating swamp lizard. Within a score of moves you meet barrowights, venal castle guards, a pirate and even a giant clam.

Like its bejewelled predecessor the program's general style can be aggravating. The description will scroll up, up and away as soon as you make an entry, making for a lot of retyping of 'Look' if you are of vaguely amnesiac dispositions. On the positive side, you can use prepositions such as 'with' enabling you to choose a weapon for a fight or offer items of bribery to creatures of all species.

Allies can also be spoken to in an easier way than in truly 'interactive' games though the characters do not lead fully independent lives. I must admit that this is a bonus as I find the behaviour of characters in games like The Hobbit to be desperately unpredictable and annoying.

As far as action and events are concerned Heroes of Karn is an improvement on interceptor's earlier offerings. It does not compare in complexity with the Level 9 style but should be quite appealing to adventurers in their novitiate.

Spectrum 48K
£6.50
Interceptor Micros

Heroes of Karn is a text and graphics adventure that first appeared for the Commodore 64. It proved to be very popular and has now been translated for the Spectrum.

Although the plot and puzzles are identical to the 64 version, the Spectrum program wins hands down in the graphics department, has a small edge in the text input contest but, naturally enough, loses by a mile in the music stakes.

Unlike the 64 version, not every location is depicted graphically but those that are included are magnificent. Credit for the superb computer artwork goes to Terry Greer, as credited by the cassette inlay. The pictures appear instantaneously and are beautifully drawn using colourful high-resolution graphics.

The Spectrum's lack of sound capability means that the impressive music of the 64 version has had to be foresworn. However, the input parser has been tidied up making the acceptance of more complex commands much easier to use.

The plot involves you searching a fantasy land for not one but four lost heroes. The adventure has a host of puzzles, most of which involve hitting on what object to use with what item. The heroes themselves have different capabilities and in certain situations can do things that you could not do by yourself. It is therefore essential that you locate at least one of the lost heroes quite quickly. Finding the first lost hero, Beren, turns out to be quite easy, fortunately.

A thoroughly enjoyable adventure with some of the best graphics on the market.