Producer: Digital Fantasia
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: B. Howarth and C. Ogden

A large box houses this Mysterious Adventure; a sticker tells you have the right version - it requires a ZX Spectrum 48K rame and one cassette recorder.

Inside you find a booklet filled mostly with general hints on solving adventures which, leaving aside the exercise in speed reading, wil not warrant much attention from experienced adventurers. Conversely, fresh adventurers may learn something of the creed. By far the most useful information is on the first page where you see the Spectrum Version has some special features (don't say the BBC looses out again!). Pressing ENTER gives you a pictorial view of your current location and pressing again puts back the text. The story line tells of a day at the seaside spent stuffing yourself with junk food whereupon you are in need of a long snooze in the cool and quiet of the waxworks. You endeavour to escape the nightmare that ensues.

The screen is split into two areas. The upper hall displays what you see graphically, or in words with the name of the location and a fist of the items there. The lower has prompts, input and brief comments.

You're in the leisure lounge of the waxworks and moving north gives you the washroom. Examining the toilet door and reading the bottom half of the screen you are informed of an object. If you're used to playing the adventures I've been playing (lots!) you may be caught out since the identity of the object is inserted, almost hidden, amongst the list of items in the top half of the screen. This can be a little disorientating at first but what is more, had you been in graphics mode - and who could blame you as the graphics are superb -you would not notice the identity of the object at all. Not necessarily a bad thing, I point it out only because it strikes me as non-standard.

Set within the washroom floor is a grid but after unlocking it you can't simply go down and it is quite a struggle to find the right words. The vocabulary is not far removed from Verb/Noun (take off gloves must be entered remove gloves) but combines the surefootedness of this style with some noteworthy flexibility. Commas are used as in 'QUICKLY GET THE LAMP, SWORD, CLOAK AND STAFF' and the word THEN or a full stop is used as in 'GO NORTH THEN CLIMB THE TREE. EXAMINE HOLE THEN GO DOWN.' Single word entries include help, score, quit, save, inventory, run, jump, shout and the increasingly popular wait.

The eccentricity of the language often adds to the game but one solution is only invoked with the curious command 'GO AIRLOCK'. The examine command must be used with care. Examining the jacket reveals nothing - until it is picked up. One innovative feature is found on searching the pile of junk in the workshop which is well worth examining twice.

The waxworks of your dreams can become tricky to map and the solutions to some of the problems, perhaps in keeping with this theme, are a little unreal. Rising from the treehouse takes you into the main hall but no matter how you descend leads you back into the leisure room. Indeed, in many places the game sends you back to this main area.

In the grand hall, up from the leisure room, north gives you the Everest and west the Undersea World display. If you answer the display bedecked with Jacques Cousteau and his scuba gear correctly the aqualung decides to appear in the hall of mirrors. It's worth noting that when answering these questions you must type 'SAY ANSWER' and not just the answer. There are two mazes in the game - one being easily enough for my tastes - in the hall of mirrors and the other in the sewer (both six location mazes) which is painstakingly mapped out for the sake of a rat-trap.

Waxworks has excellent graphics and a good vocabulary and has all the makings of a good adventure. The absence of long location descriptions is more than compensated by the detailed pictures.

Meanwhile, Waxworks is the last in the series of Mysterious Adventures and comes from the keyboard of Brian Howarth and Cliff Ogden.

The setting is a waxworks, complete with hall mirrors, in which you have dozed off and awake to find yourself locked in.

Being locked in after closing time means you have the freedom to wander around behind the scenes. It pays to examine things closely as you do. Guy Fawkes, Hillary and Tensing, and Jacques Cousteau are among the exhibits and you are posed questions by them as you wander past.

If you get them right, it may be to your advantage later, but discovering how is part of the game!

I visited a toilet and washroom which revealed an unexpected and sinister secret. But I thought it was a bit off, being called a rapscallion for trying to make use of the facilities!

How you deal with the sewer rats, how you survive a rather large fish and what use is a vandalised telephone are among the many questions you'll have to find answers for on your quest to leave the premises.

I played on a BBC micro which had split screen display with coloured text and a fast response speed.

Waxworks is available or many micros, some versions with graphics, and costs £9.95, The game is supplied by Digital Fantasia for BBC and Spectrum versions and by Channel 8 Software for others.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K, BBC, Oric, Atari, Dragon
PRICE: £9.95 (BBC £9.95; Oric £9.95; Atari £9.95; Dragon £9.95)

Waxworks is the new mysterious adventure distributed by Digital Fantasia and Channel 8, and available on most machines for £9.95. It's the latest in a long series that includes Arrow of Death, Circus, and The Wizard Akyrz. In Waxworks, you wake up to find yourself locked inside the building - but you are not alone.!

Good graphics which you can skip if you want to - just as well because they take a while to draw. Your commands are entered on a scrolling text window as in The Hobbit, and the responses are nice and fast.

Waxworks looks like becoming as much of a favourite as the other titles in the series. There are a couple of tricky mazes to negotiate, so the White Wizard advises you to stock up with as many useless items as possible. You can then drop them in the mazes and use them as landmarks to find your way about.