Does the thought of wandering alone through a deep, dark, dungeon fill you with the urge to wet your armour and shout for your mum? You're not alone! Fortunately, the good old Bitmap Brothers have come up with the wimp's alternative: Cadaver.
Yes, I know it is a silly title, and no it isn't some form of rhyming slang. It is however, an excellent graphic adventure. Produced in the - now familiar - 3D isometric format (in the style of Treasure Trap) and for those people with very long memories, the Ultimate series on something called a Spectrum.
Fortunately we've come a long way since the days when everything was in one colour and the sound was enough to make you turn the game off. Cadaver is a fine example of the state of the art.
It's based upon the continuing adventures of Karadoc. Fancy calling a kid that. Some people, honestly!

Anyway, your mission and indeed his, is to explore Castle Wulf, dealing the objects, monsters and people you meet on your travels, as well as the numerous puzzles which need to be solved before you encounter the final task, namely, killing the evil necromancer Dianos. Familiar scenario for adventure freaks?

What Cadaver lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in real quality. The action takes place in the 3D dungeons, rooms and passages of Castle Wulf and Karadoc is moved around this little world with a joystick (as indeed are all his functions).
If you want to pick up an object, move Karadoc next to the required item. This activates a number of icon options relevant to that particular object, you can then pick it up, use it, drink it, examine it and so on, depending on the icons activated.

Certain icons however, cannot be picked up and may only be pushed, dragged or used in the room in which they were found. There are a large number of icons which become available depending upon the item being used and the situation Karadoc is presently involved in. This can make interaction with both characters and objects quite complex and also makes for some interesting puzzles.

Many items can be found on your travels and these fall into four broad categories, the first being food and drink.
Food is usually found in chests and drink usually in barrels, but be careful, always examine what's in the barrel before you guzzle it down.
The second category is best described as a collection of utilities, items which are needed to proceed in the quest, such as keys, ropes, weapons and so on.
The third section consists of magical items, and these can be weapons, healing potions, and various spells for more abstract uses such as learning what certain potions may be used for.

The Main Screen is the window to Karadoc's world, it displays your present position in the game, giving all the details you need to know concerning Karadoc and the items he finds.
There's a rucksack which, in the interests of safe keeping, stores all your goodies. They can be viewed as a whole, or scrolled individually.
In the first room of the adventure you'll find a personal log book. Examining it provides details on your health, score, and the percentage of completion of the present level.
A map is activated by pressing F1 and the result is a display of the rooms you've entered. Maps can be scrolled and zoomed at will.

Up to 10 individual quests can be saved via a separate disk and loaded as required, however there is a price to be paid.
The further you progress in the quest, the more money a subsequent save will cost. There is some good news, at least loading is free!

Karadoc the dwarf is a thieving, lying, low-down scumbag with only one thought in his head: treasure. The fact is that he has been sent by one warlord to take out another is only a side issue to him. Basically the guy has not had a good time of it and instead of accepting human warmth he has to compensate by rushing around Castle Wulf in search of gems, helmets, potions and gold and trying to beat things up before they get a chance to have a go at him.

Unhappily for him, his exit from the castle appears to be blocked and the evil Neuromancer awaits. Not the kind of entity you would want to take home to your mother, The Neuromancer is one of those monsters which does a hell of a lot of lurking - in the background that is. He, she or it has been in some pretty heavy battles in the past and so is obviously protecting an already fragile psyche by beating the life out of anyone or anything which cross its, his or her path.

What we have waiting here is a potential disaster for the poor avaricious dwarf and lunch for the Neuromancer. Or do we?
Much depends on your hand to eye coordination. Not only are there severe amounts of joystick waggling to be done but there are also several icons to be used.

Dragons lurk in various pools and ponds just waiting to get you. If that isn't good enough you have to avoid the green fluid which passes for water, in the same way as the sea off most English seaside resorts does - in other words it's highly toxic and will damage you beyond repair.

Pausing along the way you will find various life enhancing potions and one particular brew which is clever in its effect but not too hot if you need to move fast in the right direction. Remember to examine everything before playing with it, boys and girls.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Nice ones both. As you would expect from the Bitmaps, the sound is not overdone: it is also fairly effective with some beefy 'creatures dying in explosive agony' sound effects. The clink-clanking sound when you pick things up is a little tiring after a while but is not so irritating as to interfere with the gameplay. Thankfully all the audio works on a level which enhances the game.

Graphically the game is wonderful. The backgrounds are rendered in luscious 3D isometrics which are not marred by garish colours - the whole thing has a strangely sepia feel to it. Movement suffers a little with this form of graphics: you can find yourself hanging in mid-air or losing some perspective, but this is true of most 3D isometrics, so we won't quibble.

LASTING INTEREST

Quite a lot of his. While the opening screens are fairly simple with a few puzzles to tax the newer adventurers, the game only really gets going after you've managed to backtrack - won't say where - and have flicked a few levers. Once into the main body of the game there is enough gore to keep Sam Raimi (Who he? - Ed) happy, and there is also a deal of brain power required.

While the manual does nothing to help in playing the game, this merely acts as an incentive to beat the damned thing. A definite plus factor in keeping on with Cadaver is that Karadoc is such a great little guy: endearing and fairly hard with it.

STRATEGY

Cadaver is one of those games which has taken a great deal of working and will be fun to play from now until you finally finish the damn thing. There are a few illogicalities in the play, such as losing a key, or being pinned inside three spikes. Moans aside for a moment, there is no way in which the adventuresome type, the strategist or the arcade freak (or even Karadoc the Dwarf himself) won't get some real enjoyment out of this game. Not a classic, but most certainly an excellent game.

Wulf Castle, a murky mysterious place, devoid of human life except for a vile necromancer, Dianos. Killer of King Wulf, it is said he abducts villagers for use in his black magic rituals. Karadoc the dwarf has been hired to fin and kill Dianos, taking any treasure he finds as payment.

Cadaver is a flickscreen, isometric 3-D arcade adventure with five levels of 70 screens, filled with objects, unsavoury creatures and treacherous traps. Objects are divided into a number of categories and when touched bring up icons in the lower left of the screen. The least you can do is search something (with a second icon to return you to walk around mode) and the maximum is five actions. Depending on the object, these actions include drink, read, open and give.

Food and water (held in barrels) are essential to restore energy lost from contact with creatures and the poisonous swamp water. Potion bottles often don't specify what ability/disability they give the consumer so they are quite a gamble. Scrolls give useful information or hold spells for use against adversaries or at certain locations. Tools, armour and weapons have more conventional functions and are accessed via a 'rucksack inventory'.

The castle holds many puzzles, solved using objects, spells, buttons and levers - the latter usually unlocking doors - and through interaction with castle inhabitants (some are friendly). As the castle is explored it is automatically mapped. The map shows rooms entered, highlights Karadoc's current locations, can be scrolled around and zoomed in on. The game position can be saved and loaded with appropriate spells, a gold fee (increasing with the level) required for saving.

First things first - this isn't a complete game, it's a levels disk (the first one we've reviewed, in fact) and the only way you're going to be able to play it is if you have a copy of the real Cadaver to boot up first. Level disks have become fairly popular over the last couple of years, though it's the first time the Bitmaps have done one - the idea is that you increase interest in a popular game, and satisfy the demands of fans for a sequel, without going to the time and effort of doing a full blow follow up.

The downside is that it's only going to be of interest to owners of the original game - and ones who are desperate for more of the same, at that - so the market is limited. The plus side is that since all you're really doing is changing locations, graphics, and particular in-game tasks (as well as perhaps fixing a few bits and pieces you may have felt were wrong about the original game) it's really only a couple of week's work. This one costs (two thirds of the price of the full Cadaver, but then it's a bit smaller (about two thirds of the size, in fact!) so all's fairly fair. (Or something).

So is it any good? Well, yes it is. The plot follows on nearly from the first game (our mercenary hero returns to collect his wages for the first mission, only to find that his employers have gone missing - what's up?), the main character still looks like his limbs aren't properly connected to his body when he walks (a bit of a downer) and overall everything gives the impression of being better than the first game, but not stunningly so.

Puzzles are still a mix of arcade style jumping about, arcade adventure style lever pulling and text adventure style lateral thinking, but in some ways the new tasks seem a bit more action packed than the last, or at least a bit more visually interesting. The monsters you come across are no longer mindless baddies out just to get in your way, but form integral parts of the puzzles and can even, in some cases, be won over to your side and used to your advantage.

Many of the locations are new too - the disk takes us outside into the streets of a village for the first time, for instance - and the distinctly Germanic look to the whole thing (from the names of the towns to the whole look and feel of your surroundings) goes up a notch as well, a neat reference to the particular success of the original game in Germany.

So there we have it. Lots of new rooms (200 or so), four new levels and a very professional looking product. Great news for fans of the first game, unlikely to be of any interest at all to people who didn't like it, and, erm, that's it really. Level disks, eh? Don't you just love them?

The Payoff is the sequel of the adventures of Cadaver, involving Karadoc, the heavily armoured person of diminished stature. An isometric puzzle game which takes place in a village setting, our diminutive hero is trying to claim his reward from patrons who seem to have conveniently taken leave of the country.

The game is in a similar style to the first adventure, the difference being new puzzles, rooms and riddles to solve. Targeted exclusively at Cadaver fanatics, the makers of the game used the skills of experienced players to find out what would make an exciting, new sequel. The result is a concise and sharp conundrum with plenty of mysteries to make the brain achieve cerebral pyrotechnics.

One of the most endearing aspects of the game is the character Karadoc. Something of an anti-hero and misfit, the poor misunderstood duffer is treated with insults and hatred by everyone he comes across. Probably because of this treatment, Karadoc has learned to look after himself and can usually get out of scrapes. The layout and background to the game is planned well, enabling the player to travel through rooms, village squares, temples and caves. Tip-toeing through the rooms is essential for picking up valuable objects, spells and potions. These can be used to befuddle the various monsters, which range from squeaky metallic blobs to floating blood shot eyeballs. Killing them is not necessary, in fact, they can be put to good use to help in the quest. For example, some monsters are heavily addicted to gold and will go to any lengths to acquire it. A nifty spell enables you to capture and then release them to collect gold from dangerous nooks and crannies that Karadoc would rather avoid.

The Payoff is filled with cryptic, mind bending puzzles which truly give a sense of satisfaction when solved. Although the game will be savoured by Cadaver fans, it could also be addictive for those who have not crossed swords with the character before. Unfortunately, though, you'll have to fork out for the original game's disk to load up these data disks.