I don't know, you wait ages for a role-playing adventure game to turn up and then you go and get four in two months - it's just not fair. Following quick on the heels of Knightmare, Abandoned Places and Moonstone (OK, it's more action than adventure, but who cares) is Shadowlands.
I don't really know how to describe Shadowlands, but I'll have a go. It's a sort of, err, umm, isometric Dungeon Master with a mere shade of Akira thrown in for good measure.

You are now probably wondering what the hell Akira, the cult Japanese cartoon/film epic, has got to do with Shadowlands. Well hold on to your hats, helmets or whatever you're wearing on top of your head and all will be revealed soon.

Time for a story, I think. Are you sitting comfortably? The story follows an ancient legend. Drowned while fleeing enemy hordes who have invaded to find that your spirit is still very much alive and lusting for vengeance.
New supernatural powers give you the ability to control the minds of others. Hyou must guide them into the Shadowlands where they must search and find your natural remains and from there take them to the altar to be reunited with your spirit in an ancient ceremony.

Just like Dungeon Master and all its contenders, you start the game with four intrepid adventurers. Normally you have to choose your adventurers, but not in Shadowlands - here you have to make your own. Using an identikit system rather like the one in Midwinter 2, you get to design your brave lads.
If you remember, I mentioned Akira - well this is where the Japanese influence appears. All the graphics of your man's face, hair, mouth, etc. are very oriental and you can get qite a good likeness to the bloke who runs the chippy down the road.

Right, you've made up your men and you've given them names, now it's time to play the game. You start off in an orchard with loads of apple trees, so you can do your best Darling Buds of May impressions, pretend to pick this year's crop of apples and say "Perfick" a lot.

While you are wandering around you encounter pesky crows and also find some very important weapons. After a bit of apple-picking and the odd game of hide and seek, you will eventually find the dungeon. Now the game really begins to take shape.
The first part of level one is merely a little taste and enables you to get used to the controls, so that you can move around quickly and efficiently. Movement is entirely controlled by your little mouse. By now you should have seen our little box with an explanation of the control system - if you haven't seen it, read it right now, it's dead important.

If you're a bit daft in the head and you haven't seen the screenshots then you probably won't know why the game is called Shadowlands. It's called because it uses a Photoscaping system. I suppose you'll want to know what a Photoscaping system is? It allows the game to actually simulate light and darkness. I know it sounds a bit complicated, but I'll make it easy for you by using a couple of examples.

Example one - when you light a torch in Shadowlands, you actually light up the area around you and you can see everything a lot more clearly.
Example two - when you open a door the light from the torch actually floods through into the next room, just as light does in the real world.
I know the word 'gimmick' comes screaming at you from out of the darkness, but it really does add atmosphere to the game and lends it a realistic feel. The actual game is plagued by all manner of evil beasties like skeletons, rats and even Jeremy Beadle (are you sure? - Ed). Some of the beasties are harder than others, and some so-called "beasties" are actually scantily-clad women.

Also contained in the dungeons are loads of fiendish puzzles. Sometimes the dungeon will help you with them by leaving a plaque for you to read, other times it won't. These puzzles will give you sleepless nights and a severe case of brain-ache.
For all you would-be wizards, there are also spells for you tp play around with, but be careful - you wouldn't want to command a bunch of frogs around the dungeon!

I have been reliably informed the dungeon bit lasts for 14 levels. Then your progress further to the pyramid and maze levels, so it definitely isn't one of those "I completed it in ten minutes" jobs.
Shadowlands is one of those games which will keep you entertained for hours on end. You know the type - you start playing in January and before you realise it, it's April.

Engrossed? I certainly was. I almost forgot about writing the review. And even now while I'm writing this, Darren, our resident adventuring expert, is deeply engrossed in it - at the moment he's turning the air blue.
In fact, hold on for a minute.
"Oi! Get off that Amiga!"
"Whaat?"
"Come 'ere you, take that!"
"Youch!"
Ho ho! That'll teach the bugger.

Overall, Shadowlands is the game all adventurers have been looking for. It has great graphics which, coupled with the Photoscaping system, gives a unique atmosphere, almost a feeling of actually being there.
On the sound front there are suitable FX featuring grunts, screams, thuds, clanking, clanging and even a ding ding ding sound. And it's got a lovely intro tune.

Playability? Do I even have to tell you about this? (Yes, you bloody well do - Ed). OK, it's certainly one of the most playable games I've ever attempted. It even beats Dungeon Master, mainly because it's a lot more interactive.
The control system becomes second nature after just a few goes. You don't particularly have to read the manual, you can just boot it up and play it straight away - it's that playable.

It's time for a bit of a sum up, methinks - 2 + 2 = 4, and Shadowlands = bloody ace adventuring roleplaying games.

Originality is always scarce in this business - you only have to look at the hordes of plagiaristic shoot-em-ups to see that. As soon as someone hits upon a neat concept for a game, everybody rips it off. But Teque Software, the guys who are behind Domark's new fantasy role-playing game, Shadowlands, have decided to ignore what's gone before, and try to re-invent the wheel. A difficult task indeed, but one that they've taken on with gusto - and the results speak for themselves.

Shadowlands is the first decent role-playing program to develop the ideas from Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder, and add a new twist that works. Instead of the 'player's-eye view'which was used in both of the old classics, Shadowlands uses a 3D-isometric view, (rather like the one in Hero Quest except that it runs in real time) to help you guide your party of four adventurers around an underground dungeon.

In the past, this type of view has usually been severely dogged by playability problems: monsters and party members simply disappearing behind foreground walls (and usually dying before you get chance tow wiggle them back), or they just animate badly around corners and get stuck on other objects which are hidden from view.
Not so in Shadowlands. Using some neat tricks and well-studied designing, Teque have made these long-standing nags ancient history.

Blinded by the light
The first and most obvious trick concerns the foreground walls. As your party approaches a wall which might obscure them from view, the wall disappears, leaving just a simple red line on the floor in its place. Sounds a bit too easy to work, but it does. You know for sure that there will never be anything to examine on the back of a wall (because they always vanish before you can search them), but this is no problem. You may find objects on the floor just behind a wall, however, and the disappearing trick makes looking for them easy.

Shadowlands' most atmospheric feature (and the one which it gets its name from) is the use of light and darkness throughout your quest. Much like Dungeon Master, you can pick up flaming torches from holders in the walls and carry them around with you to light your way during the adventure.
But the lighting effect in Shadowlands goes one better - a circle of light follows the torch-bearer, gradually diminishing as the torch burns down. The light behaves almost naturally, shining through open doorways in shafts as you approach the threshold and then blossoming out on the other side as you pass through. You can even throw them down passages and watch them light the way ahead.

A new perspective
Another facet which makes Shadowlands a kind of 'Dungeon Master Plus' is the controllability of the party. DM only ever allowed you to move your party as a single group - Shadowlands lets you split them up into different travelling formations, even as two distinct groups, as well as move individual members anywhere you want. This makes Shadowlands a far more plausible game than DM, and it gives you total control over the actions of your party. The downside, however, is that you have to work just that little bit harder to manage everything effectively - but that's what role-playing is really all about.

Despite creating their own style of role-playing game, Teque know when established ideas work well enough, and leave them be. So you'll find loads of magical items and spells, monsters and weapons, keys and locked doors, pets, pressure pads and plenty of leap-of-faith puzzles. The monsters (which range from slashing skeletons to fireball-chucking barbarians) vary in strength as you go deeper into the tunnels, and Shadowlands alters their relative toughness depending on your success so far.

Perhaps the most annoying of all are the rats - these bite you repeatedly if they catch you standing still. They can't be killed and they even follow you through teleports. Dodge and run is the motto here.

This time it's personal
Another enhancement to the gameplay is the character generator which enables you to create your own team with your choice of statistics for health, magic power, strength and combat abilities. You can create individual faces for your characters by using the identikit system which combines many different style head, chins, eyes and hairstyles together.

With the in-built load-and-save function (which also includes a disk-formatter), you can negotiate Shadowlands with a group of handcrafted alter-egos and really get the best enjoyment possible out of it.

So if you're looking for something in the role-play vein which is a bit different, has oodles of late-night, early-morning appeal, and is good enough to let your mates watch over your shoulder, get Shadowlands or you truly will be in the dark.

Nyctophobiacs beware! The powers of light and darkness pervade every nook and cranny of Domark's new fantasy epic. From the way day and night take their turn above ground to the murky depiction of underground passages.
Shadowlands is by turns a light-saturated or a visibility-free zone. Torches cast pools of light. Opened doors allow streams of light to fall into adjacent rooms, and the absence of light wreaths everything in uncertainty. It's a Nice Touch alright, but let's be honest - a program which simulated the effects of light and did little else wouldn't be too thrilling. Which is why Shadowlands gives you a 3D isometric, mouse-driven bells-and-whistles role-playing game into the bargain (Mmmm, I wonder I could program my word-processor to add the words 'role playing' into every other review?

THE MOUSE CONTROL THAT ROARED
But - hey1 - don't stop here arcade fans. It may one of those fantasy jobbies with nasty demons and undead and all that, but it's far from trainspottery in its execution. Whereas most role-playing games rely on numerous keyboard inputs, references to hit points and seem to display British Rail timetables on the screen for no apparent reason, Shadowlands dispenses with all that sort of guff. Instead it opts for an entirely mouse-driven control system, one which lets all four characters move together or be given individual instructions to left to do their own things.

LIGHTER THAN WINONA'S SMILE
All movement, object manipulation, eating and fighting is achieved by clicking on the various body parts of the appropriate character in a small box at the bottom of the screen (the on-screen location of these boxes can be altered). To pick an object up is simply a matter of clicking on a character's left hand, then the object in the play area. Throwing the object is similarly achieved by clicking on both hands, then where you want the object thrown to. Of course, if it's too heavy, then it's not going to be thrown as far. (And if the distance is negligible, then the character will walk over and carefully drop the object).

There's a lot of clever stuff going on behind the scenes here, all right - object weights, character strengths, distances, and even the effects of gravity, all are worked out by the computer as you play. The result is a game that's both realistic and darned intuitive, creating a most believable game world. There's so many of these subtleties in Shadowlands, it's easy to see why it took one and a half years to get finished.

As you can probably gather from the screen shots, the game is the usual 3D scrolling isometric romp both above and below ground. Treasures, food, new weapons and spell scrolls can all the collected and used, and there's the inevitable array of monsters and fiendish nasties to be dealt with. And of course, whether it's in combat or character interaction, there's always the light to be taken into consideration. Some monsters are attracted by light, others are repelled by it. There're even traps and puzzles which depend on light. Of course, all this brightness-dependent stuff means that the player's party of characters will need to carry torches everywhere they go - and these have a horrible habit of going out at the most inopportune moments.
This would be bad enough even if the monsters weren't a darn sight smarter than most you'll come across - rest your party in a room without closing the doors first, for instance, and the chances are the sneaky rats that populate the game will be chewing your warriors' sinews. Yeuck.

Have I mentioned character creation yet? Wow, now that's a doozy section of the program. For a start there's the appearance of each of the guys or gals in the party. The hair, eyes, nose and mouth/jaw can all be re-defined. In theorty this means that its possible to create your own image on screen, though in practice things aren't really that flexible - but it's fun to muck around with all the same.

COME ON BABY LIGHT MY TORCH
Then there's the character attributes. In place of boring old numbers there're nice simple bars representing strength, magic, combat ability and health - you'll find none of those daft references to hit points, constitution, wisdom or dexterity here. If you're not happy with the computer -generated levels of these attributes then the chance card can be used. Doing this will add to some attributes while taking away from others. It's not an exact trade-off, there's a random element to the modifications, so if you want to slightly improve an almost-great character, the chances are you'll end up with a complete wimp. (Them's the breaks).
Having given all four characters a face and a good selection of attributes it's on to the land of shadows itself.

From the short intro bit (some outdoor exploration in the apple orchard and heroes' graveyard) it's into the first dungeon. Here every sort of puzzle is on show in its most basic form - you get to learn the sort of thing you're up against before it all gets much more complex. Don't worry, though - this is one of those clever programs that's sensitive to how well a player is doing, and judges the game accordingly. And, if you're really stuck, there are always the coin-operated help functions. These wall mounted devices offer not-so-cryptic help for the totally stumped - but remember that those precious coins may be much better used for buying stuff.

WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE
The spell system in Shadowlands is another brilliantly simple system. Spell energy can be extracted from active (i.e. energy laden) objects. A torch or piece o food, for example, is full of potential energy. But sucking an object's life-force for casting spells will inevitably make the object less effective.
Torches will burn out quicker. Food will have less effect. This idea of trading off one advantage over another is at the heart of Shadowlands. Taking firm control of one area inevitably means losing out in some other way - just like it does in real life, in fact.

BACK GO GRIPES, BACK TO REALITY
There's just one problem - I'm running out of space, and I haven't even dug out my list of reviewer's superlatives yet. Before that though, I suppose it'd be only fair to point out a few rough edges - the graphics (too dark and dull) and scrolling being my biggest gripes. And the control system isn't perhaps quite as intuitive as it could be either (that said, half an hour or so should be enough to get the hang of it). These are really fairly minor quibbles though - in gameplay terms the basics are all there, and the size and depth of the whole thing make me forgive its little faults. I personally find it a lot more refreshing than all the Eye Of The Beholder lookalike games streaming out right now.

And so into my last paragraph, and I still haven't mentioned the way the walls dissolve into 'architect lines' to give the player a good view of the four characters' movement. I haven't gone into the way that the character formations can be altered at any time. I haven't really mentioned the wonderful sphere of light which follows the players around when they've got a torch fades. Or the way that the light effects really are ray traced to make the light fall realistically.

Or the way that characters can gang up on monsters, peeling off one at a time to rest and regain health before going back into combat. Or the array of potions and spells to collect. I haven't mentioned the weird and wacky uses of the fireball spell. And I haven't even got space to mention (Snip! - Ed).

From converting coin-ops to developing RPGs might not be the most logical of moves, but London-based Teque are hoping they've managed to make the transition and designed the ultimate in Amiga role-playing games. With the likes of Dungeon Master, Might and Magic, Phantasie IV and Chaos Strikes Back already available, it's a brash claim to make but, here, after months of hype, is the proof of the pudding.

Killed by the evil forces of the Shadowlands, your spirit has miraculously remained intact. With your village torn asunder and your family slain by the apocalyptic warriors of the region, you swear revenge upon the bloody reapers. Boosted by strange supernatural powers, you have possessed the minds and bodies of four unfortunate travellers and enlisted them in your campaign to exact revenge.

The four travellers under your control have random combat, magic health and strength ratings. There's also a neat identikit feature whereby each character's facial characteristics can be built up from a number of different chins, hairstyles and hooters.
The Japanese-style graphics used here are a recurrent theme throughout the game and certainly make a change from the European-inspired graphics of Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master.

The game begins in an applce orchard, with plenty of fruit, sticks and even a discarded bow and arrow to collect. It's best to scoop up anything that's not bolted down as you never know what might be useful in later levels. There's nothing on this level to cause any problems, except for a few vicious crows, but once you've entered the dungeon complex the bad guys come thick and fast.

This is also where Teque's much-touted Photoscape lighting technique comes into play. The main light source in the dungeons comes from a number of burning torches, with each once throwing out an arc of light. This lights up the immediate area, but leaves the rest of the dungeon dimly lit and receding into darkness. It's not just a gimmick, though, as many of the game's puzzles are light-activated and the darkly-lit surrounding also help create a dark and foreboding atmosphere which permeates much of the game.

Even when it's completely dark, it's still possible to make out the silhouettes of enemy warriors as they prowl the corridors and labyrinths of the strange underworld, but some of the more important weapons, spells and puzzles might be left undiscovered. A hints-based tips system is also rendered inoperable if you run out of torches, as the helpful information can only be accessed when the placards on which they appear are illuminated by torchlight. Lose all source of lighting, and you'll be well and truly stuck. Moreover, some of the samurai-type warriors wandering the levels are attracted by fiery torches whereas others are frightened off.

Shadowlands adopts an isometric 3D view of the proceedings similar to Core's Heimdall. This reinforces the idea of your detached soul watching and guiding the tour adventurers throughout the game. What stands out most of all, though, is the incredibly simple user-interface with an impressive array of commands at your disposal.

Each character can pick up and throw objects, read clues, engage the enemy, and perform various functions simply by the click of a mouse button on their skeletal forms at the bottom of the screen. For example, by clicking on one of the legs it's possible to guide the character around the screen. It's an incredibly simple control method and works a treat.

There are six main levels to the game with some containing several more sub-levels. The dungeon world is first and is populated with a fearsome array of warriors and suicidal sword-wielding maniacs.
Next up is a maze-like level based on the famous Hampton Court maze and patrolled by rabid dog-demons and tough-but-dim warriors who have the reflexes of a slug. AN Egyptian level immediately follows and, whilst providing a refreshing change in graphics, is choc-ful of beasts ripe for the slaughter and some quite devilish traps and puzzles. The game finishes on a high note with a gigantic cave system to explore.

My only real quibbles with the game are the 'burst' scrolling and the main sprites. As each character wanders near the edge of the screen, the action is re-centered around the group, and this is painfully slow at times. The main character sprites are also slightly disappointing and look more like spindly pipe-cleaners than the chisel-jawed heroes that you'd expect. But this really is nit-picking and the game's many points far outweigh any criticisms I can levy at the game.

Admittedly, there's little in the way of character interaction except for a first in the face, but what we've got here is a contender for the RPG crown and a thoroughly engrossing and entertaining game to boot.