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Despite the proliferation of isometric 3D games since Ultimate released Knight Lore a couple of years earlier, Fairlight still managed to wow the critics and the public with this astounding game. As Isvar, you find yourself trapped in a castle and can only escape by finding the Book of Light hidden within its walls and taking it to the sorcerer. There are plenty of guards and vicious beasts roaming the castle that can be fought using Isvar's sword, but some are probably best avoided. Unlike earlier 3D efforts, the enviroment is extremely realistic with objects behaving according to the laws of physics rather than being there merely for decoration. This a large and brain-teasing game and spawned an equally fine sequel.

ACROSS THE Incredibly Flat and Featureless Plain, on the other side of the Impenetrably Thick Forest, just beside the Stream that Dries Up In The Corner of The Map sits the Enchanted Castle.


Haven't we had enough of them, after Avalon, Knight Lore, Dragontorc, and Tir na Nog? OK, so the setting of Fairlight is not promising. There's a wizard locked up in the castle and you have to find a magic book to release him and save the great gizmo from going ape with the wotsit.

Don't worry. When you actually get inside the castle you'll forget about how bored you are with fantasy. Fairlight, from The Edge, a division of Softek, is a quest with a difference.

The difference is largely in the graphics. They are the best we have seen of the two-colour 3D variety, streets ahead of Knight Lore and Alien 8 for variety and elegance of design. There are stairways and catwalks, corridors and chambers, trapdoors and courtyards in the castle; mapping Fairlight is going to be a problem, as the castle is designed like a castle, not a chessboard with a lot of walls between the squares.

Your character is an adventurer, cloaked and armed with a suitably workmanlike orc-sticker for those embarrassing social encounters. The figure moves in four directions and can jump, pick up objects and fight. It does those things a lot faster than Sabreman, whose antics are beginning to look decidedly creaky against this new wave of arcade-adventures.

You can push objects around as well, stack chairs on tables to get at high doors or windows, and generally derange the furniture at your pleasure. But the problems have a more naturalistic quality than usual. Keys tend to fit doors - somewhere - and performing various sequences of action will reveal further depths to the castle as secret doors are opened.


Monsters include guards and trolls, club-wielding heavies who can be fought or outwitted. Realism in the fight sequences includes comparisons of strength.

In fact, every object and character in the game has a weight. Objects carried are displayed on a small scroll tucked away in the corner of the screen, one at a time - the one you have selected to hold. You can carry up to five objects altogether, but the weight is important, and you may only have strength enough for less. Similarly, 300 pounds of gibbering green trollflesh packs a bigger punch than one wimpish little prison guard.

Fairlight is to be the first of a trilogy of games set in the land of Fairlight and future games will take the player into the surrounding countryside.

The secret of the stunning graphics is Grax, a high-powered low-level graphics language developed by Softek. Bo Jangeborg, who is currently putting the finishing touches to Fairlight, uses Grax to develop complex screens which occupy only one or two hundred bytes of memory at most.

Softek originally thought in terms of a 35 screen game but the finished product could contain up to 100, depending on Bo's stamina.

Tim Langdell, manager director of Softek, says Grax uses adapted core routines from The Artist, a graphics package reviewed elsewhere in this issue. But he's thinking about releasing Grax in the shape of an arcade-adventure design package.

Meanwhile, watch out for Fairlight. it's got to be one of the best arcade-adventure quests of the year.

Chris Bourne

Producer: The Edge
Memory required: 48K
Retail Price: £9.95
Language: machine code
Author: Bo Jangeborg

The Land of Fairlight was once a happy, jolly place - but this is no longer the case. More than three thousand years have passed since the worthy King Avars held court over the land from his Castle, and the whole county is enveloped in gloom and despondency. The Light has gone from the land, and the days are perpetually grey and gloomy when once the sun shone endlessly in clear blue skies. Over the years, partly as a result of a series of weak rulers, the social fabric of Fairlight declined - the people once lived happily in a peaceful land, full of music, jollity and magic. Now the county has a feudal system; society is fragmented, overseen by merchants and barons.


Castle Avars stands alone in the middle of the plain of Avarslund, impenetrable and surrounded in rumour and myth. Folktales suggest that a perpetual summer shines within the castle; other myths tell of Segar the Immortal who dwells within the castle, awaiting the moment to return, when he'll bring Light back to the land.

Isvar is the reluctant hero of this game, which forms the first part of the Chronicles of the Land of Fairlight and is subtitled A Prelude: The Light Revealed. Musing one day on the state of life he decides to enter Ogri's Wood - a wood that is universally acclaimed as dangerous. Ignoring the wisdom of the Elders, (Isvar is sure they must be hiding something - perhaps a great treasure) he enters the wood and is captured by the woman-monster Ogri and carried off to her cave, unconscious.

When Isvar comes round, Ogri has departed. The figure of a old man in a hooded cloak appears before him and tells Isvar that he is now on the shelf of Ogri's larder! Not one for being eaten, Isvar follows the old man out of the cave towards Castle Avars. Suddenly an entrance opens up in a wall that moments before was featureless. Isvar is in the castle and the old man explains that he is the court sorcerer of King Avers and has been imprisoned for thousands of years. Then the old man disappears - the figure which lured Isvar into the castle was merely an apparition, created by the imprisoned sorcerer for just that purpose. Isvar is now trapped in the castle. and can only escape by finding the Book of Light hidden within its walls and taking it to the sorcerer.

Isvar, the character you control, is moved round in a world which is not only three-dimensional in aspect, but realistic in terms of the way objects behave. Isvar has five pockets in which he can store objects he collects - but each object has a mass and obeys the laws of physics. Push a chair and it will move quite a long way; push a table and it moves less far. You can pick up and carry several pieces of food, for instance, as each is quite light but if you try to carry a barrel you will find that it is so heavy that Isvar has to drop everything else first. Objects may be called from a specified pocket, when they will be displayed on the little scroll next to the life counter, and can then be used. This scroll also acts as the display area, where messages to do with the manipulation of objects - such as 'too heavy' - appear. Isvar's life force is also shown.

Isvar begins with a life force of 99 units, shown on a counter on the scroll. This counter is decremented by encounters with the trolls, guards and other nasties that patrol the castle and may be topped up by eating food or drinking wine that can be found here and there. Isvar can fight and kill some of the nasties, using his sword, but other opponents are not in the least perturbed by his efforts and are best avoided completely.

Each location in the castle is colour coded - which helps you keep your bearings while you explore. All the open air locations, for instance, are blue. As you leave one room or location, the screen will go blank for a couple of seconds while the change is made, then the new location flashes onto the screen, ready drawn. If a location is filled with other moving figures, Isvar slows down a bit