Shades Online at http://games.world.co.uk/shades/shades.html The aim of the game is quite simple, to score points by collecting the treasure scattered about the land and dropping it in the Mad Kings room. You move about by typing simple english commands like GO NORTH or just NORTH or even N, and you collect and drop objects by using GET and DROP respectively. You can also cast various spells of which the most useful is undoubtedly the WHERE spell, as in WHERE IS THE TREASURE (you can abbreviate this to WH T). You may find it doesn't work too well, this is because the lower your score the less spell-casting ability you have. If you persist though it will work eventually and list all the places where there is treasure. You'll need to spend time exploring before you get to know your way about, because other people will be trying to beat you to the treasure. During the course of play you'll come across puzzles put there to make life that little bit more difficult - a number of these puzzles require two players to solve them so it helps to make some friends, especially as other players are the best source of help with the game. To talk to other players in the same room as you, type SAY then your message, for example if you type SAY HI, can you help me please? others in the room will see " says "Hi, can you help me please?". If there are no other players in the same room as you (type LOOK or GLANCE to see who there is) you can always SHOUT your message which is just like SAY except everyone in the game hears you. For example, if you are stuck you could SHOUT HELP, I'M NEW HERE! and everyone in the game would see shouts "HELP, I'M NEW HERE!". You can always type WHO to see who is currently playing. A third way of talking to other players (besides SAY and SHOUT) is TELL, which operates just like telepathy. Only the person you tell your message to will hear it, so for example if you type WHO and see that someone called MERLIN is playing you could type TELL MERLIN HI, COULD YOU TELL ME THE WAY TO THE MAD KING PLEASE? and Merlin will see tells you "HI, COULD YOU TELL ME THE WAY TO THE MAD KING PLEASE?". You can use TELL to another player from anywhere in the game. It will take you a while to get used to the layout and to the way you deal with other players, but once you have you'll find yourself scoring points with ease. The very best players will eventually reach the level of Wizard or Witch, where you become Immortal and are granted fabulous powers over the land and all its inhabitants. If you type LEVELS you'll get information on how many points you need to make to progress through the levels before you reach Wizard/Witch. Once you begin to get a picture of the Lands layout (and we suggest you draw a map) you can type BRIEF to stop the long description being displayed every time you enter a room. After you've typed BRIEF you can always type VERBOSE to get the long descriptions back, or you can LOOK which always displays the full description. Finally, try typing COMMANDS to get a short list of some of the more useful commands, also try typing HELP. - o -