Or, to give the game its full title: Fairlight II: A Trail of Darkness. First released in 1986 – one year after the original Fairlight – and again published by The Edge. It was definitely much more substantial than the first game.

Again you play Isvar, and again: he’s trying to recover the Book of Light. Only this time it’s inside a different castle – this one called The Dark Tower.

Fairlight II is considerably bigger than the first game (as you’d expect), but the gameplay still essentially boils down to finding the right objects to stack on top of each other to climb up to out-of-reach places. That’s okay though. The slowdown is ever-present (no surprises), and the combat is the same, but there are a few surprises in this second game that you don’t get in the first (like travelling over the sea to a new location; more varied enemies, and even a magic carpet!), which makes it better in my opinion.

Fairlight II is a good evolution of, not just the series, but the genre. In many respects it carried the baton created by Ultimate in the isometric adventure stakes.

Fairlight II was programmed by Bo Jangeborg, with graphics by Niclas Osterlin. Again: there were 48K and 128K versions, the latter version having music and other enhancements. These grabs are from the 128K version.

More: Fairlight II on Wikipedia