Arriving alone at a dilapidated orphanage in 1930s England in the middle of a dark night, a young girl, Jennifer, tentatively explores what is to be her new home.

But things are not what they should be in the gloomy, creepy mansion house she nervously enters. Children's whispers and giggles behind doors, pattering footsteps, and the fact there is not a soul in sight make it clear from the off that something is very wrong.

The house's sinister juveniles soon have their new visitor captive, and she is whisked away in a coffin onto (what else?) a giant zeppelin.

Jennifer has been captured by The Aristocrats of the Crayon, a sadistic and hierarchical group of children for whom she must carry out tasks or be punished. Devils with fish heads, giant murderous stork men and evil imp rabbits populate this huge airship, and must be fought off (with the help of a rescued sidekick dog, Brown) as you find gifts to offer your 'superiors', in order to find out what is happening to you.

Despite an atrocious combat system, terrible camera angles, and lots and lots of annoying door-opening screen-loads, Rule Of Rose is creepy and strange enough that, as long as you think of it as a surreal interactive movie with puzzles thrown in, rather than a true game, you'll get a spinechilling thrill out of it. And watch out for the scene where a little girl torments another little girl with a rat tied to a stick.