THE MIGHTY QL AT PLAY

QL GAMES COMPENDIUM
Publisher: Interface
Price: £5.95 (paperback)

Tim Hartnell is one of the grand old men of letters in the world of Sinclair books, having produced a prolific supply since the early days of the ZX-81. QL Games Compendium is a collection of fairly standard entertainments, more suited to those for whom the QL is their first computer.

The book contains 25 programs of varying length. Among old standards like Eliza - where the computer plays psychiatrist - Simon and Reversi you will find a couple of original adventures, a poetry generator, Draughts, and Stockbroker.

Although none of the games make any startling use of the QL facilities, and seem to have been adapted in the main from earlier programs for the Spectrum, they are good examples of simple programming which should appeal to novices. Hartnell also includes a chapter on other games, giving brief summaries of the rules as suggestions for readers' own programs.

The listings are reproduced from printer output, but are clear and easy to follow. There are few, if any, bugs, although Eliza started to behave strangely after a while. Perhaps that was due to perverse inputs rather than the programming itself.

Although Hartnell's collection is the best we have yet seen for the QL, there is room for programs of a much higher quality. It really is about time programmers turned their attention to games a little more original than Othello.