5D Compendium contains twelve programs for the 16K ZX81 by five authors. The programs include games, arcade action, utilities and an adventure. They are written in Basic although some have been compiled using the PSS program, MCoder.

The first program is an introduction to the compendium. It contains credits and copyright information. Next is a short program which sets out the contents.

Wash-n-Slosh is the first of three arcade games and is quite good fun. You cannot pay your restaurant bill, and so find yourself in the kitchen washing dishes. There you rush up and down ladders, jump from platform to platform, and step on and off moving platforms (strange kitchen, eh?), in a frantic attempt to get plates from a lift into one of two sinks and then over to another part of the kitchen. Occasionally, a bomb comes down in a lift which you are supposed to grab and dispose of safely, but unless you happen to be very close to the lift this is an impossibility, the bomb explodes and you lose a life.

You also lose a life if you misjudge a jump and miss a platform. You have three lives per game. The object is to build up a high score within the set time limit.

The second game, Assassin, is similar in many respects. As a guard, you must protect your king and queen as they proceed in a horse-drawn carriage along a crowd-lined street. Assassins appear at random in the crowd and must be removed to the police station before they strike. Bombs have to be dealt with, and there are bonus points for collecting what the horses drop for the royal roses (the horses are loose to say the least!).

There is a time limit, and, if the royal party complete their procession they begin again and the difficulty of the game increases. Assassin is an enjoyable game, but like Wash-n-Slosh there just is not the time to do everything so the game can be frustrating.

Weed Attack is the third arcade game, and is similar yet again. In this one you have to prevent your garden being overrun by giant weeds by racing around applying weedkiller.

All three games have on-screen instructions. Action is generally fast and responsive, and the ZX81 graphics have been used to good effect. They are very similar to each other, probably because they have the same author.

Haunted House comes next and is the only adventure included in the compendium. It is a reasonable game with plenty of variety and includes a few graphic displays (pictures of locations). It is quite short as adventures go, with about 10 objects and as a similar number of locations. There are plenty of hazards to be dealt with (usually on a fight, flee or bribe basis) and even magic words to find. It is written in Basic, which imposes the usual limitations.

Stones is a game of strategy. It is the same game that was reviewed in the Dec/Jan 1984 edition of this magazine. It is the sort of game well suited to computer simulation and this version works reasonably well.

Next comes Odd One Out. The object is simply to spot the odd one out of four inticate patterns. A new pattern is created after each go, and the computer highlights the odd pattern.

In Picslide, a 4 x 4 grid is displayed on the screen in which patterns can be drawn by using the cursor keys. Each square in the grid is divided into 8 x 8 pixels. You can draw in black or white (which leaves spaces but doesn't delete existing black pixels), and the whole grid can be cleared. The two subsequent programs contain predrawn Picslide displays: of a train and a sailing boat. Apparently the grids can be shuffled so that an opponent can try to recreate your original picture, but there seemed to be no instructions as to how this is done.

Unfortunately, the two utility programs in the compendium, Functions and Display Generator, were also without instructions.

Hangman comes next and is a version of the game in which you are given the definition of a word which you must guess before being "hung" by the computer. There seem to be about 100 words in all. The game works reasonably and has effective graphics.

Horse Race is the penultimate program and is a game of chance. You choose from five runners, the only guide to form being the latest betting price. The horses are displayed as the race across the screen to the finish. A number of players can bet and their winnings are recorded.

Finally, 21-or-Bust is of course a ZX81 implementation of the card game. You can play an opponent or the computer. The cards are displayed face down and, as you twist, they are turned face upwards; this means that you can both see your hand and that of the ZX81. Graphics are reasonable, colours and suites which are unnecessary in this game are not shown.

In general, 5D Compendium is a reasonable cassette and is good value for money, though better instructions are needed for some of the programs. None of the twelve programs is original or breaks new ground, however the cassette might well serve as a cheap introduction for the beginner.

5D compendium Tape 1 costs £5.95 from 5D Programs, 12 Fleming Field, Shotton Collery, County Durham DH6 2JF.