Not much has been released for the QL of late, but what there is seems to be getting better...

One or two new names have appeared on the QL scene lately, and it looks as if the software these companies are producing is at last making good use of the machine, rather than simply churning out conversions of old arcade games.

At the last Microfair a company called Datalink (Wales) had a stand where they were selling copies of a game called 3D Slime. You could describe this as a version of Pacman, but with a difference. As the title implies, it's all in 3D. You control a vicious lump of slime that makes its way through a number of screens situated inside a pyramid. Each of these locations is represented in excellent 3D graphics looking a bit like the arcade game Crystal Castle, with doorways, ramps and pillars to manoeuvre across, and the movement of your little slime creature is very well animated as he shlurps his way around the rooms. Because of its similarity to Pac-man, this can't really be called an original game, but the implementation is very novel and at long last gives the QL an arcade game that doesn't look like a ZX81 leftover. At £12.95, this is possibly the best arcade game currently available.

On a recent visit to the ZX offices, Hamish from Datalink also showed us a not quite finished copy of QL Pencil, their next QL program, a graphics utility based on the Macintosh's system of graphics. For some reason the only software that the QL isn't short of is graphics packages, but this looked like it would be a welcome addition to what is already available. Icon-drien, it looks like it could compete with Sinclair's own QL Paint but will probably be a bit easier to use and cheaper too. Hopefully we'll be able to give it a full review next month.

French software house Pyramide are about to release some of their QL programs onto the UK market, the first being something of a novelty. Wanderer, as it's called, comes complete with cardboard glasses just like the ones you get if you've ever been to see a 3D film. The plot is a bit odd, the main task being to rescue your landlady's cat (see, I told you it was odd!).

It seems that there's a game of interstellar poker being played by all the planets in the galaxy and the main units of currency in this game are cats, which is why thousands of cats have gone missing from all over the galaxy, catnapped by the ruler of the universe, The Sphinx.

Wanderer is similar in many ways to Elite - there are the same space combat and navigation sequences, but the trading elements have been replaced by the poker game in which you have a chance of gaining access to the Sphinx's ship. But, of course, a lot depends on what you think of the 3D effect. Personally, I found that this worked well in the outer space sequences and helped to create a suitably 'spacey' atmosphere, but that it didn't really add much to the poker section of the game, since this is less interesting graphically regardless of whether it's in 3D or not. Still, Wanderer is undoubtedly one of the best games yet released for the QL, though I can't help thinking that £19.95 is a bit steep even for 3D graphics.

Psion produced an excellent version of Scrabble for the Spectrum a couple of years ago, and now Leisure Genius have produced one for the QL. The game itself is almost identical to Psion's Spectrum version, though the extra memory has allowed the programmers to cram around 20,000 words into the QL, which gives it a huge vocabulary to play with.

Up to four players can take part and the computer can control any or all of these, playing on any of eight skill levels. I found that the first couple of levels weren't that hard to keep up with, but on higher levels its ability to create words like oojimaflip with incredibly high scores looks suspiciously like cheating to me.

Graphically, the layout of the board and letter racks is clear and quite colourful and the option which allows you to watch the computer 'thinking' as it tries out different words on the board is fascinating to watch. Personally, I'd rather play Scrabble lying on the floor with a packet of biscuits but there's no denying that this is one game that does the QL justice for a change.