"The Key to Non-Un-Victory" - PART 5 - M.U.L.E.
9Yeah wait a second, what exactly ARE we doing there?
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CHAPTER SELECT:
00:00 Intro
00:22 Development #11
03:49 Status & Auction #11
07:49 Development #12
11:34 Status & Auction #12
15:52 Outro
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M.U.L.E. is a seminal multiplayer video game written for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers by Ozark Softscape. Designer Danielle Bunten Berry took advantage of the four joystick ports of the Atari 400 and 800 to allow four-player simultaneous play. M.U.L.E. was one of the first five games published in 1983 by new company Electronic Arts, alongside Axis Assassin, Archon: The Light and the Dark, Worms?, and Hard Hat Mack. Primarily a turn-based strategy game, it incorporates real-time elements where players complete directly as well as aspects that simulate economics.
Set on the fictional planet Irata (Atari backwards), the game is an exercise in supply and demand economics involving competition among four players, with computer opponents automatically filling in for any missing players. Players choose the race of their colonist, which has advantages and disadvantages that can be paired to their respective strategies. To win, players not only compete against each other to amass the largest amount of wealth, but must also cooperate for the survival of the colony.
Central to the game is the acquisition and use of Multiple Use Labor Elements, or M.U.L.E.s, to develop and harvest resources from the player's real estate. Depending on how it is outfitted, a M.U.L.E. can be configured to harvest Energy, Food, Smithore (from which M.U.L.E.s are constructed), and Crystite (a valuable mineral available only at the "Tournament" level). Players must balance supply and demand of these elements, buying what they need and selling what they don't. Players may exploit or create shortages by refusing to sell to other players or to the "store," which raises the price of the resource on the following turns. Scheming between players is encouraged by allowing collusion, which initiates a mode allowing a private transaction. Crystite is the one commodity that is not influenced by supply and demand considerations, being deemed to be sold off-world, so the strategy with this resource is somewhat different; a player may attempt to maximize production without fear of having too much supply for the demand.
Each resource is required to do certain things on each turn. For instance, if a player is short on Food, there is less time to take one's turn. If a player is short on Energy, some land plots won't produce any output, while a shortage of Smithore raises the price of M.U.L.E.s and prevents the store from manufacturing new M.U.L.E.s.
Players must deal with periodic random events such as runaway M.U.L.E.s, sunspot activity, theft by space pirates, and meteorites, with potentially destructive and beneficial effects. Favorable random events never happen to the player currently in first place, while unfavorable events never happen to the player in last place. Similarly, when two players want to buy a resource at the same price, the player in the losing position automatically wins. Players also can hunt the mountain wampus for a cash reward.
"The Leidenfrost Effect" by Level 99 & Hemophiliac
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