M.U.L.E.

Way, way back in my college days, my then landlord and friend and I were heavily addicted to a game on the Commodore 64 called M.U.L.E. Mark and I played this hour after hour after hour.


M.U.L.E. (which stands for Multiple Use Labor Element) is a straight-forward strategy game that can drive you nuts, specially with multiple players. Basically, you buy plots of land and put M.U.L.E.s on them to perform various functions (like farming, or energy collection, etc). Here I am grabbing a M.U.L.E. before getting ready to put up a farm.

Here's a screenshot of the main playing board. Notice that sometimes bad things happen, like a pest attack eating all of your food!


After each round, you can buy or sell leftovers from your production in the store.

M.U.L.E. was developed by the great guys at Ozark Softscape from Little Rock, Arkansas. I met Bill and Dan Bunten in Little Rock once. They were our heroes since they were the only successful gaming company in Arkansas at the time. They also made another of the best games of all time, Seven Cities of Gold, which was equally addicting but for a single player.


For laughs, I picked up a M.U.L.E. t-shirt from the Ozark Softscape website. Here's a picture of the front of the shirt:


And the back. What fun!

There is also a multi-player online version of M.U.L.E. at Planet M.U.L.E.