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Imagine an economic strategy game where success owes as much to hand-eye co-ordination and quick thinking as it does to strategic planning!

Imagine a game a complex to master as chess and yet as simple to learn as draughts!

Imagine a game that lets four people compete and yet forces them to co-operate.

Imagine a game that attracts both strategy players and arcade freaks.

You have just imagined M.U.L.E.

M.U.L.E. is a game of exploration and development on another planet for up to four humans. The computer will take over up to three players if you are short on Homo Sapiens. There is also a complete demonstration game where you can sit back and watch the computer play all four players.

By deploying resources and developing plots of land each player must try to make as much money as possible. But there is a catch because you each form part of a colony which must, as a whole, achieve a certain monetary level in order to survive. The more selfish each player is in his or her pursuit of wealth the more the colony is placed in jeopardy!

There are eight different characters to choose from, each with different abilities. For instance, Bonzoids are good at mining Smithore (more of that later). Different characters also start with different amounts of money.

M.U.L.E. stands for Multiple Use Labour Element and they are robots designed for exploring alien worlds. The design of the M.U.L.E. allows pioneers to outfit them for specific tasks. In this game, M.U.L.E.s are used as mini-production facilities.

There are four resources: 1. Food 2. Energy 3. Smithore 4. Crystite (only found in the tournament game)

Food is needed to provide enough time to outfit more M.U.L.E.s. All plots except those producing food will use up this resource. Food plots themselves are self-sufficient. The price of food usually stays well below 50 except during shortages when it can rocket well into the 200's. The best place to produce food is by the river!

Energy is required to power your M.U.L.E.s and a lack of energy will result in under production on one or more of your plots. As with food plots, those with energy M.U.L.E.s are self sufficient. The price of energy follows much the same pattern as that of food.

Smithore is one of the two raw materials that can be mined by the colony in all areas except the river, however, those plots containing mountains will yield the most plentiful supply. The more mountains in a plot the better a Smithore producer it will be. Smithore is used to produce more M.U.L.E.s so if nobody produces Smithore, no new M.U.L.E.s will be made and if there is a run on M.U.L.E.s then the Smithore price may soar well into the 200's.

Crystie, like Smithore, is mined from the ground but there are only a limited number of plots where decent supplies of crystite can be found. There are two ways of determining whether a plot is rich in crystite. The first is by assaying the plot you are interested in, by taking a soil sample back to the town for analysis. The second way is to deploy a crystite. Once production or that round starts, the number of dots in the bottom left-hand corner of the plot will tell you all you need to know. The price of crystite ranges between 50 and 150 and is not affected by supply and demand.

There is a store in the town whose prices (except for Crystite) are governed by supply and demand. The store's selling price will always be 35 higher than its buying price, that is if it has anything to sell!

Let's play a game!

The game is divided into three main phases:

1. Land grant
2. Development
3. Auction

The colony is divided into 44 plots, one of which is the town. The remaining 43 can be used to produce any one of the four resources mentioned above by the outfitting and development of a M.U.L.E. At the start of the round a black cursor frames each plot in turn from top to bottom and from left to right. Land is chosen by pressing a joystick or keyboard when the cursor frames the plot you want. It isn't always that simple though because someone else may want the same plot as you in which case the first on the button will get it, although close calls will invariably be won by the player with less money at the time.

At the end of the land grant phase extra plots may be put up for auction (more later).

Plots are developed by entering the town and purchasing a M.U.L.E. which then has to be outfitted to perform its required function. This having been done you must lead the M.U.L.E. to the plot you want to develop.

At the end of the phase, the production of those plots with mules is shown by the number of blobs appearing in the plot from 0 to 10.

After production comes a series of auctions where players can bid and outbid each other for the various resources. This is one of the best designed features of the game!

At the start of each auction you must decide to be buyers or sellers. This having been done, the players are displayed on the auction screen with the sellers at the top and the buyers at the bottom:

By using joystick or keyboard players can moveup and down, the auction area and where buyer and seller meet a transaction will take place.

When two buyers meet a seller at the same time (or vice versa) the player with the least money will transact first. This allows you to buy out the store, for example, when one or more of your opponents need to buy too thus leaving them short!

Buying and selling prices in the store are determined by the amount of production and the colonies requrements of each resource. Accurate monitoring of price fluctuations is a prerequisite to successful M.U.L.E.ing as it allows quick killings to be made by offloading before the price drops.

Another vital area of the game comes when deciding what type of M.U.L.E. to deplot a given plot. There are a number oF reasons for deploying a particular M.U.L.E. One is to produce food or energy for your own continued survival, another may be because everyone else is either short of or not producing, say, energy and you think these factors may push the price up and even dictate the selling price, especially if the store doesn't have any.

Here, as in many other places, the player in last place is helped by going last in line during the deployment phase. This allows him to see what the others have done and legislate accordingly.

Before each and grant phase it is important to work out which plot you're going to try for. Adjacent plots producing the same thing will produce one more unit each due to economics of scale. When three or more plots off a similar persuasion are owned by the same player then each will produce another extra unit each as you learn to produce more efficiently. A good policy therefore is to develop groups of plots that are all connected. This allows far more flexibility in M.U.L.E. allocation and means that like pairs of M.U.L.E.s can be deployed at any one time.

The net worth of each player is given by the total of cash, land and goods. Land is given a nominal value of 500 plus the value of a M.U.L.E. should it contain one. Goods are the resources that you own at the time.

A league table showing each player's net worth is displayed at the end of each round of which there are six in the beginner's game and twelve in the standard and tournament levels.

During the production phase there is a high probability that a random event may occur, sometimes inconsequential, sometimes devastating. For example: consider the situation where there is a glut of food in the store and nobody is actually producing much themselves - why should they? It's in plentiful supply, the price is rock bottom and Crystite or Smithore plots should pay far better dividends.

All this is sound reasoning until there is a fire in the store destroying all its stock. Suddenly food, and perhaps energy, becomes a rare and possibly very expensive commodity into which players will have to move if they are to continue outfitting M.U.L.E.s.

Other random events include the planetquake which halves mining production (of both Crystite and Smithore), sunspot activity which increases energy output and the most feared of all - The Pirate - who steals all Crystite produced that round including any that players may have been hoarding because the price wasn't high enough to justify selling last round.

One of the extra features of the tournament game is the ability to shut out one of more of your opponents during the auction phase. This means that two players could come to a private arrangement where one concentrates on food production while the other makes energy.

This means that both players can benefit from economies of scale and the learning curve thus producing more of their chosen resource. Then during the auction phase energy and food can be exchanged to enable both players to have all they need of both!

Collusion is also used to stop a particular player from buying something he wants.

As mentioned above, you may not be the only one trying to get a particular plot during the land grant phase (especially if a Crystite meteor has just landed on an unowned plot!).

This often results in players with plots far away from their main developments. In such cases it may be better to sell the plot in question to another player, especially if he has one smack in the middle of your development. Collusion allows you to sell land to your chosen player without interference from the others.

It is very difficult to convey in so few words how deep a game M.U.L.E. really is. All I can say, is play it for at least an hour - if after that you can't see why M.U.L.E. is one of the best games ever written for a computer then I'll eat my memory map!

The following may help you discover some of the many subtleties which abound in M.U.L.E.:

1. Try to become self sufficient as quickly as possible. Don't rely on the store for a continuous supply of food and/or energy - someone else may buy the store out or there may be a fire.
2. Buy as much land as you can as early as possible. It is difficult to win without more than your fair share of property (11 plots).
3. Because of the many ways M.U.L.E. favours the losing player, it is no great advantage to hit the front too early - in fact, the best time to take the lead is round 11.
4. Never keep a surplus of more than one unit of food if you can help it because food wastes at a rate of 50%. However, you may have occasion to ignore this rule of thumb if, or example, you wanted to buy up the stores supply to deliberately starve one or more of the other players.
5. Always keep between two and three surplus energy units to allow or development next round - remember your present break-even level does not take into account extra energy requirements for the next round.
6. The pirate usually comes at least once in the game and often twice. So if you've got lots of Crystite because the price has been lousy lately but it's late in the game and the pirate hasn't made an appearance yet then think carefully about selling at a modest price in preference to losing everything next round.
7. Always try and group plots together for more efficiency.
8. Early on in the game assay to determine the whereabouts of the high Crystite plots. Remember an assay resulting in a "no Crystite" message can be very informative in pin-pointing where Crystite can be found.

M.U.L.E. is available in Atari and Commodore version from Ariolasoft.