M.U.L.E. - Starcraft of the 8-bit era

M.U.L.E. is an economic strategy you must have. Many consider it to be the best game ever made for eight-bit computers. I think I agree with that. One of the game’s breakthroughs is the availability of multi-player for up to four players.
We start with choosing a colour. The computer displays the next colours, the player can reserve a colour for himself by pressing the fire-button. Then we go to the choice of one of eight available races: Mechtron, Bonzoid, Flapper, Gollumer, Leggite, Packer, Spheroid or Humanoid.
As a representative of the selected race, we find ourselves on the planet Irata (Atari backwards), where our task is to create and maintain a colony. So we choose real estate, we buy the first M.U.L.E. (Multiple Use Labor Elements) and install it on our land. M.U.L.E. can produce energy, harvest food or mine Smithore. Energy and food are essential to the maintenance of the colony. Smithore is useful, thanks to it, we can produce more M.U.L.E.

When planning production, we must take into account what kind of land we have. Farming food goes best by the river, flat land is best for producing energy. If we want to mine Smithore, mountains will be our best choice.
When we are short of resources, we can buy them at auctions. We can get money by selling what we have produced or by gambling in the pub (gambling ends a player’s turn and always results in getting money, the sooner we finish a turn by entering the pub, the more money we will win).

M.U.L.E. was created by Ozark Softscape, which had a policy of creating games for the most advanced systems before porting them to the other platforms. The game was published by Electronic Arts in 1983, it was one of the first titles released by this company.