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| By Asmodee Games |
You're Landing on the Planet Irata
At some point in the 80's, my Uncle John gave us his old Atari 400. This was pre-cartridges. These games were on 5 inch FLOPPY DISKS. The graphics were barely recognizable as what they were supposed to be, and the music was little more than beeps and boops, but it was AMAZING. It had all the classics: Defender, Ultima, Miner 2049er (if you never played it, you are seriously missing out), Pogoman, Claim Jumper. Okay, so maybe some of these weren't exactly classics, but they were the games of my early childhood. But what I remember playing the most was this weird game with a messed up looking robot donkey on the cover, called:
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| Doo-Dada-Doo... Doo-Dada-Doo... Doo-Dada-Doo... Doo-Dada-Doo... |
M.U.L.E. was like space Monopoly. This was played with my brother and sisters more than ANY OTHER video game we have ever owned.
Home sick? M.U.L.E.
Spring break? M.U.L.E.
Bored on a weekend? M!U!L!E!
We would bust this out all summer, every summer, making sure to aim the fans towards the system so it wouldn't overheat and stall out our game (we had an unofficial rule that whenever that happened, whoever was in 1st place at the time won). To this day, it is a game that if my siblings and I are able to play when we're together, we do.
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| Look at that sweet, sweet, setup... |
So, when I heard that Asmodee was developing M.U.L.E. the board game, my nostalgia senses started tingling. Would this game hit all the same notes as the 1983 masterpiece...?
Pirates Take All Smithore!
M.U.L.E. The Board Game is a 3-4 player worker placement economics game. The players take on the roles of alien colonists trying to make a little scratch for themselves on a harsh EVEN MORE alien planet. You buy plots of land, buy the eponymous M.U.L.E. itself, set it to harvest any of the four different resources that planet Irata has to offer, and sell your goods to the store, or the other players, all the while making sure that you still have enough for your own needs.
You do all of these things by spending food. If you don't have the food to spend, whether it's because you sold it, it spoiled, or pirates stole it all (yes, there are space pirates in this game), then you can't do any actions. I mean, thematically, this makes sense, I GUESS, in that you have to eat in order to do things in life, but in M.U.L.E., certain actions cost more food to perform than others. I know this is meant to symbolize that some actions are more difficult than others, but I can't help but picture Bob the Builder opening up his lunchbox and not finding enough food, and saying "Can we fix it? Not today. I've only got my PB and J."
The fact that there are limited resources makes this game work. Limited land, limited food, limited energy, limited everything. These limitations dictate the price that the those resources can be bought from and sold to the Store. The more energy the Store already has, the cheaper it'll be. So, how do you actually win this game if whenever you sell to the store, your goods become less valuable? By becoming nothing short of a damned robber baron.
Eventually, you will grow tired of the back and forth scoring. Eventually, you will think that your goods should be worth more. Eventually, you WILL manipulate the market. Whether that is by refitting your M.U.L.E.s to flood the market with your competitor's primary good, causing its value to plummet, or by hoarding resources that are used by others, like Smithore or Food, creating your own feudal system, where you will take care of everyone else, but only if they pay the right price. Random events like raids by Space Pirates, or fires that wipe out the entire stock of the store used to be seen as threats, but are now looked on as old friends, long overdue for another visit. This is how your soul shrivels and dies... But this is also how you win at M.U.L.E.
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| Spell Irata backwards... |
You do all of these things by spending food. If you don't have the food to spend, whether it's because you sold it, it spoiled, or pirates stole it all (yes, there are space pirates in this game), then you can't do any actions. I mean, thematically, this makes sense, I GUESS, in that you have to eat in order to do things in life, but in M.U.L.E., certain actions cost more food to perform than others. I know this is meant to symbolize that some actions are more difficult than others, but I can't help but picture Bob the Builder opening up his lunchbox and not finding enough food, and saying "Can we fix it? Not today. I've only got my PB and J."
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| Nothing like carbo-loading before a hard day of collecting smithore... |
The fact that there are limited resources makes this game work. Limited land, limited food, limited energy, limited everything. These limitations dictate the price that the those resources can be bought from and sold to the Store. The more energy the Store already has, the cheaper it'll be. So, how do you actually win this game if whenever you sell to the store, your goods become less valuable? By becoming nothing short of a damned robber baron.
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| Crystite prices on the rise? Bully! Bully, I say! |
Eventually, you will grow tired of the back and forth scoring. Eventually, you will think that your goods should be worth more. Eventually, you WILL manipulate the market. Whether that is by refitting your M.U.L.E.s to flood the market with your competitor's primary good, causing its value to plummet, or by hoarding resources that are used by others, like Smithore or Food, creating your own feudal system, where you will take care of everyone else, but only if they pay the right price. Random events like raids by Space Pirates, or fires that wipe out the entire stock of the store used to be seen as threats, but are now looked on as old friends, long overdue for another visit. This is how your soul shrivels and dies... But this is also how you win at M.U.L.E.
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| Better to let all this food ROT than to dare decrease its value... |
Multiple Use Labor Element
Everything about M.U.L.E.'s production is designed to make it hit all the nostalgia points for those who remember the video game. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you've got someone who never played the video game, they may not get some of the inside jokes, and BOY, are there inside jokes. Just about every Event Card in the board game is a headline for some random event from the video game. Don't get me wrong, this game looks good, and I love the addition of numbers on the player boards to direct your attention to the right areas of the board, in the right order. It helps with the fiddly upkeep of the game. But I wonder if this game's design is a great adaptation of a video game, or if it's just a game that can stand on its own.
MAJOR COMPLAINT about the production of M.U.L.E. Those little wooden blue disks that represent M.U.L.E.s? They don't come with the M.U.L.E. stickers on them. You have to put them on YOURSELF! What horrific world do we live in where that was a legitimate cost saving measure?!? That may seem like a small thing, but there are, like 70 of those damn things! It took me like an hour! Imagine if I had just opened the thing up for a game night, and everyone had to sit and wait for me to put on 70 M.U.L.E. STICKERS. FUN FUN.
What makes it even worse is the fact that they include instructions on how to put the stickers on the disks. Like they were worried about us messing it up. If you were so worried about it, here's a novel idea, PUT THE STICKERS ON FOR US!
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| F those little M.U.L.E. stickers... |
MAJOR COMPLAINT about the production of M.U.L.E. Those little wooden blue disks that represent M.U.L.E.s? They don't come with the M.U.L.E. stickers on them. You have to put them on YOURSELF! What horrific world do we live in where that was a legitimate cost saving measure?!? That may seem like a small thing, but there are, like 70 of those damn things! It took me like an hour! Imagine if I had just opened the thing up for a game night, and everyone had to sit and wait for me to put on 70 M.U.L.E. STICKERS. FUN FUN.
What makes it even worse is the fact that they include instructions on how to put the stickers on the disks. Like they were worried about us messing it up. If you were so worried about it, here's a novel idea, PUT THE STICKERS ON FOR US!
Buy It!, Try It, or Fly It!
Again, my ratings go like this:
Buy It! = Go buy this, right now! It is fantastic and worth your hard earned money!
Try It! = Play it with a friend or at your local game store. You might like it or you might not.
Fly It! = %&#! this game!
When you hear the word "Economics" and the word "Game", you don't necessarily think that you'll be in for a good time. Well, I think you'll be surprised by M.U.L.E. The Board Game. It does a lot of things that mimic ACTUAL economics, such as supply and demand, while adding fun game things like random events that prevent you from feeling like there's no way you'll mount a comeback if you're losing. There's a LOT of strategy, playing your opponents and not just the cards you're dealt, and the whole thing flows pretty well.
The biggest issue, and I personally don't really care that much about this, is that this game requires you to be HEARTLESS. In order to truly enjoy this game, in order for you to truly experience everything this game has to offer you, you must feel no shame in actively screwing the other players. Not only that, but the game encourages you to do so! You know the idea of the angel and the devil sitting on your shoulders? Well, replace the devil with a copy of M.U.L.E., and you're starting to get the picture. Really, to have any fun with this game, the other players have to be cool with getting screwed, and remember that it's all just part of the game... That sounds... possible... maybe...
Even in my own life, I know that this game is not going to fly with my friends or my wife (my wife literally once shouted that she was going to murder me if I beat her at Mortal Kombat again), so I know that this is going to be for very special sociopaths, like me, my brother, and my sisters. But, if you're like me, and that kind of gameplay is just another day in the life for you and yours, then M.U.L.E. is gonna be your jam. Otherwise...
Buy It! = Go buy this, right now! It is fantastic and worth your hard earned money!
Try It! = Play it with a friend or at your local game store. You might like it or you might not.
Fly It! = %&#! this game!
When you hear the word "Economics" and the word "Game", you don't necessarily think that you'll be in for a good time. Well, I think you'll be surprised by M.U.L.E. The Board Game. It does a lot of things that mimic ACTUAL economics, such as supply and demand, while adding fun game things like random events that prevent you from feeling like there's no way you'll mount a comeback if you're losing. There's a LOT of strategy, playing your opponents and not just the cards you're dealt, and the whole thing flows pretty well.
The biggest issue, and I personally don't really care that much about this, is that this game requires you to be HEARTLESS. In order to truly enjoy this game, in order for you to truly experience everything this game has to offer you, you must feel no shame in actively screwing the other players. Not only that, but the game encourages you to do so! You know the idea of the angel and the devil sitting on your shoulders? Well, replace the devil with a copy of M.U.L.E., and you're starting to get the picture. Really, to have any fun with this game, the other players have to be cool with getting screwed, and remember that it's all just part of the game... That sounds... possible... maybe...
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| Yeah, that looks familiar... |
Even in my own life, I know that this game is not going to fly with my friends or my wife (my wife literally once shouted that she was going to murder me if I beat her at Mortal Kombat again), so I know that this is going to be for very special sociopaths, like me, my brother, and my sisters. But, if you're like me, and that kind of gameplay is just another day in the life for you and yours, then M.U.L.E. is gonna be your jam. Otherwise...
The Verdict...?
TRY IT!
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NIce! I have played this and I think you summed it up rather well :)
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