Let's Play (010) - The Sumerian Game [Sum9rx]: How to Starve A Kingdom

Release Date: 1965

Platform: IBM 7090

Genre: Resource Management, Educational

Developer(s): Mabel Addis, William McKay

Publisher(s):

I've been looking forward to covering The Sumerian Game. Ever since I discovered the collection on Steam that recovered and restored several versions of the game (alongside some other lost games I'm excited to cover), I've been itching to play it for OGC. It's especially exciting as it appeared after I did my original article on The Sumerian Game. A lost game, no more. And it brought some friends along, too.

HareSoft's The Sumerian Game collection helpfully places all the various versions of the game on a timeline, allowing us to clearly see which versions were first. According to this timeline, there are two 1965 versions, titled Sum9rx and Suilxr. The former is described as the less complete version, so that's what I've chosen to play first.

The basic gameplay outline remains the same across most forms of The Sumerian Game, and the later evolution into Hamurabi, so I'll go over it here once, and for future versions, I'll only be pointing out the differences.

The king has arrived.

All versions of The Sumerian Game place you in the position of king over a kingdom. In the earlier versions, it's the city-state of Lagash, in Ancient Mesopotamia. In Hamurabi versions, you are king of Babylon. Your job, as king, is to ensure the stable running and flourishing of your domain - by making sure everyone's fed properly.

Sum9rx begins your reign as follows:

• Population = 500
• Grain = 5,000
• Total Farm Land = 2,000 (acres)
• Cultivated Land = 500 (acres)

Here begins the gameplay loop of The Sumerian Game. The player must now decide how to use their resources. The sequence Sum9rx follows is "how much grain to store" ==> "how much grain to plant" ==> "how much grain to feed to the people." This version is extremely particular about how you distribute your grain - every last bushel must be allocated; nothing can be left over, otherwise the game will tell you off for "not meeting current economic conditions." That's a fancy way of saying that you didn't so your sums properly - try again, dummy.

This advisor of mine is one grumpy, pedantic bastard.

My familiarity with David Ahl's Hamurabi led me to think that the formula of grain per person would be same, so I played the first round accordingly.

Turns out, this was quite a ways off the mark. I forgot that Hamurabi started you with only a population of 100, not 500. As a result, 166 people died of starvation. This is going well, isn't it?

Still... could be worse.

At least I had a good amount of grain to work with for next turn. Roughly 7,000 bushels, including stored inventory. The remaining people should be better fed this turn.

I put away enough grain to bring my reserves up to 2,000. I also planted the same amount of grain as last turn, 2,000.

That left ~3,000 bushels leftover to feed the people. This is where I discovered the aforementioned annoyance of having to be pedantically specific with grain totals. I spent several minutes playing around with rough estimates until I got what the game was asking. I settled on 2,000 bushels planted, and leftover was 2,826 bushels for the people. No way are they going hungry this time!

In fact, I was apparently too generous with my food distribution. The steward called it "excessive." Well, I wasn't going to let anyone starve again, was I?!?

I mean... less people around means more food for everyone, right?

It was at this point where a problem occurred in the game. Our harvest for that turn completely failed, and there was quite literally zero new grain.

So I had to work with what I had, which was less than 2,000 grain. Foolishly I left the ~1,000 year-old bushels in storage alone. Probably should've planted those, or allocated more to the people.

At this point, the writing was on the wall. The kingdom was doomed. Even what left I had tried to plant produced nothing again. No more food, nothing to plant. It was over. Time to call the teacher to tell me what I did wrong.

You have doomed the kingdom.

I was told to try again. So that's what I did. Unfortunately, it played out in much the same way as the first time. I did learn some valuable information, though.

• The minimum formula for keeping the people fed is five bushels per person.
• This does not permit population growth, however. For that to start happening, you need to allocate at least six bushels per person.
• However (again), the population growth won't outpace the disaster deaths until you allocate at least seven bushels per person.

Whether it's actually a good idea to grow the population or not is debatable, as that means more hungry mouths to feed. I did only stick to 2,000 bushels to be planted for the previous season, so I considered whether more was required.

I did so, but the yields didn't improve at all. I knew the inevitable famine was coming...

All my planning only delayed the inevitable.

That's if, it is indeed a famine, and not a coding error causing the harvests to drop to zero. They did occur at different times in each playthrough, so maybe not. But having multiple periods of the harvest completely dropping off, regardless of how much grain is planted feels a little suspicious to me.

This is where I chose to end my time playing Sum9rx. Considering the fact that I was unable to beat this (and didn't want to play forever just to test the theory), I will be coming back to this for my first "longplay" video. I plan to do this more regularly going forward as a more "complete" and "professional" playthrough, once I know a game better. This game is the perfect tester for this type of video.

For now, we'll look at my tentative scores. These will be subject to change once I figure out if I can beat the game or not.

Scores

Time Played: 20 minutes (approximate - I played Suilxr in the same session.)

Difficulty: 10* (Impossible)
Of the two rounds I played, I lost both after a certain point where harvests stop. Whether this is part of the game, or poor programming from an early draft resulting in an unwinnable scenario has yet to be determined. So, technically impossible to win as far as I'm aware, but with an asterisk as I'll be playing this again more in-depth at a later time to discern the truth.

Gameplay: 5
Sum9rx's gameplay loop is more advanced than the previous games. It is, however, less realised than Tennis for Two. This is an early draft of The Sumerian Game, after all.

There appears to be some depth in the mechanics, from what I noticed. The volume of grain fed to the population doesn't just determine whether or not the people starve, but also population growth. Yet there's also a balance to be had here. Feed them too little, and there will be no births. Too much food and the game will tell you it was excessive. There's a Goldilocks "just right" sweet spot somewhere in the middle that I didn't find.

What was of more concern was the point in the game where crop harvests completely stopped. This seemed to happen around the same time in both rounds: late year 3 - early year 4. I'm unsure whether this is an intentional decision. I could see it being intentional as a famine scenario, testing your management of stored grain. Two seasons in a row also seems like a death sentence, and could be an forced game ending sequence. At the same time, the game also calls you out for losing. More time playing is required to determine whether this is a design choice, and I'm just missing something, or a programming error. The latter seems most likely to me, based on the early development state of Sum9rx. The former is possible if I'm misunderstanding how to play the game, in particular when the game info speaks of managing "arable" land.

The biggest annoyance I had playing this version was its insistence on every single bushel of grain being allocated somewhere. It forces the player into doing some convoluted sums, which I just used a calculator for since I couldn't be bothered. I know this was meant to be an educational game, but the precision asked for seems excessive. The next version of the game, Suilxr, does fix this, thankfully.

Controls: 5
As a rule for text-based games, I leave the controls at a standard 5, and adjust depending on the intuitiveness and logic of the inputs required. Sum9rx passes the standard test, as all you input is solid integers, but there's nothing else worth noting.

Sound: N/A
The collection has the click-clacking of the typewriter as the text is drawn on screen, but I don't really count that as actual game sound.

Visual: 1
Text-based games all receive a base 1 score. Extra points can be given for exceptional formatting and attempts at ASCII graphics. Sum9rx has neither of these, so a 1 it is.

Story: N/A
One could argue that this game has some form of base, nascent, procedural story driven by the player's actions. It gives you a clear setting and role, and your decisions ultimately affect the outcome of the game. Whether that's sufficient to make a story without a formal plot and characters (yes, there is technically you as the King, and the King's Steward), I'm not so sure.

Functionality: 5*
A tentative score, because I'm yet to find out if the game's bugged or not.

Accessibility: 3
Standard for text-based games. Yes, it's available in an easy-to-get package, but the game itself still requires a lot of reading and arithmetic, which can be bothersome for some.

Fun Factor: 4
It's somewhat more enjoyable than all the E-tier games, but not by much. Also benefits from replayability, as there's always the option to come back, experiment and try to improve your management of Lagash.

Overall: 23/80
A weighted score of 28.75 places Sum9rx at the top of the E tier pile for now. Marginally better than the early proto-games, and I'd sooner return to it (and will) over what's placed under it. This is subject to change, however, based on the results of my Longplay test.

Video:

Up Next: The Sumerian Game, Part 2 [Suilrx]

Let's Play (009) - Spacewar!: One Giant Leap for Video Game Kind

Release Date: 2nd of April, 1962

Platform: PDP-1

Genre: Multidirectional Shooter, Space Combat Simulation

Developer(s): Steve Russell, et al

Publisher(s):

We're now entering the 1960s - and things are starting to get good. The next few games mark some significant leaps both in technology and quality for video games. First up is what's probably the most significant game from this pre-industry era of video games: Spacewar!

As Spacewar! is best experienced with competition, I brought along a friend for this one. It may or may not be the same person I played Tennis for Two with. If it was, I may or may not have been out for revenge. For the sake of convenience, let's call this friend "A" for the time being.

By way of comparison to our last multiplayer game, Tennis for Two, Spacewar! presents quite a significant advance in game design. We're not just hitting a ball back and forth on a two-dimensional plane anymore. No, here we get to freely control spaceships across an entire star field! If you think to yourself "gee, that reminds me a bit of Asteroids," you're not far off.

Now this looks like a video game.

For reference, I'm using Masswerk's browser-based Spacewar! port. This includes several versions of the game, but the primary focus for us in this article is on what's generally considered the "definitive" version of Spacewar!, which is version 3.1 from September, 1962. I'll discuss the other available versions in brief later, as they do have some differences. The foundational game remains the same across all versions, in case you were wondering.

Spacewar! controls in a manner almost identical to the aforementioned Asteroids. The browser port uses the standard WASD/IJKL layout for players 1 and 2 respectively. A/J rotates the ships anti-clockwise, D/L clockwise; S/K engages thrusters, and W/I shoots the missiles/photon torpedoes/whatever you prefer to call them. Additionally, Q/U is used to engage the "hyperspace" feature. This causes the ship to instantly vanish, then reappear at a random place on the field a few seconds later. While great in a pinch, it's highly unstable, leaving the risk of your ship instantly exploding upon exiting hyperspace. Use with caution.

Oh, and the other important thing to mention that sets Spacewar! apart from like games is the small sun set in the middle of the star field. Its strong gravitational pull draws the ships into it from the edges of the screen (and the screen wraps around, too - first time seeing that feature.) One of the most important aspects of mastering Spacewar! is utilising the gravity to slingshot your ship - it's the only real way to build speed or change direction. The Newtonian space physics mean that you can really only suggest to your ship which direction to go in, which usually ends up being towards the sun anyway. Also, if you happen to run into the sun, your ship is not destroyed, but is instead teleported to the edge of the screen. Is this a sun or a wormhole?

I first spent some time with "A" practicing the game, as they hadn't played it before. After about 5-10 minutes, they had a hang on the controls, and we started in earnest. The browser port keeps score at the bottom of the screen, which is great for me - saves time on the video edit.

The rules for scoring are as follows. You blow up your opponent, you get a point. If your opponent blows up from using hyperspace, you get a point. If you blow each other up at the same time, it's a draw, and no points are awarded. If you blow up yourself... well, neither of us suffered such a dishonour, but I assume that your opponent would score a point in that instance. Or you'd lose a point.

I'll say upfront that I think I've redeemed myself from Tennis for Two. We called it after 25 minutes of playing, and I won 15-3. I very much learned the power of the gravity slingshot throughout, as my main goal in each round (I was the "Needle" ship starting in the top right) ended up being to aim my ship to get as close as possible to the sun without clipping it. Wasn't always successful, but it worked enough times. I also managed to get a run where I did three full orbits before slingshotting out!

I was having some fun with the gravity here. 1080 round the sun.

"A" didn't quite get the hang of the slingshot, but was a rather good missile shot. Defensively, they were able to stave off many of my missile barrages with sharp shooting, knocking out my missiles with their own. I also had some very close calls from their offensive barrages. My general preference was also to avoid hyperspace and rather shoot down the attacking missiles.

Some of the rounds went quite long, and through that we discovered that the ships do not have unlimited reserves of fuel or missiles. The game is very generous with these resources, but if you waffle around for long enough, you will run out. If this happens, the game calls a draw and resets for the next round to prevent a soft-lock.

Now, for the other versions. First up, there's the earliest public version of Spacewar!, version 2B from April, 1962. This has what's referred to as "Minskytron Hyperspace." Funky name there, but it's just referring to an animation that occurs when hyperspace is used that's not present in version 3.1. "Minskytron" was the nickname of one of the developers, I recall, and it was his animation. Some of the other graphics are less well-developed, and there's also a manual reset button present.

Hyperspace... more like funkyspace...

4.1f from February 1963 is 3.1, but adds a score graphic that appears after every round.

The first ever internal score counter.

4.2a from May 1963 appears to not be much different from 3.2. It doesn't have the score counter.

4.3, also from May 1963 includes the score graphic, and adds the option for "twin star" mode - a bizarre mode with moving stars, a ship stuck in between two stars and an almost fish-eye lens appearance. The needle ship's graphic is in the centre, and doesn't appear with the ship itself, essentially making it invisible. Very confusing game mode.

Then there's... whatever this abomination is.

Then there's 4.8, which represents the "final" version of Spacewar!. It's essentially the plain 4.1f, but with the score graphic, and no twin star mode. There are a few more versions after this, but none more that are strictly original.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the first "proper" video game, since it's, in my mind, the first that resembles a lot of future games. Remember, the first arcade games, Galaxy Game and Computer Space were ports/heavily inspired by Spacewar!, so this game's fundamentally part of the DNA of video games, which I can't strictly say for anything we've previously covered.

On to the scores.

Scores

Time Played: 30 minutes

Difficulty: 4 (Mild)
A game I would argue is easy to learn, but has enough depth in its mechanics to make it more challenging to master than, say, Tennis for Two.

Gameplay: 8
We've got quite a bit to talk about here, which I'm pleased about. Not only do we have our first shooter, but our first multidirectional shooter, and our first space combat simulation, all rolled into one package. The simulator part comes in with Newtonian physics, making the movement of the ships feel very sluggish in the vacuum of space. However, the gravity of the sun compensates, being a vehicle for some funky tricks to help get your ship moving, both speed-wise and laterally.

The physics also affect the ship's missiles in trajectory and velocity, just to add an extra layer of depth to the gameplay. Not only does one have to wisely lead their missiles into the path of the other ship, but the timing varies based on the current trajectory of your own ship. Add on top of that that missiles can destroy other missiles, allowing one to defend themselves, and it can make for some tense moments, both in close range missile-spamming, and more long range sniping helped by the sun's gravitational pull.

It does keep going, though. You've only got a limited supply of missiles and fuel, and - although quite generous - doesn't mean you can just mindlessly spam your weapons and thrusters. You do have to think about it a bit, but you can still be aggressive with your resources. Probably best to not be aggressive with the hyperspace, though, as that has a tendency to be quite unreliable. It's a neat panic button that's another defensive option, but comes with a massive risk of causing you to immediately lose the round.

Genuinely impressive for 1962. Spacewar! really gives off the feel of a proper, well thought out video game. And it's, in my opinion, the first game to truly do so.

Controls: 7
Controls are a funny thing with Spacewar!. On the surface, the layout of the controls are simple, and easy to pick up, but the feel of controlling your ship is quite sluggish and stiff due to the Newtonian physics - but that is kind of the point. You are meant to use the momentum of the sun's gravity to better position your ship, and that works exceptionally well. As far as the intent of the control design is concerned, it works.

Sound: N/A

Visual: 5
Spacewar! is extremely impressive for 1962 on the graphical end. It combines real-time graphics with smooth animation (it occasionally has a frame rate drop), and impressive effects, with the perpetually animated sun, a generated star field background, afterimages of the ships and missiles, and explosion effects. The leap here is significant, and thus Spacewar! certainly deserves a score a couple of points higher than all other games played so far.

Looking back, I realise I was quite generous with the CRT Amusement Device's visual score. As I definitely think Spacewar! is the more graphically impressive game, this is going to be our first score revision in the reboot era. As I reflect on the knowledge gained from past games, I think that CRTAD falls a bit more in line with Tennis for Two or Pool graphically, so I'm dropping its visual score to 3.

Story: N/A

Functionality: 5
I haven't run into any glitches

Accessibility: 4
I don't quite give Spacewar! perfect marks here, since you need a second person to play properly. Otherwise, it's a highly accessible, simple game that anyone can learn to play quickly and enjoy. No reading, no convoluted controls, just fly and shoot.

Fun Factor: 7
Despite me talking up the gameplay, I do think that the overall speed of the game hinders the enjoyment somewhat. I know that it can be modified, but I base my scores off the developers' default settings. It does come across as a bit sluggish, especially after several rounds of the gameplay loop. Waiting for the ships to get close enough to the sun to start making moves gets a little dull and repetitive after a while. Still, once you get past that bit, things can get more interesting.

Overall: 36/80 (45 | D Tier)
Starting to get some relatively good scores showing up now. Granted, a weighted score of 45 is still a D tier placement, but it's a high D tier at least. And, as I often say, anything E tier or above is at least worth trying. Despite the low placement of Spacewar! in the overall scheme of the tier list, I'd say that this is a game every gamer should play at least one - and do it properly with a mate for the true experience. And expect this to be the highest rated game on the list for a while. I don't think anything'll get near it until we get back around to Mike Mayfield's Star Trek. This, for me, is where video gaming starts in earnest.

Video:

Up Next: The Sumerian Game