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.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| 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?!?
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| 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.
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| 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...
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| 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]