was one of the first five games from new company Electronic Arts, alongside Axis Assassin, Archon: The Light and the Dark, Worms?, and Hard Hat Mack.

[2][3] It is primarily a turn-based strategy game, but incorporates real-time elements where players compete directly as well as aspects that simulate economics.

The game was ported to the Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System, and IBM PC compatibles (as a self-booting disk).

Players choose the race of their colonist, which has advantages and disadvantages that can be paired to their respective strategies.

To win, players not only compete against each other to amass the largest amount of wealth, but must also cooperate for the survival of the colony.

Central to the game is the acquisition and use of Multiple Use Labor Elements, or M.U.L.E.s, to develop and harvest resources from the player's real estate.

can be configured to harvest Energy, Food, Smithore (from which M.U.L.E.s are constructed), and Crystite (a valuable mineral available only at the "Tournament" level).

If a player is short on Energy, some land plots won't produce any output, while a shortage of Smithore raises the price of M.U.L.E.s and prevents the store from manufacturing new M.U.L.E.s.

Players must deal with periodic random events such as runaway M.U.L.E.s, sunspot activity, theft by space pirates, and meteorites,[9] with potentially destructive and beneficial effects.

[12] The real-time auction element came largely from lead designer Danielle Bunten's Wheeler Dealers.

[12] Additional game features such as claim jumping, loans, and crystite depletion were discarded for adding complexity without enhancing gameplay.

The setting was inspired by Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, wherein galactic colonization is in the style of the American Old West: A few pioneers with drive and primitive tools.

itself is based on the idea of the genetically modified animal in Heinlein's novel and given the appearance of a Star Wars Imperial Walker.

Another Heinlein novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, provided the decision to not have any government or external authority.

[16] Praising the "human engineering" that created the Atari 8-bit version's user interface, the magazine called it "All in all, a superior game".

The magazine praised it as offering "valuable lessons" on economic topics, noting that "Most of them are learned the hard way", and concluded that "The game feels good" and "virtually flawless" because of the human-computer and human-human competition.

unusual in the ease with which it allows multiplayer interaction through a single game computer console.

He wrote that it would have "incredible lasting power, just like the best of the board games" and stated "I learned more about the economics of the marketplace from M.U.L.E.

It ought to make them rich anyway", praised its theme as "most captivating musical come-on I've ever heard", and concluded "If you ask me, M.U.L.E.

as "a cross between Hammurabi, Diplomacy, and an arcade game, with lots of strategic decisions—provided that you're skillful enough with a joystick to implement what you've decided to do".

[22] Another reviewer wrote in the magazine that "it is impossible to adequately describe all the interaction and economically realistic subtleties of M.U.L.E.

and two other EA games, Archon: The Light and the Dark and Worms?, complimentary reviews, writing that "they are original; they do what they set out to do very, very well; they allow the player to take part in the creativity; they do things that only computers can do".

is simply a great game, a tour de force in programming and design, good family entertainment, educational and exciting.

is a unique entertainment experience for the whole family, and it gives us a glimpse of the true promise of the home computer to take us to simulated worlds.

was "an excellent trading game" and "recommended for both novice and skilled", while the third complained that he "found little [excitement] ... nothing to keep me interested".

theme song was included in Wright's later game, Spore, as an Easter egg in the space stage.

An ability in StarCraft II allows Terran players to deploy temporary robotic workers called M.U.L.E.s.