A fantasy world full of castles, palaces and forests attracts the evil forces like flies to filth. This was also the case in this long forgotten part of the world at a time when people still led a simple God-fearing life. The underworld has opened its gates and sent an evil demon whose dark aura covers the land like a grey veil and threatens to suffocate life. As they prepare for the end of time, the priestess Grimhild has a vision of the white wizard Taam, who, according to her afflatus, knows salvation. The immediately informed King Rohdhis immediately sends his messengers through the entire Middleworld in search of the sorcerer. The message reaches the next town and there the handsome son Siegurd of an old-established family, who wants to take the search into his own hands. To do so, he wants to enter the king's service and sets off for Siegelhorst to his place of residence.
Last year, LucasArts closed its doors. Instead of spreading even more malice than already out there about them not having produced good games for many years anyway, we would like to go back to the beginning of this development studio under the name of 'Lucasfilm Games'. One of their first two games called itself Rescue on Fractalus.
The first thing you may notice about this title and what probably made you wonder about the other games from this studio, too, is that there seems to be no connection with the 'Lucas' name brand. Everybody would have expected something along the lines of one of the most famous science fiction films of all times, wouldn't you think?
What is a M.U.L.E.? It stands for Multiple Use Labor Element, the robotic backbone of the economy on planet Irata which is about to be colonized by members of different alien races. And, well, from human history, we all know what 'colonisation' implies: Grabbing land before anyone else does, exploiting it for profit and when you've milked it dry, move on – leaving political and economical chaos behind.
OK, so the long-term socio-economic aspects are not really part of this game. It is even completely unknown whether the planet has a native population to start with. It all plays rather like a board game: Each player can acquire one square piece of land per turn which they can then choose to develop to produce one out of four trade goods: food, energy, coal and gems. This is where the eponymous M.U.L.E. comes into play: One of these devices need to be deployed on each square. Otherwise, no produce.
