Students in 1960s New York classes managed scarce resources through teletype connections to massive mainframes, deciding how to allocate grain and land in this pioneering strategy simulation. Now rebuilt after six decades, the game challenges you to store grain against disasters, cultivate fields, and grow your population across ten years. Balance food supplies with settlement expansion to avoid extinction.
This city simulation demands tough choices between arable land and population needs each season. Players who enjoy resource management and simulation games will find its core loop of survival planning engaging. A population drop to zero ends the run.
Between 1962 and 1965, some classes of students in New York were involved in an innovative research project. The goal was to create a new teaching method without teachers, using powerful computers, automatic systems such as slide projectors, and the playback of recorded audio lessons.
At the conclusion of the lesson, a 300-baud modem connected a powerful mainframe, costing tens of millions of dollars at the time, to a teletype under the students' control. The teletype printed long texts on continuous paper rolls, forcing the students to make difficult decisions on how to manage scarce resources to feed the population and plant crops for the next season.
It was the Sumerian Game, the ancestor of all strategy, management, and city simulation games.
The Sumerian Game, which was lost for 60 years, has been rebuilt and is now playable. Manage your grain, store it to withstand harsh seasons and natural disasters, grow your population, and expand your settlements. Find the best balance between people and food, or between arable land and cultivated fields.
You have ten years to expand your city and save it from extinction. If the population drops to zero, the lesson is over.
Call the teacher.
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