The Sumerian Game: The Most Important Video Game You've Never Heard Of (2021)

Hammurabi (which as mentioned in another comment seems to be a later rewrite of this) was very popular in schools in the 1980s. As was "Lemonade Stand", which at first glance seems to have nothing to do with Hammurabi, but the style of the game (player enters a set of numbers reflecting various decisions to be made in the turn) and the computer returns the results (how much wheat harvested, how many cups of lemonade sold) according to its calculations, is very similar.

Later rewritten as Hammurabi. Not to be outdone - the classic Old Testament Text Adventure game: You have 100 goats. You have pottage.

https://old-testament-text-adventure.com/

Ok, enough chit-chat, you want the mobile app, right?

https://www.appbrain.com/app/hammurabi/com.papacut.hammurabi

(also available on Google Play and Apple Store, although Sumerians wouldn't recommend using those companies' services.)

I was introduced to this game, as well as many others, in the excellent book "50 years of text games": https://if50.textories.com/

I remember typing in the David Ahl version from the 1978 edition back in the 80s, on my TRS-80 CoCo. As soon as I started reading the article I realized they were referring to the same game.

I don’t think I realized the game itself was so venerable though!

I played HMRABI on a DEC-10 with a teletype and a modem with an acoustic coupler when I was a kid - literally a game changer since affordable 8-bit computers came out shortly after and we could build rubbish games a bit similar to this. It was always a blast to script - in BASIC - the subservient computer advisor!

BTW I rebuilt the game and made it available for free on Steam. I'm also working on releasing my research with the rebuilding process step by step (so you can all rewrite it in any language you like) and comparing it to King of Sumeria (the FOCAL version by Dyment) and Hamurabi (the BASIC version by Ahl). If you have any questions about the game pls ask. I've been working on this project for 6 years :)

When I was about 6? I used to play this on a decwriter dot matrix terminal connected to the university’s DAX. My mom got free computer time every month that she never used, so I used it to play Sumer, trek, and program stupid stuff in Fortran.

Friend of mine recently wrote up a fun little piece on Hamurabi/strategies

https://www.jeffquast.com/post/hamurabi_bas/

There's a Russian take on that game with more features: http://akasoft.genliga.ru/index_e.php

The web site is also very old-school.

i had the bbc version of that as a kid. it was surprisingly immersive and addictive.

"Long before Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego or The Oregon Trail, there was The Sumerian Game.

Designed in 1964 for classrooms, it was as innovative as it is forgotten."