Hammurabi

Note: the current iteration seems broken both online and playing through Gargoyle. I thoughtlessly typed 'help' as my first command and led me into a (bug) cycle I couldn't escape.

Hammurabi wants whole, positive numbers only.

I remember when this came out (the Hugo port, that is), and enjoyed it. It's a different thing than the usual IF, and these days I could see it being a good base for a mini-game or something within a larger work.

There's no story, so it's not interactive fiction or a text adventure, really. At each turn, you can buy land, sell land, plant land, & distribute food. By twiddling these numbers, you try to grow your city. At each turn, some people starve, some move into the city, rats destroy food, & the price of land changes.

It's old. It's cute. It's a reminder of the early programming projects people do (or did) in school in the 1970s or early 1980s.

For what it's worth, I found "hammurabi.c" in the hammurabi.zip file on IF-Archive, compiled that & played that version. Did not play the Hugo version.