if i had a william dollars, i would make a game where you play a courier in a pre-industrial setting, carrying parcels to various places on a route. and the game would start with your first day on the job, getting your map and your camping supplies and your first day’s advance pay, and then your boss goes okay let’s get you your mule. and you go to the stables and you meet your mule. and it’s like, okay, standard video game mount, you know how this works. you press a to pet the mule.
the mule does not allow you to pet it. the mule attempts to bite you.
from this point on, every interaction with the mule is obtuse and difficult. if you kick the mule, it will not go faster. in fact, sometimes it will goes slower. if you dismount, it wanders, and you cannot whistle to bring it to you— it may even intentionally walk away from you when you try to climb into the saddle. you have to always be ready to steer it away from the side of the road if it sees some tasty-looking grass or another equine it wants to pick a fight with. any time you get too close to a ledge, the mule stops moving and you have to dismount and slowly walk it around the ledge by the reins while it screams and brays the whole time.
the only bargaining chip you have is the ocassional bribe of a carrot or apple, and even then, there’s like a 10% chance that the mule will decide that this particular carrot sucks and it doesn’t trust it.
this is not a courier simulator. this is not a mule simulator. this is a begging simulator.
eventually, you run into bandits on the road. they are armed with knives and clubs, and you have neither. in fact, you have very little ability to defend yourself, other than trying to wrestle and shove bandits one at a time. you’re well and truly fucked. that is, until the mule oneshots bandit with one kick. you can’t fight. the mule, however, can.
the mule also has keener senses than you and is a naturally suspicious animal. half the time, it’s snorting and stamping at a tree because it moved weird, but sometimes, it’s stamping because it noticed an ambush waiting for you, or a wild dog creeping in the bushes. it also may be your first day on the job, but it is very much not the mule’s time day. your map is ten years out of date, with rivers that have since shifted and landmarks that have since been torn down and rebuilt elsewhere, but the mule has taken this route countless times. whenever it isn’t pulling towards a tasty-looking bush or trying to fight a barn donkey, it finds the path easily, and will even direct you towards safer passages not marked on the map or shortcuts you wouldn’t know about.
eventually, you run into a scarecrow on the side of the road, and the mule flat out refuses to continue until you walk up yourself to show it that it’s only a scarecrow and not a monster. then, haltingly and complaining loudly, it lets you lead it across the scarecrow’s path and away. after that, it doesn’t get any easier to handle, it’s still a complete monster the whole time, but you can pet it.
about halfway through delivering parcels, you run into the other courier in your company, heading the opposite way from you, also riding a mule. but this mule is screaming the whole time, moving somehow even slower than your mule, and keeps trying to turn its head to bite its rider’s boots if given half the chance. you lucked out. they gave you the good mule.
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