Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio

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Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio is a video game in which each player becomes the ruler of a fledgling Italian city-state around the year 1400. The goal of the game is to become king; to do so the player must manage their city-state so that it may grow.

[edit] History

The game, by George Blank, first appeared in the December 1978 issue of SoftSide magazine, (Milford, NH), and was published for sale on tape cassette as a computer game by Instant Software (Peterborough, NH) for the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Apple II, and the Commodore PET. It has been translated into many languages and has been ported to the Palm Pilot.

[edit] Gameplay

The game consists of yearly turns; each turn involves the allocation of grain and funds, attempting to grow the colony in both population and size. A ruler must ensure that sufficient grain supplies are available to feed his people; by distributing excess grain, a ruler can encourage more citizens to move into his city-state. However, often famine and rats cause grain reserves to diminish.

Funds can be spent to purchase more land, military forces, or various types of structures. These structures include revenue producing mills and markets as well as prestigious palaces and cathedrals.

Based loosely on the text game Hamurabi, Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio was an early God game. It combined 'guns and butter' economic tradeoffs with graphic development of a kingdom with buildings being constructed and shown on the screen as well as character development, shown as progressive promotions from baron to king.