Game rules

The game starts in 1985 and by default ends in 2020 (35 rounds); when you set up a game you can pick another final year, from 1986 to 2100. The highest net worth wins: capital minus 1.6 × bank debt. Everyone starts with the same capital, 100 to 200 thousand dollars.

On your turn you do one thing: buy a field, a company or goods (pipes, pumps, tankers), change a price in your company, try sabotage — or pass. After everyone has had a turn come production, sales and the bank; then the next year.

Oil lies at an unknown depth, from 1 to 3,666 m. Each year the drill goes 470–499 m deeper and uses 500 m of pipe from the field's stock. With no pipe, drilling stops. When the drill reaches the oil, it gushes.

Each pump on a field gives 8,000 litres a year until the deposit runs dry. You sell as much as your tankers can carry — 7,000 litres per tanker a year — at that year's price. The prices for every year are known from the start: the surplus waits in the field's store until oil gets dearer.

Drilling companies sell pipes, pump factories sell pumps, tanker companies sell tankers. The owner sets the price; whoever buys there pays the owner, and buying from your own company refunds 20% of the price for every player at the table. Company stocks are never replenished. In one purchase you can buy at most 10 pipe sections, 15 pumps or 6 tankers.

Whoever ends a year with negative capital gets a forced loan of $20,000. Every year the bank takes a $5,000 instalment, but the debt goes down by only $3,000 — the difference is interest. At the end of the game, debt counts ×1.6.

Going into sabotage uses your turn. An agent on a field (F1): first a 50% chance the agent takes the job at all (bad luck costs nothing), then you pay the costs and have a 33% chance — a successful sabotage strips the field of everything and puts it up for sale. Sabotaging a company (F3, F5, F7): you stop the bar and pay the company's price raised or lowered by the percentage you hit; a negative value means the company collapses. When a tanker company collapses, you get the right of first purchase.

On one screen you take turns on a single device, and the game is saved in the browser, so you can stop and come back later. Online, you set up a table and send the others a link or the code. A public table shows up in the list of tables on the start screen; a private one can only be reached by link or code. The computer can take any free seat — on one screen you can even play against it alone.

The computer plays by simple rules and only on public information: it knows neither the depth of the deposits nor future draws. It buys a field it can afford, drills, adds pumps and tankers after a strike, and sells its oil unless this year’s price is well below the average of the years still to come.

“Back to start” keeps your seat — you come back via “Resume game”. “I’m leaving the table” means resigning: your company plays on on autopilot, its turns pass without a move, and its oil sells by itself, as much as the tankers can carry. You can’t return to that seat.

When someone loses the connection and the game has waited on them for over a minute, the others can turn on the autopilot for them. Once they are back, they play on themselves.

You can play in the modern interface or on the C64 screen: 40×25 characters like the original, played from the keyboard (on a phone an on-screen keypad appears). You change the look in the settings, even mid-game.