Reporting in "BYTE" that his children loved it, Jerry Pournelle described "M.U.L.E." as "a cross between Hammurabi, Diplomacy, and an arcade game, with lots of strategic decisions—provided that you're skillful enough with a joystick to implement what you've decided to do". Another reviewer wrote in the magazine that "it is impossible to adequately describe all the interaction and economically realistic subtleties of M.U.L.E.", concluding that it was "an intriguing way to illustrate some of the triumphs and perils of free enterprise". Orson Scott Card in "Compute!" in 1983 gave "M.U.L.E." and two other EA games, "" and "Worms?", complimentary reviews, writing that "they are original; they do what they set out to do very, very well; they allow the player to take part in the creativity; they do things that only computers can do". The magazine listed the game in May 1988 as one of "Our Favorite Games", stating that it "requires a sense of strategy as well as proficiency at joystick maneuvers".