A member of the ZMan Games Demo team will be in on Friday, February 5th at  6:30 pm to give free demos of their latest games, MegaCorps and Campaign Manager.

From the publisher:

MegaCorps is a game of economic domination. You control a MegaCorp — one of the six enormous conglomerates that dominate economic and political life in the mid-21st Century. You control industries, manipulate governments like puppets, and even wage war to open new markets. You win by making more money than the other MegaCorps.

A player chooses industries in countries, hoping for big payouts by having less competition in the industry. But if you own an industry and want to build the same industry in another country you will need to get permission. Of course, you can try to take over the country first then build in there, using the force of countries you own and mercenaries you have or with those you can persuade allies to contribute.

The type of government a country is can also have an effect on what you buy (or what you keep!). Kleptocracies can steal ownership of your industry. Dictatorships can nationalize an industry to shut you out. Democracies can buy you out.

From the publisher:

Middle-earth quest is a game of adventure and conflict set in the time leading up to the creation of the Fellowship. One player will adopt to mantle of Sauron and do his best to spread his evil influence across the lands. Up to three players become heroes and will do their best to foil Sauron’s foul plots, and rally the peoples of Middle-earth to their side.

Set during the time of the Hunt for Gollem before Frodo leaves the Shire, this game promises more of an adventure game experience as opposed to the large army scale of “War of the Ring”.

While we’re big fans of Fantasy Flight’s, “War of the Ring” here at the cafe, we’re the first to admit that the rules and playing time are daunting. Let’s hope that Middle-Earth Quest can deliver the huge scale of Tolkein’s work without the huge rulebook to go with it.

Most interesting to me, are the sections describing the growing popularity of board games. Sales of Settlers of Catan last year were double that of 2007 in the US and Canada. In all, the game as sold over 15 million copies worldwide.

Settlers has become so successful in the US that other German-style games are starting to ride in its wake, even in the midst of the recession. New Mexico entrepreneur Jay Tummelson licenses, translates, and imports German mass-market hits like Carcassonne alongside more offbeat titles like Galaxy Trucker by Czech designer Vlaada Chvatil. His company, Rio Grande Games, sold half a million of these titles in 2008. “We’re growing at 30 to 35 percent a year, compounded,” he says. “In the US, most of my customers this year weren’t my customers two or three years ago. They didn’t know these games existed.”

The article also does a nice job of describing what it is that makes these new style boardgames so intreging.

Settlers is now poised to become the biggest hit in the US since Risk. Along the way, it’s teaching Americans that board games don’t have to be either predictable fluff aimed at kids or competitive, hyperintellectual pastimes for eggheads. Through the complex, artful dance of algorithms and probabilities lurking at its core, Settlers manages to be effortlessly fun, intuitively enjoyable, and still intellectually rewarding, a potent combination that’s changing the American idea of what a board game can be.

Thanks to the BoardgameNews twitter feed for the link.

Here’s a description for their web site:

Innsmouth Horror introduces several new game concepts to the Arkham Horror board game. Among these are the Personal Stories, a new way for each investigator to contribute. These will provide a bit more of the back story for each investigator, including the 16 new investigators found in the Innsmouth Expansion. Another new feature is the Innsmouth Look deck. These cards represent the dangers inherent in staying in the town of Innsmouth any longer than necessary, and can spell the end for an unwary investigator.

In Arkham Horror, players take the part of investigators discovering clues, fighting monsters and trying to close gates to other dimensions before Cthulhu or another of the Ancient Ones awakens. Arkham Horror is a cooperative game, in which players must work together to succeed. There are currently two large expansions and three smaller expansions for this game.

Read the announcement at this link.

One of the most popular games at last year’s Essen show, Space Alert is a cooperative game that can be played by 2 – 5 players.

Here’s Czech Games description of the game:

“Players become crew members of a small spaceship scanning dangerous sectors of galaxy. The missions last approximately 10 minutes (hyperspace jump, sector scan, hyperspace jump back) and the only task the players have is to protect their ship.

And there’s the catch. The game really lasts just 10 minutes. On 2 CDs (or Scenario cards if you don’t have a CD player available) are 10-minute soundtracks that represent central computer announcements about the presence of threats. These vary from space battleships and interceptors to different interstellar monsters and abominations, asteroids or even intruders and malfunctions on the board of the ship. Players have to agree who will take care of which task and coordinate their actions (moving around the ship, firing weapons, distributing energy, using battlebots to deal with intruders, launching guided missiles etc.) in real time to defend the ship. Only a well working team can survive 10 minutes and make the jump back to the safety.”

Thanks to Boardgame News for the link.