OK, part III of my coverage of WAR FOR EDADH culminates in the full review of the game at Gameshark.com. Go read it. Support these guys, they really deserve it. Next week I'm actually going to run a "mailbag" feature. Sort of.
Next up, I was just over at Greg Costikyan's video games blog www.playthisthing.com (a pretty great place if you like bizarro indie freeware/shareware/flash games) and noticed an interesting tidbit.
So I recently sold a boardgame to Z-Man Games (publishers, among other things, of 1960: Making of the President and Pandemic). It's entitled Megacorps, and the short description is: Three to six players each control one of the huge multinational corporations that dominate the globe in the mid-21st century, competing for market share and manipulating governments like puppets.
It's somewhat satirical in tone, but also an attempt to meld the Eurogame aesthetic (simple but interesting strategic choices, no more than an hour to play) with a sort of Avalon Hill/SPI/West End boardgame approach (simulationist, and a strong connection between theme and actual gameplay). I'll post a bit more about it as things develop; at present, we're hoping for a Summer 09 publication.
You may remember Costikyan from such games as THE CREATURE THAT ATE SHEBOYGAN, TOON, PARANOIA, the old STAR WARS RPG, the awesome STAR TREK ADVENTURE GAME and DEATHMAZE. This sounds awesome to me and I like his stated approach. It's a fresh theme and I'm hoping it delivers on what it promises. It wasn't that long ago when we were talking about different themes and cutthroat/ruthless business was one that I and a couple of other people brought up as fertile ground for AT development. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Summer '09 my ass, though.
*edit- not sure why credited him with TotAN...must be that WEG thing...