Zapitalism Deluxe     ã Copyright 2003 LavaMind.   All rights reserved.

Zapitalism is the latest creation from Lavamind, a company created and run entirely by 2 people. This game was also programmed by only 2 people and it is very impressive for such a venture. The programmers asked me to take this into consideration but to be honest this only makes the game even more impressive. So, without further ado, let's get into Zapitalism!

Zapitalism puts you on the world of Mermadan on an island known as, Zapinalia. This island is ruled by Queen Keshi Keshi Gomu who has wisely decided to open the economy to foreign imports. The goal of Zapitalism is to make millions of zables (the local currency) by running an import store which sells various exotic goods to the local consumer population. The first person/chain to reach 100 million zables in profit wins the game. Zapitalism can be played with 1 to 6 human players and even via e-mail! The very generous folks at Lavamind provided me with a free copy of Zapitalism for review.

Zapitalism combines the principals of micro and macroeconomics along with stock trading and more to create a game unique unto itself. If you're not familiar with these business concepts, don't worry! The game comes with a friendly tutorial that starts you on a new game while introducing game concepts. You start off by choosing which store you want to work for as CEO, and there are 6 to choose from. Once you decide, you begin by buying product to put on your store shelves, and there are hundreds to choose from throughout the game. Each product generates a certain demand and is provided in a certain supply for you to buy, graphs on the purchase menu show you these details so that you can make wise decisions. Each game has certain products though that are just always in high demand which you can sell for a lot of money, these products change with each game however to keep things fresh.

Once you've begun pulling in some zables, you can start to explore the other economic centers on Zapinalia. The first one you'll notice is the exploration menu. This menu shows you the island of Zapinalia and the surrounding islands around it, each with its own unique history and story. You can send the owner of your store to visit these places in the hopes of making business deals, investments, finding magical artifacts, getting inside scoops on hot products, meeting foreign nationals, and more. Of course, all of this costs money so you'll have to plan accordingly. Advertising is also a big part of this game, as you would expect with any retail business. You can visit the advertising agency to buy ads which will help boost your sales. At the end of each week the agency creates a pie graph showing how far your ads went in comparison to the other stores.

Natural disasters, theft, and other sorts of bad things happen to stores all the time and so also occur in Zapinalia. To protect yourself from having to pay for such calamities (which can get expensive), you can visit Quagmire Insurance. Here you can buy an insurance policy which will protect you from these disasters in 1 week intervals, or you can use the auto-insurance feature which has the game purchase insurance for you every week. Of course, money makes the world go round and so we need a stock market to represent this! By visiting the local investors island, you can get an option to buy or sell stock on the Zapinalian stock exchange. Each week the stock market's position is plotted on a graph along with other buyer info so that you can make wise investment decisions.

The main sellers of natural resources are households and so you must keep your workers happy, lest they strike! To accomplish this, you can visit the local labor union where you can adjust your workers salaries to keep them happy. Zapitalism has many other features but I don't want to get into all of them here in detail, here are some of the other cool things in the game: Ediface construction - allows you to add onto your store for more shelf space, Ministry of Taxation - you can't even escape taxes in the virtual world, Burch's loan office to finance you in times of financial trouble, and the accounting office which provides you with overhead info, graphs, ranking, turn order, sales, and the Import exchange which gives you exclusive rights to certain product imports.

Zapitalism is one of the most involving, unique, and fun to play strategy games you'll ever play. It will challenge you like no other strategy game ever has before and you'll find yourself glued to your computer for hours and hours trying to get ahead of everyone else!