TGI Friday!

There has been a 7 year gap since my previous play of Friday. I needed to reread the whole rulebook when I picked up the game again recently. I have written about the game before (in 2012!), so I won't repeat. You can read the write-up here. 

Lately I am playing boardgames mostly online, so it's good to play a physical game once in a while so that I don't lose touch with my roots. Friday is a solo game, so I don't get to sit opposite a physical opponent. However it still feels nice to be shuffling cards and fiddling with game components. Even the chore of packing the game away makes me feel good. Feels human. 

I played two games, and lost both. In the first game I didn't even manage to reach the pirates. I was already eaten by wild animals on the island. I did a little better in the second game. I reached the pirates, and even defeated the first one. Unfortunately the second one got me. 

This was the pirate I lost to. I had too few life points left - not enough to draw more cards to beat the pirate. 

Thailand Board Game Show 2025: Quick Takes Part 2

These are some more games I saw at the Thailand Board Game Show 2025. 

Barbaric is a Thai design, a tactical battle game. 

It has a ton of pretty miniatures.

Those at the centre are the monsters. Those near the edges are playable characters. You goal is to go to the centre to take a treasure and then bring it out to the edge. You don't necessarily have to defeat the monsters. You don't even need to be first to grab the treasure. If someone takes it and then drops it due to being smacked by a monster. You can conveniently swoop in to pick it up and bring it to the edge yourself to win. 

You get to choose a combination of character and mount. Every character and every mount is different. 

This is another character / mount combination.

This is a player board, with character info on the left, and mount on the right

This is actually made of two pieces. This allows you to make different combinations.

The character board of the boss monster

Many Thai games have impressive production quality. This is certainly international standard. One thing I learned this trip is that like Malaysia, Kickstarter does not support Thailand either. We are both blacklisted. For Thai designers to go Kickstarter, they need to partner with someone from another country. Probably most often Singapore. 

This is a game about pottery, and it is still at the prototype stage. This is designed by one of my assistants from last year, Tree (Surakit Joradol). He designed this for the pottery school where he works. This cover certainly caught my attention. 

This is a worker placement and resource collection game. When you compete for turn order, the earlier you want to go, the more you will have to pay to buy stuff. 

This part is contract fulfilment. There are different types of pottery you can make. When you complete certain sets, you will score bonus points. 

Viking See-Saw is a dexterity game from Reiner Knizia. 

Everyone starts with the same number of pieces. These are goods you need to load onto the ship. The ship starts with some wooden blocks. On your turn, you must place one of your pieces onto the higher half of the ship. 

If you manage to place your piece without causing the ship to tilt the other way, you're safe. If the ship tilts, you will be penalised. You must take one wooden piece from the ship. If goods fall off when you attempt to add a piece, you have to take them all, in addition to taking one wooden piece. 

The game ends when all the wooden blocks on the ship have been taken. The player with the fewest pieces remaining wins. Those wooden blocks count too. At first I thought that blue hair band was one of the pieces to be placed too. It was just to stop the ball from rolling all over the place. 

Little Dot Garden has the kind of cover which is love at first sight. 

You have your own player board and you will plant flowers on it. You claim tiles from the centre of the table to place on your player board. These tiles have flowers in four different types. At the end of the game, for each flower type you check which connected region on your board is the largest. You will score each of these largest regions. The value of each flower type increases throughout the game depending on player actions. So this is a market value manipulation game. You collect flowers and increase their values at the same time. You want to collect the most valuable flowers. You also want to increase the value of the flower type you have the most of.

These lovely ladybirds are the currency in the game. When you place a tile, if you need to cover an object, you must pay a ladybird. After I listened to the rules explanation, the game did not excite me as much. It was Jon who was accompanying me who found it intriguing. I told him - buy buy buy! Too bad the game wasn't available yet. It was still in pre-order stage. 

Tanbo is a brain-burning abstract game from Japan. It is an award winner. 

This is a 2-player game. You have your own set of components. During setup you create five rice fields divided by the dikes. Each field starts with two snakes. You have one farmer pawn. On your turn, you pick up all the pieces in the field where the farmer is and then redistribute them one by one in clockwise order from the next field onwards. In other words, congkak / mancala style. Once this is done, you examine the field where the farmer is now located, and perform actions according to the number of snakes and rice. 

This reference sheet lists all possible situations at a field and what you must do.

The game was a little hard to grasp initially. I think it was due to the way it was taught to us. Before being explained the five different scenarios, I had to start playing. The goal of the game is to harvest rice of a total value of 25. The rice pieces have values ranging from 3 to 5. Whenever you get to grow rice in your play area, you draw pieces randomly from a bag.

In this game snakes are not pests. They help with the rice growing. When you have more snakes than rice, you get to add rice pieces until they equal the number of snakes. When you have more rice than snakes, you get to harvest the difference. There are several other possible situations and required actions. You must plan your moves to maximise the opportunities for harvesting rice. 

This is a perfect information abstract game, and both players start with the exact same setup. There is no randomness other than the value of rice you draw from the bag. This is mostly a solo game, since you don't interact with your opponent. 

Barenpark

Barenpark is a polyomino tile placement game, or let's just call this a Tetris game. That's probably easier to understand. It is a family strategy game about building your own bear park. Everyone builds his own, and there are several ways you score points. The game ends when one player completes his park.

You start the game with one 4x4 spaces board. Ultimately your park should have four such boards. To complete you park you must fill every single space on all four boards. At game start you get to pick one basic tile to be placed on your first board. Once the game starts, you don't pick any tile you want from the supply. To claim a new tile, you need to cover a specific icon on your board with your current tile. Only when you are completely stuck will you be allowed to take a basic tile of your choice for free. That's not a situation you want to get into because you will waste a turn. 

These are the various tiles and components at the centre of the table. The tiles are divided into three classes. The four types on the left are the basic tiles. They have no point value. The next four types are the mid level tiles. There are multiple tiles in each of the four types, but their point values differ. When you take a tile from a stack, you always take the highest valued tile remaining. The other types are the top class tiles. There is only one tile in each type, and their values are the highest. 

When you add a tile to your board, it must touch an existing tile. The icon or icons you cover with the tile being placed determines which class of tiles you can pick from the supply next. What this means is you have to plan carefully how to expand your park. You need to think about what tile you need next and what icon you need to cover to get that tile. You can take a tile of a lower class than you are allowed to claim, but usually that's wasteful. 

When your tile covers the icon showing a group of workers, you must draw a new board to add to your park area. You will expand your park area three times, so your park will eventually consist of four boards. On every board there is a hole. You can't cover that. You need to cover every other space on the board. Once you do that, you will claim a bear statue from the supply to finally cover that hole. This is how a board is completed. Bear statues have point values. Similar to other aspects of the game, the earlier you claim a statue, the more points you will score. 

These are missions. The first type on the left says if you have three polar bear habitat tiles in your park, you get to claim a mission card. The mission cards work the same way as other items in the game. The earlier you claim, the more points it is worth. 

You don't necessarily have to arrange your four boards in a 2x2 configuration. You can make a long rectangle, or a T shape, or even an L shape. 

This is a soothing game to play. Almost therapeutic. It works well as a family game. Even though you compete to grab the higher valued tiles, and all the highest valued tiles are first come first served, you don't attack or destroy. You don't do nasty stuff to your competitors. You can safely get into flow and focus on your own park. It's a peaceful life. Tiles are aplenty. It is only this year that I feel there are so many polyomino games. I have never been specifically a fan of these games so I don't seek them out. This year I just happened to have played many of them. I used to associate polyomino games with Uwe Rosenberg, but there are actually many other popular polyomino games by other designers. These games do offer a spatial element which other games don't have. 

I had originally expected Barenpark to be a little stressful because with every tile you place you need to make sure you can cover the right icon to get your next tile. When actually playing the game, I found that this was not as hard as I thought. There are many icons on the boards, and sometimes you can cover more than one, getting yourself two or more tiles. It is not uncommon to have three or four tiles in hand because of this, which means you can even miss covering any icon for a few consecutive turns and still have tiles available. I had the luxury to claim tiles not because I intended to place them, but for the sake of denying others. So much for friendly family game. 

Barenpark will work well as a gateway game. It is a pleasant game and it is easy to understand. 

I realise I have played quite a few games by Phil Walker-Harding and they are all enjoyable. They are all decent family games, like Imhotep and My Shelfie. These are all new to me this year. 

This was my completed bear park. I had three enclosures each for polar bears, koala bears as well as panda bears. I must say I was quite pleased with myself for achieving this - all three missions completed. 

This was another game and another set of missions. These three could only be fulfilled using the basic tiles. The first one required six basic tiles all connected. The second one required three 1x3 tiles lined up in a straight line. The third one required three L shaped river tiles to be connected end to end to form a long river. 

I had a very different park in this other game. 

Thailand Board Game Show 2025: My Trip

The Thailand Board Game Show was held at Union Mall in Bangkok 7-9 Nov 2025. This time there were six publishers from Malaysia participating. Chee Kong, Jia Xian (Meja Belakang) and I (Cili Padi Games) were there last year. It was the first time for Jon (nPips Games), Buddhima (Specky Studio) and Rizal (1+1 Studio). The show has expanded this year. Last year it took up two areas at the mall. This year there were three areas. 

From left: me, Chee Kong, Buddhima and Jon. This was taken at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. We took the same flight to Bangkok, arriving Thursday afternoon. 

This year I took Malaysia Airlines, so we landed at the bigger main airport of Bangkok (Suvarnabhumi). This was further away from where we stayed and where the show was. The airport was super busy. Going through customs, collecting our luggage and waiting for our Grab car took about two hours! Jia Xian flew in from Penang and he took Air Asia. He landed at the smaller airport Don Mueang which was less busy and also much nearer to where we stayed. I had booked Malaysia Airlines because the flight times were more suitable. 

We stayed at the same hotel - TD Bangkok. Well, more a rest house than a hotel. It's very near Union Mall so it is convenient. Food is available nearby too. And two 7-Eleven's. 

We were assigned the same area as last year. Last year there were five publishers, and this year six. The area could fit six tables. Last year we had one table dedicated to displaying and selling all our games, while the other five were for demoing. This year we had a different arrangement. No common table or centralised selling. There were six of us so we handled our sales individually. Last year I forgot to bring my standing banner, but this year I remembered. Bringing this banner was a little troublesome. It had to be checked in as oversized baggage, which meant a separate check-in counter and also a separate collection counter upon arrival. The banner after being packed up isn't that big. It's just slightly longer than a large suitcase. 

My new game this year was Pinocchio. However this was not the first time Pinocchio was available in Thailand. In August Choon Ean helped to bring some copies of Pinocchio to the Bangkok International Game Festival. 

This chilli on my head is part of my uniform now. I bought this on Shopee. 

When I saw the Thai version of Samurai I knew I had to take a photo to show to Allen, to ask him whether he wanted a copy. He's a big fan of the game and owns multiple copies. 

I contacted Chris who was my assistant last year to ask whether he could help me this year too. This year he helped me for all three days of the show. 

Yoyo from Swan Panasia, Taiwan was there too this year. I showed him Pinocchio. Several other Malaysian designers also took the opportunity to show him their games. Chee Kong had shown Yoyo Zodiac Go last year, and as a result Yoyo signed the game. Now they are working on publishing a version for Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. 

An art piece at the underground station

Rizal showed Duo Quest to Yoyo. Buddhima, Yoyo and I played it as a three-player game. This was my first time playing the game. I knew the general concept, because Rizal and I have been to several game events together, but this was the first time I actually played the game. Now I understand even better why it is popular and why it elicits so much laughter. 

Union Mall is an old mall, but in recent years efforts were made to reinvigorate it and to attract visitors. The crowd was great at the show. On Saturday and Sunday morning, when the doors opened, there was an eager crowd rushing in to a TCG booth to buy a limited edition booster pack. It was mad! People literally running to the booth. This is a local TCG. It is amazing how they managed to create such a strong following. 

This is another game which received much attention. It is about flirting at the bar. The designer is a university student. He had cosplayers at his booth. Unfortunately he did not manage to manufacture the game in time for the show. Otherwise he would have made a lot of sales. He could only take pre-orders. His business cards came in 10 different designs, featuring 10 characters from the game. When people asked for a business card, he did not let them choose. He gave one randomly. There were people asking him for business cards so that they could collect all 10 characters. That's a great marketing tactic - creating scarcity.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in play

My customers purchased Pinocchio

Chris is animated when he explains games

I am not a coffee person. Right across the street from our rest house there is a coffee stall. All my friends who had coffee there said it was fantastic. I couldn't resist trying it, and ordered a cappuccino. It was indeed excellent. A wonderful blend of bitterness and sweetness, with an amazing aroma. I ordered another the next day. 

This is the coffee stall

The Meja Belakang booth gave out coasters. These cats are from their upcoming game, a children's game about searching a picture for cats and counting them. 

When we arrived on Sunday morning, all of us found a gift bag at our booths, courtesy of the BGN team. So thoughtful of them! 

I asked Milk of BGN (organising chairperson of the show) to help take a look at my game in development Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. I wanted to ask her feedback on whether this would work in the Thai market, and what would it take it make it work. I was surprised to learn that the Thai are familiar with the history and the characters from the Three Kingdoms era. There is a Thai version of Killers of the Three Kingdoms (三国杀) called War of the Three Kingdoms. All these names like Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Sun Quan and Zhuge Liang have Thai pronunciations, and the pronunciations are somewhat similar to Cantonese. I learned something new this trip! 

I told Milk we must take a photo together, because we both had things growing from our heads - chilli and sprouts. Jia Xian held up that box behind Milk so that it was easier to see the sprouts.

I took the opportunity to show Rebels of the Three Kingdoms to several other people. Buddhima and I have agreed to publish this game under Specky Studio. Specky Studio focuses on the Malaysian market. So I try to pitch the game to publishers outside of Malaysia. I showed the game to Collin, a boardgame scout who connects designers and publishers. He is an American who now lives in Japan. I showed the game to Yoyo as well, and Note from Wisebox / Board Game Academy (Thailand). They gave me great advice and also shared with me what they know about the markets they are familiar with. These are valuable insights. 

This sushi place is super popular. Whenever I walked past it there was always a crowd waiting for their numbers. 

Dr Nipat and I are in the same business - leadership training. I got to know him through social media, and this was the first time we met in person. He too uses boardgames in training. We exchanged games. 

Prior to the show I had not known about Take Time. I discovered it during the show. It is stunningly beautiful. It is a cooperative abstract game. Paul (right) is the Thai translator for the game. He patiently explained to me many of the games at the booth. Jon (middle) was the assist in this sale. When I hesitated about buying, he kept telling me to just buy it. Well, I do the same to him so I guess that's fair. 

My assistant Chris (Apiwat Toey Jaturongparatipat). The term "assistant" is not exactly accurate. He didn't assist me. He was doing all the work himself. I don't speak Thai, so it was him demoing and teaching the games over the three days. Only once in a while when a customer needed an explanation in English I would take over. 

I did contribute some

At the end of the show, we asked Milk (BGN) to help us safekeep our remaining stock and to help us sell in Thailand. If you are in Thailand and want to buy any of our games, you can reach out to BGN. 

We the Malaysian team did a post mortem after the event, reviewing what went well, what could be better, what we gained, and what we learned. Before we were done the mall had to close down. So we bid farewell with the many friends we met, and returned to the rest house to continue. 

The guy with the red bag is Buddhima's customer. This photo was taken after the event had ended. This customer came earlier in the day, and told Buddhima that he would come back later to buy the games. However by 9pm he still had not shown up. All of us thought he wouldn't be returning. Still, Buddhima set aside several games for this customer. It was around 10pm that he came back to look for us. We were all surprised and welcomed him enthusiastically. He was probably a little shocked by the Malaysian hospitality. 

The Malaysian team and the organisers - husband-and-wife team Wat (5th) and Milk (4th). 

Milk brought us out to dinner - the visitors from overseas. Nationalities represented here include Malaysia, Thailand, USA, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Indonesia. I cheat a little. Yoyo is a German living in Taiwan. Simon is a German living in Indonesia. Collin is an American living in Japan. 

Boardgame influencers are huge in Thailand. We met a few this trip. Their numbers of followers and views are shocking. They are fast too. F1RST P1ayer played Ali Baba on Saturday, and that evening they released a post. 

All of us from Malaysia stayed at the same rest house. This was the last photo we took with all six of us together, after we completed our post mortem. It was almost midnight on Sunday. We were all exhausted. Rizal had to go to the airport in about three hours. He had a 6am flight to catch, because he had an appointment at noon the next day. The rest of us flew back to Malaysia on three other different flights. 

The various Thai snacks from BGN

This trip to the Thailand Board Game Show felt like a smaller version of visiting Essen. I had the opportunity to explore many new games. Most of the time I asked for a quick rundown of the game, and I did not sit down to play the full game. I did not explicitly plan to buy games, but I ended up buying some anyway - Take Time and Cat Between Us. Where & Which was a gift from Dr Nipat. 

This trip made me reflect on several things. When I observe and learn about the boardgame industry in Thailand, I compare it to Malaysia. What can Malaysian boardgame businesses learn from Thai businesses? Will what works in Thailand work in Malaysia? How should the Malaysian boardgame industry grow? I also reflect on my own journey as a game designer and indie publisher. Am I using the right business model? What do I want to achieve? What is the long-term strategy? There is much to think about. 

One thing I appreciate from this trip is being able to chat, brainstorm and exchange ideas with my friends. In the past few months I have been feeling demotivated about running my little game design studio and publishing house. Now I have found new inspiration and passion to continue working on designing games. That's the power of being part of a supportive community. We encourage and support one another. I am keen to work on the next Cili Padi Games title for 2026. I don't know yet what it is going to be. I have several game design ideas which are still being developed. They have been left hanging for some time. It's time to get going again!