Boardgaming in photos: about Malaysia and holidays

Once in a while I do a gathering with Ruby, Edwin and Benz, my ex-colleagues. This time Xiaozhu had a last-minute matter to attend to and couldn't join us. I asked them to help me playtest Malaysian Holidays. They are all big fans of Japan, so when the Japan destination card came out, everyone was keen to score it. 

I initiated a small collaboration project with fellow designers and publishers in Malaysia, to help one another promote and sell games. I place some of my games with them, and they place some of theirs with me. Whenever I attend any boardgame related event or gathering, or even on some private occasions, I bring a bag of local-published games to sell. Doing boardgame publishing in Malaysia is difficult. You wouldn't be doing it if not for a great passion for boardgames. The market in Malaysia is tiny. It is underdeveloped. There are Malaysian gamers. Most play international games and not many pay attention to local games. I was one such gamer myself. Local designers and publishers need to work together to grow the local market. 

A gamer from Belarus visited Malaysia, and bought a copy of Dancing Queen. I'm always excited to learn that Dancing Queen has reached yet another country. Even I have not been to Belarus. 

Those few days after the designer diary of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was released on BoardGameGeek, I received several international orders. They kept me busy packing games and making post office runs. I'm happy to be able to sell my games internationally. The effects of publishing this designer diary remind me that I need to do a better job at marketing my games. A big part of doing publishing well is marketing, and I know it is one of my weaknesses. Also it is not exactly what I enjoy doing. Just that I know I should be doing it. I still hope to find good publishers for my games. I would prefer to let people with the skills and the reach to do it than to do it myself. I enjoy doing the game design and development part. 

One first time experience for me was selling to a gamer from Saudi Arabia. Being able to sell Ali Baba, an Arabian themed game, to a buyer from Saudi Arabia is a wonderful feeling. 

I had the joy of playing again No Thanks. This is a game from 2004, which was roughly when I got into the hobby. I remember first playing it using cards from Category 5 (6 Nimmt). I also remember playing a copy at Witch House in Taiwan. For many years I never properly owned this game. Only last year I bought the latest version. Now it comes with expansions. I have not yet played the expansions. I find even the base game great fun. We did a 6 player game.

In this game you want to minimise taking cards, because the numbers on the cards are all negative points. Every round a card is revealed and when your turn comes, you either take it or pay money to a pool. Money is positive points. The pool will grow. When you take a card, you take the money in the pool too. So at some point the pool will be attractive enough for people to be willing to take the card. Sometimes someone will run out of money and will be forced to take the card. The important twist in the game is when you have consecutive numbers, only the lowest number in the sequence counts. If you have the 24, you do not fear the 25. The 25 card does not affect you, but it's minus 25 points to others. You will be happy to let others contribute a ton of money to the pool before you take the card. It's a simple game, but very clever. 

This is a game design I am working on - Sabah Honeymoon. This is my entry for a game design competition run by an organisation based in Singapore which promotes trade and tourism in Sabah. I come from Sabah, so I was excited to learn about a competition which is about my home state. This time I decided I needed to make a game with a board. I feel to make a game about tourism, having a map makes the game more relatable. 

Buddhima and Jon helped me playtest Sabah Honeymoon and gave me several good suggestions. 

My old friends Ah Chung and Moh Yen helped me playtest Malaysian Holidays. I have two works in progress related to holidays. I have decided that Malaysian Holidays will proceed to publication. I hope this can be released in 2025 too. However this publishing project may be a little different from my previous games. Hopefully it works out. 

Malaysia is a country with many public holidays. I wanted to make a game which is relatable for Malaysians, and I thought this topic of public holidays would be great. On social media, every year near the end of the year there will be people doing analyses about the public holidays of the following year. They list public holidays which fall on Mondays and Fridays, because these mean long weekends. They also list public holidays which fall on Tuesdays and Thursday, because by taking a one-day annual leave (on Mondays or Fridays) you can have a four-day stretch of holidays. You can plan traveling during these long weekends. This kind of thinking is common among Malaysians. The game aims to convey the joy of public holidays. Photo courtesy of Choon Ean. 

Dancing Queen on Dice Tower

The Dice Tower is the number 1 English-language boardgame media channel. My game Dancing Queen just turned up on their show, reviewed by Chris. This is an exciting moment for me, seeing my game on The Dice Tower. It wasn't a standalone review video. Dancing Queen was reviewed together with several other card games. 

The segment for Dancing Queen was short. When I watched it, my heart sank a little. The video says that you play your objective card face-up, and you play other cards face-down to try to fulfil your objective. The correct way to play is you play your objective card (called your lead dancer) face-down. A key point in Dancing Queen is you don't know what your opponent is trying to achieve, and you must observe and guess. This is how bluffing and feints come into play. If the lead dancer were face-up, the game wouldn't work. No wonder Chris didn't like the game.  

I hurriedly left a comment below the video to clarify. Chris responded quickly. It turned out that he did play the game correctly, just that he explained the game incorrectly in the video. The shot was taken at the end of a round, and that was why the lead dancers were face-up. 

I imagine The Dice Tower must be receiving tons of review copies of games. I'm happy that Dancing Queen stood out enough that they made time to introduce it. It's disappointing that it didn't click with them, but I need to learn to accept that not everyone will enjoy my games. I always appreciate it when people take time to try my games and share what they think. That is always precious and I always learn something. Sometimes when I send out review copies, the reviewer never mentions my games. I do ask beforehand whether they are interested, and I only send review copies if they are. Still, there are some whom I don't hear from anymore. I guess that's part of life being an indie publisher. I need to continue to work on marketing my games and getting exposure for them. 

The international edition of Dancing Queen will be released by Matagot in June. This will be an important opportunity for me to observe how an established international publisher does marketing and promotion. Got to keep learning.  

Dancing Queen segment on The Dice Tower here. 

Zenith

The Game

Zenith is a two-player (or two-teams-of-two) card game about exerting influence across the solar system. It will be released mid 2025, and it is already available on www.BoardGameArena.com. In addition to Earth, four other planets in the solar system are now colonised and populated. Your goal is to exert enough influence to form an interplanetary government. 

The main board shows five tracks representing the players’ influence. These are tugs of war.  You want to pull the tokens to your side of the board and your opponent tries to do the same to his side. When a token reaches your edge of the board, you claim that token. A new token is then placed at the middle of the track, and you start competing again for this new one. To win the game, you need to collect three tokens of the same colour, or four of different colours, or any five tokens.

On your turn, you just play a card and then refill your hand. A card can be used in three different ways. The basic usage is to pull a token towards you. Most cards have secondary effects, so you can gain something else in addition to pulling the token. Some effects are conditional so you want to play the card only when the condition is met, so that you gain more. The second way to use a card is to play it to advance yourself on a tech track. You gain some benefit, and this benefit is cumulative. When you advance further, you also claim benefits of all previous steps. The third way of using a card is to just exchange it for some resources, depending on the card type. 

Cards come in five different colours, one each for the five planets. The colour determines which planet you can influence. Cards also come in three types - humans, robots and animods. The type determines which tech track you can advance on and also what resource you can exchange the card for.

Cards you play to your side of the board stay there. This is an important part of the game. The cards you have in play give you a discount for the next card you play to the same planet. There are card powers which manipulate these played cards, e.g. discarding your opponent's cards, getting some free cards, and even stealing your opponent's cards. 

The Play

Zenith plays smoothly. There are many cards with many different powers and it is fun to see what you can do with your cards. You have two currencies to manage. Money is needed to pay for card plays to exert influence. Another premium currency zenithium is needed to advance on the tech tracks. Both currencies are tight and need to be managed carefully. There are five different colours and three card types, so you don’t always get what you need. That is an interesting challenge to manage.

One interesting mechanism is the leadership token. Some actions allow you to claim the leadership token, and when you control it, you can take take an action to upgrade it. The leadership token increases your hand size to five or six, depending on whether it is upgraded. This gives you more flexibility. There is only one leadership token in the game so you are fighting with your opponent over it.

There is some engine building in the tech track aspect of the game. If you invest effort in it, in the late game, the tech actions are very powerful. The tech tracks are not static. They can vary from game to game, so there is variability.

This is a resource management game. There is some luck in what cards you draw, and you do your best with what you get. It is an everchanging puzzle to figure out. At the same time you must watch your opponent and which planets he is aiming for. Although this is a game about maximising efficiency, sometimes you must sacrifice efficiency to prevent your opponent from sneaking in a early win. 

Hand size is 6 when you control an upgraded leadership token, but once your opponent steals it away, you go back to 4. 

The Thoughts

Zenith is a well polished mid-weight strategy game. Don't let the cartoonish box cover fool you. This is not a simplistic or light game. It has plenty of tactics to keep the gamer in you engaged. 

ito

The Game

Ito is a party game from Japan and supports up to 10 players. It's a huge success in Japan, having sold more than 350,000 copies. I decided to buy it and give it a try when I saw this number on the box. 

This is a pure card game. It has cards numbered 1 to 100, and also many topic cards. I'll describe how the game works beginning with this topic card below. 

Every round every player draws a number card. This is a cooperative game. Your common goal is to arrange your number cards in ascending order. You cannot tell what number you have or show your card. You must rely on the topic to convey how big or small your number is. Using the topic card above as an example, if your number is a small one, you want to say an imaginary world which you don't want to visit. If you get a big number, you want to say a world you are keen to visit. So the 1 to 100 is a measure between two extremes related to the topic. After everyone states an imaginary world, you arrange your cards face-down in a row, from small to large. You then reveal the cards to see whether you have made a correct arrangement. 

In a four-player game this is what the row of cards looks like. The coloured cards tucked below are just to indicate who has contributed which card. If you reveal the cards and they are in the correct order, you win. Otherwise, you lose. The rulebook doesn't say how many rounds you need to play. You can even play just one round. You play for as long as you wish. 

Failure

Success

The Play

The four-player game feels a little easy. I think the game will be more interesting and challenging with more players. The difficulty is also determined by the kind of cards you get. Even with four players, if one player gets 55 and another 56, it's going to be very hard to get these two right. You need a bit of luck. 

There are many topics to talk about. You need to think about not just any item. It has to be an item which reflects the number you have. This is not always easy to do. The game generates conversation on a wide range of topics. It's a good ice-breaker. I can use this for my training work. It lets you understand how your friends think. When you lose a round, there can be even more discussion because it means people value and see things differently. You find both similarities and differences among your friends.   

The Thoughts

This feels more like a group activity than a competitive game. Yes you can call it a cooperative game. It feels more like a group problem solving exercise. It is simple and easy for non gamers to get into. Perhaps it is not that important whether you want to call this a boardgame or a group activity. What's important is the group enjoys it. 

Schrage Vogel / Odd World / Weird Bird

The Play

Schrage Vogel is German for "weird bird". This game comes in a tiny tin box which looks like it's for mints. The game was first released in 2015, and it was called Odd World then. That edition featured different planets. I much prefer this newer artwork. 

This is a pure card game. Every card is a bird. There are 9 types, and they are numbered 1 to 9. The card backs are different, as you can see from the photo above. There are always two different birds on the card back. This tells you that the bird on the front is one of them. 

During the game you collect birds (cards). Every bird is worth one point. However for any bird type where the number of birds you have is an even number, these birds score nothing. This is a key point. 

During setup, everyone draws 3 cards. You reveal two of them, so that everyone knows what you have so far. The third is kept secret. Your opponents can see the card back so they know the two possibilities, but they don't know exactly which bird it is. There are two draw decks at the centre of the table. On your turn you have to decide two things - which deck to draw from (remember you can see the card back), and who to give the card to - yourself or another player. You must decide before looking at the front of the card. Every card is, by default, one point, so most of the time you want it for yourself. However if this might be the 2nd, 4th, 6th etc of a bird type you already have, maybe you want to give it to someone else. Or maybe this is going to hurt someone else and you want to give it to him even if it can benefit you. 

The game ends when one player has all 9 types of birds, and you compare points to see who wins. In case of a tie, whoever has more bird types wins. This means the person who collects all 9 types has an advantage. If there is still a tie, you check who has the most number of birds in a single type. 

The Play

The game takes about 10 minutes to play, so to gamers this is a filler. The early game seems overly simple. You'll mostly be taking cards for yourself. Only when you approach mid game then you realise there's more than meets the eye. If both the birds on a card back will cause you to have an even number of that bird type, then this is a card that will certainly hurt you. You probably want to give it to someone else, or take the other card. However, the pain might be temporary. Yes, that bird type is worth nothing now, but if you can get another one later, you're back in business! In the mid game, you can probably still gamble. In the late game, things become different again. You don't know your opponents' face-down bird, so you don't know exactly when the game will end. If you still have many bird types where the count is an even number, you'll be biting your nails. Near end game when you screw over an opponent, it will likely be hard for him to recover. So the temptation to sabotage others becomes bigger. It becomes almost irresistible when either bird on the back of a card will hurt an opponent. There is no risk of unintentionally giving him one point. 

I am making the game sound more complicated than it is. This really is a simple game, and even non gamers will quickly grasp these tactics. 

That face-down card at the bottom is my secret bird. It might be a 2, it might be a 6. If it is a 6, then I have two birds which are 6's, and I will score nothing for this bird type. Sometimes you can guess your opponents' secret birds through their actions. If I keep taking cards which are possibly 6's, my opponents will know my secret card is a 6. 

The Thoughts

I admire the mechanism in Schrage Vogel. Simple and clever. Because it's simple, this is a game that will work with non-gamers and children. 

Potato Tomato

The Game

Potato Tomato is a party game from Thailand. This is a social deduction game. You are either in Team Potato or Team Tomato. Your aim is to kill one member of the other team, after which your team wins. At the start of the game, you know which team you are on, but you don't know who else are on your team. The game is a process of working out who is friend and who is foe, and then killing off one foe in order to win. There's a twist - players may switch teams during the course of the game. 

You get five identity cards at the start of the game. An identity card is either potato or tomato. Depending on which ones you have more of, you belong to that team. During the game you might swap cards with others, and this is how you might switch to the other team. When you attack another player, you give fire tokens to your target. Anyone who accumulates 5 fire is forced to reveal one identity card. You lose once all five of your cards are revealed, and your team loses with you. 

On your turn, you draw cards from a small action deck. You keep drawing cards one by one for as long as you like. The cards come in four types - blue, green, blue + green, and grey. Every card specifies an action you can perform, so you want to draw more cards. However if you get to three green or three blue cards, you lose your actions and you are penalised instead. So this is push-your-luck. 

There are many types of actions. There are specific rules about how many cards of each colour should be in the action deck. The game gives you more cards than you need, allowing you to choose the mix of actions you want to play with. This action card above lets you swap one of your identity cards with another player. Note that any such swapping is limited to identity cards which are still face-down. Cards which have been revealed are locked. 

Players will attack one another and reveal one another's identity cards, until one person gets all cards exposed and loses together with his team. The game is a process if identifying your teammates then working together to defeat the other team. In case things go south, you may try to betray your team. 

The Play

This is a game with a lot of attacking. Randomly at first, maybe. Or maybe some people do have personal grudges. As you gradually work out who's on which team, your attacking will be more deliberate. I did a five player game. Being the guy who brings and teaches games comes with its occupational hazards. I'm often the first to get targeted in games like this. I told them to hold their horses because some of them might be on the same team as me. My initial cards were 3 potato and 2 tomato, so I was Team Potato. However it wasn't that hard for me to switch to Team Tomato. I only needed to swap one potato card with a tomato card. I was first to have cards exposed, but it didn't necessary mean they could be sure of my identity quickly. You need to reveal three cards of the same team to be sure of a player's identity. Even when you reveal four cards of the same person, they might be 2x potato and 2x tomato, and you still can't be sure. Also the player might still swap his last card. I find this rather clever. 

In our game, Alex and Danny were quick to work out that they were both in Team Tomato. I appeared to be on Team Potato from the cards initially revealed, so they came after me with enthusiasm. Seet Han was initially in Team Potato. He didn't come to my rescue, and instead switched teams and started attacking me too. Eventually Ong was my only ally. Team Potato had three of us and we probably could have worked together to kill Alex or Danny in time. Unfortunately I couldn't muster enough support (or sympathy). There can be some politicking in this game. 

The Thoughts

This is a highly interactive party game. There is a lot of "take that". The team mechanism is clever. There is a gradual build towards a climax as identities become more and more certain. The more information you have, the nearer you are to the end of the game. Sometimes you might be surprised with the results. The process of working out who's who is organic, sometimes confusing (because you forget which cards have been swapped with which other cards), but usually funny. Initially I wondered whether the game would be less fun or feel unfair when the number of players is odd, due to the number of members per team being unequal. Having played the game, this doesn't seem to be a problem. It is possible to jump ship. This feels more like an individual victory game than a team victory game, because teams are not fixed. 

Designer Diary - Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

The designer diary I wrote for BoardGameGeek has just been published: https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/1/blogpost/170055/designer-diary-ali-baba-and-the-forty-thieves

JinxO

The Game

JinxO is a party game from Indonesia. It is for 4 to 7 players. The key to victory is to be able to understand and guess how your friends think. Every card in the game specifies a category, for example scary noises in the night. Based on the category, and without any discussion, players must write three items down on their respective player boards. Your goal is to write items which others will also write. 

There are 9 boxes on your player board. The game is played over 3 rounds, and within each round you will use 3 cards from the deck. For each card you must write 3 items. You decide which boxes you want to write in. Once written, you can't change it for the rest of the round. Using the photo above as an example, the items written were based on (1) things you eat with instant noodles, and (2) body parts you wish to enhance. For the latter, my friends wrote things which are... ahem... inappropriate, aaaaand I shall leave it up to your imagination. 

You do scoring once everyone's board is filled. You take turns reading an item from your board. If no one has the same item as you, you cross it out. As long as at least one other person has the same item, both you and them circle the item. You will score points for this. If exactly one other person has the same item, congratulations, you both shout "JinxO!", and you get to fill the star next to the item. A filled star is worth 2 points. 

Once any player has all 9 items crossed out or circled, the round ends. You add up your points for the round. Circles are 1 point each. Stars are 2 points each. If you have complete rows or columns circled, you score points too. The scores are written along the edges of the grid. The box at the top right helps score both the 3 point column and the 3 point row, so if there is an item you are confident about, you should fill it here. Similarly, the bottom left box only helps you score the 1 point column and row, so if there is an item you are unsure about, you probably want to put it here. 

The game is played over 3 rounds. Highest scorer wins. 

The Play

This is a game about getting to know your friends. Over a game you will use 9 cards, which means 9 different categories to talk about. You don't talk when filling your player board. You talk when doing scoring. When you read an item which others have, you feel happy you share the same way of thinking. When you read an item which no one has heard of or thought of, you may trigger some interesting discussion. They may make fun of you for being weird. Well, you can also call them uncouth. 

There are some tactical considerations. This is not the kind of party game where you are trying to make things up and be creative. You have to think about how your friends think and what they know. If you want to score well, you shouldn't be filling your player board simply based on your opinion and experience. You should be thinking about what your friends will be writing. The best case is only one other person writes the same item, but this is hard to deliberately achieve. It normally takes some luck. 

The categories in this photo above: (1) food you eat with your hands, (2) cult classic movies and (3) gods from mythologies. The movies I wrote were not really cult classics. They were all blockbusters. Had I written movies which I perceived as cult classics, I probably wouldn't match with any of my friends because they might not know those movies that I know. And Lord of the Rings matched with exactly one other friend! Woohoo!

The Thoughts

  

There is one type of party game where players play the role of judges. One example is Cards Against Humanity. Who scores and eventually wins is not based on objective rules but on preferences and decisions of other players. To me these don't feel like proper games. They are more about persuading your judge friends and talking convincingly, as opposed to using skills and strategy. I like that JinxO requires skills and strategy. If I read my friends well, I will do well. I don't need to be a great salesman. I'm not specifically a fan of party games, but I quite enjoyed JinxO. It works very well with non gamers. I brought it to a friend gathering of non gamers, and they all loved the game. I made the right pick! 

Usolli on Kickstarter

Usolli is on Kickstarter now! I played the probably final prototype in December, and greatly enjoyed the game. It is from fellow Malaysian designer Ahmad Salahuddin, and the game is about the Muslim daily five prayers. 

Click here to visit the Kickstarter page. 

Star Wars Unlimited

The Game

Star Wars Unlimited is a 2-player battle card game. It is a collectible card game and you can do deck-building with it. What is most attractive about it is, of course, the Star Wars universe. You get to see all those familiar characters, weapons, and spaceships come into play. Other than that, it seems to me to be pretty much standard fare. That said, I am not an expert in collectible card games, so I might be missing some of the nuances. 

To win the game, you need to reduce your opponent’s health points to zero. Every turn, you draw cards and play cards. You may always play one card face down before you as a resource. There is no limit to the number of resources in front of you. To play a card face up, you need to pay the resource cost, and you do this by turning your resource cards 90°. Your resources are reset at the end of your turn. This aspect reminds me of Hearthstone, the digital CCG. Every round you get more and more resources, which will allow you to play more cards and better cards. In Star Wars Unlimited, the dilemma you have is which card to sacrifice as a resource. This is not always easy.

Other than the resource cost, every card also has an attack value and a defense value. Face up cards can only be used once per turn to attack. You can choose to attack the opponent base to reduce their health points, or you can attack one of their units. There is one restriction regarding unit type. Ground units can only attack ground units, and space units can only attack space units. Both unit types can attack the opponent base. When a unit takes damage, the damage is accumulated as long as it hasn’t reached the defense value. The unit is killed once the defense value is reached. 

Players control a general, and this is the player’s character. The general has a unique ability. It can also be deployed as a unit by paying the cost. When the general dies as a unit, it doesn’t actually die but just returns to being your general. However the general can only be deployed once as a unit. 

My base and my general

Some weapons are tucked under characters to modify their abilities. 

We used dice to keep track of modified attack and defense values.

Units have various icons, and this is something you need to consider when building your deck. Usually cards with the same icon combo well with one another. There are abilities which depend on icons. 

Icons are at the top left, below the card cost. 

The Play

The game starts slow and there is a gradual escalation because of the resource system. In the early game you probably want to play a card face down as a resource every round. Later when you feel you have enough, it might be better to keep and use those cards. The card abilities mostly match the Star Wars theme so that is fun. One interesting dilemma is whether to attack your opponent base or his units. You know the base is your ultimate objective, but if he is building a nice combo which can cause you a lot of pain, you may want to break it up first. 

Cards have interesting abilities. Some characters from the movies combo well, e.g. R2D2 and C3PO, and that’s fun to do. 

The Thoughts

Star Wars Unlimited feels like a pretty standard collectible card game and head to head battle card game to me. It’s on the simpler end of the spectrum so it is easier to pick up for a wider range of players. This will be a game you can use to attract casual gamers because of the Star Wars theme and the relative ease of play.