Hiew's Boardgame Blog: Malaysia Design & Play Game Design Competition Finalists

Saturday, 16 August 2025

Malaysia Design & Play Game Design Competition Finalists

Posted by Hiew Chok Sien 邱卓成 at 09:00

The 2025 Malaysia Design & Play Game Design Competition is organised under the Malaysian Boardgame Design banner, and MBD is a loose and informal group of local game designers, game publishers and game enthusiasts. I have participated in several game design competitions as a participant, and this is my first time being on the organising team of one. The main organiser is Jon from nPips Games (Furmation of Rome, King & Peasant). We have 6 judges and 110 contestants signing up, and that means quite a bit of work for us judges. The submission date was end of July. In the first stage of the competition, contestants must submit a 2-minute video giving an overview of the game, and the rulebook. Judging was based on just these two elements.

The original plan was to have 8 finalists entering the second stage. However we had a tie. Several games around the 8th position had the same score. We discussed how to decide which to stay in the Top 8 and which to eliminate. Eventually we decided to go with the Top 9 instead of the Top 8.

Our objective in organising this competition is to encourage more Malaysians to try their hands at game design, and to elevate game design in Malaysia. With more people doing it, we will push one another to get better. We will learn and grow together. We hope Malaysia will produce more and more good game designs, and achieve international recognition for our games. In the past few months we have been encouraging our contestants to share, learn from one another, and support one another. We organised playtesting sessions at different states across the country. In our WhatsApp group we encouraged everyone to share their rulebooks for feedback and suggestions. When we have a healthy community, one which is willing to share and help one another, we will grow faster and learn faster.

Every contest entry is scored by at least three judges. After we completed the first round of judging, we ranked all the games, and we arranged for those near the top to be scored by more of us. Some of the entries were scored by all six of us. When we scored the games, we also gave our feedback and suggestions. Whether they made it or not to the final round, we wanted to give quality feedback to help all contestants learn and grow, and become better designers.

This was my first time being a judge in a game design competition. At the moment we have only completed stage 1. Next we are going to play all the finalists. The two main criteria for this competition are (1) Malaysian theme, and (2) at most 52 cards. When I did the scoring, I found that I can easily tell whether a contestant has done much game designing or game playing. Those who are less experienced tend to use a handful of common game mechanisms. Their designs tend to fall into just a few familiar types. The more experienced game designers, or even just game players, will have some interesting twist or at least some original idea in their games.

I came across some entries which are mostly based on other published games. This is a game design competition, so there is an expectation of originality in the game design. If a contestant takes an existing game and attaches a Malaysian theme, that's not game design. That's localisation. The general principle is clear, but in actual execution this is not always simple or easy. Let's take trick-taking games as an example. How original does one need to be for it to be considered original enough? If a game uses mostly the mechanism of another game, but one new aspect is added, is this considered original enough? As we get into the nitty gritty, we realise this is not so simple. Also we as judges have not played every game in the world. There was one game I quite admired, but I later found out that it was mostly based on a digital game. We the judges had to alert one another of theme. It helps to have the six of us, because we have different experiences in playing games. Collectively we have a much wider exposure.

In Stage 1 the scores we gave was from 1 to 7. 4 means okay, nothing special. 5 means worth giving a try. 6 means yes I'd like to play this. 7 means I want to sign this game. We did have some games getting 7's. Let's see whether one of them eventually becomes the champion. Of our Top 9, their scores were all 5.5 or higher. They are all games which most of us judges are keen to play.

One thing I am quite impressed by is how much work many contestants put into designing their games. Many of the videos, rulebooks, game components and game art were done very well. AI was used by many, and it was used appropriately. Art and video don't get you any points, but they do help in explaining how the game works. For many contestants the output was a labour of love. I believe going through this whole process of designing, playtesting, producing, rule-writing and iterating has helped the contestants learn and grow.

Now the finalist games will be delivered to us judges, and end August / early September we will be gathering to play them, and doing the final judging. The final results will be out mid September. Below are our Top 9 games, in no particular order. Congratulations to all who made it to the Top 9!