Dream of the Red Chamber - first prototype

The game I am publishing this year under Cili Padi Games is Pilgrim Poker, and it uses the theme of Journey to the West (西游记). I also have another game which will be published by Specky Studio - Rebels of the Three Kingdoms, which, of course, is based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义). The advantage of using a topic or theme which many people are already familiar with is the game can be more attractive, and it can be a bit easier for people to learn to play. I have covered two of the four major Chinese works of literature, so naturally I start to consider the other two. Origame from Singapore has recently released 108 Outlaws, a game based on Water Margin (水浒传), so I probably shouldn't publish a game with this theme so soon. So I set my eyes on Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦). 

I have never read Dream of the Red Chamber before. I only know a little about it. During the Chinese New Year holidays I started doing some research on the book. I discovered many things I hadn't known before, some of which surprised me. I hadn't known that the author Cao Xueqin (曹雪芹) didn't write the whole book. He wrote the first 80 chapters, and the last 40 were written by someone else. I had always thought of the character Xue Baochai (薛宝钗) as the villain, which is completely untrue. I learned that the novel has another name - The Story of the Stone (石头记) and in fact when first translated to English, it was called this name. One thing is a little embarrassing. Due to the subject matter, I kept thinking the author Cao Xueqin is female. I only recently checked and learned he's a guy. 

I had difficulties thinking of a game mechanism. I wasn't constantly working on this, I just occasionally thought about it. Eventually an idea for the game mechanism came to me when I was sleeping. I'm not 100% sure whether I was sleeping / dreaming then, or I was half awake. I was certainly in bed. In the next few days after I had that idea, I did more research and then created my first prototype. AI helped a lot in my research. I asked it to give me summaries, e.g. who are the most important 10 characters in the book, in which chapters do certain characters appear together. My game is a set collection game, and you make sets based on specific scenes in the story, involving specific combinations of characters. 

Elder daughter Shee Yun was first to playtest the game with me. The two-player game seems to work well. I will need to test the game a lot more to see whether it is feasible for publication. I expect I will need to make adjustments. At the moment I think it will be just a 2 to 4 player game. 

I later playtested it with both my wife Michelle and Shee Yun, trying the 3-player version. That seems to work okay too. The game is a rummy variant. In some ways it's even simpler, because you can't do layoffs. In other ways it is a little more complicated, because the melds you can make are not runs or cards of the same value. The melds are scenes in the story. There are 11 different scenes in the game, translated to 11 possible melds. Every meld requires a specific combination of characters. It can consist of as few as two characters and as many as six. The two-character melds are mostly worth only 1 point, while the six-character meld is worth 11 points. There are ten different characters in the game. The lead characters like Jia Baoyu (贾宝玉) and Lin Daiyu (林黛玉) have more cards - seven, while the secondary characters have fewer. There are only three cards for Granny Liu (刘姥姥). 

Gameplay is simple. On your turn you must draw a card. You may play at most one meld on your turn. At the end of your turn, you may discard a card. You have a hand limit of six, which is the same as the number of cards of the largest meld. If you have too many cards, you must discard a card at the end of your turn. A round doesn't end when a player plays all cards. It only ends when the deck runs out. You want to play as many melds as you can, so most of the time you won't want to discard cards. However, there is a penalty for each card left in hand when a round ends. If you have three cards or fewer, it is 1 point per card, but if you have four or more, it is 2 points each. As the draw deck gets thinner, you will become more anxious and you will probably settle for the lower value melds so that you don't get stuck with too many cards when the round ends. 

My initial idea for the game was a bit more complicated. In addition to draw - meld - discard, I had a pass card step. The active player must pass a card around the table. Every other player has the opportunity to take the card being passed then pass on a different card. Otherwise they just pass on the same card. This is all done with the card face-up. This is meant to make making melds easier. I wanted to create difficult decisions. When you pass a card, you try not to pass cards which will help others. I also wanted this mechanism to give information to players. If an opponent takes a card then passes on a different card, it gives you information about which meld he might be attempting to make. When I playtested this, Michelle and Shee Yun felt it was confusing. They didn't like it at all and found it frustrating. Okay, I guess I should keep things simple. 

I still need to playtest this with four players. I'm a little uneasy that for the moment this game seems to be just a simple rummy variant. I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's good to make this a game anyone can learn to play easily, if my goal is to promote boardgames and card games. I'm just a little uneasy about whether I can justify the existence of a game if it doesn't offer something different enough. 

Snow White 2nd edition

The second edition of Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs has been out for a while, last year in fact, but I have not yet mentioned it. This is a game I struggled with a bit, on whether to do a second printing. The first edition did not sell particularly fast. Partly it is because this is a game with a minimum player count of 7. I was running out of stock, and I still had enquiries, so I decided to do another print run. At the time I received positive feedback from Thailand about the game, so that was part of my motivation too. 

Comparing the two editions (first on the left, second on the right), to be honest I like the first edition cover better because it is cleaner. Well, it is cleaner because I forgot several things. I forgot to put  the designer name and the publisher logo. I do think both are important. So now that grumpy dwarf at the bottom right corner suffers the same fate at Mike Wazowski of Monsters Inc. 

The second edition is slightly thicker. I wanted to make sure all cards still fit comfortably after being sleeved. For the first edition, after sleeving the cards, the box is just slightly too small for them and the lid no longer fits perfectly. With the second edition, I have two more rulebooks and one more card, so I made the box deeper. 

One more thing you will notice is the Japanese text has been changed to Chinese. In the first edition, the Japanese text is just flavour. I don't have any Japanese rules. It's just that the art is in a Japanese manga style. In the second edition I now have rules in both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. So I should have the Chinese name on the box now. 

I did small changes to the back of the box. I follow international best practices more now, having the child safety icon and the CE mark. I have the language icons now. 

I used the four sides of the box bottom to advertise the other Cili Padi Games titles. You can see Pinocchio and Dancing Queen here. 

Rulebooks in three languages

Cards in the first edition had Japanese text, more for flavour than for gameplay. The cards did have English text or numbers. Now the Japanese text is changed to Chinese. 

The game remains the same except for this one single card. This is the Huntsman variant. It is an advanced variant and you will only play this after you know at least two other variants - at least one of the Prince variants, and the Evil Queen variant. The Huntsman must be played with at least one Prince (you can play with both) and the Evil Queen. 

Snow White, Prince Charming and the Huntsman are kind of on the same team. The two other teams are the Dwarfs and the Evil Queen (who might convert Dwarfs to become her Evil Minions). Despite both supporting Snow White, Prince Charming and the Huntsman are not friends. They are rivals. Prince Charming wins by finding Dwarf #1 (Happy), and if he wins, Snow White wins too. However the Huntsman loses. The Huntsman wins by finding the Evil Queen. If he does, Snow White wins too, but Prince Charming loses. This sounds like Snow White can just sit back and relax and let the two guys do the work. This is not true. Snow White can win the game by finding Happy herself, and if she does that, she wins the game by herself. Both Prince Charming and the Huntsman lose. She is a strong and independent woman and does not need to rely on a man to win. 

If you have the first edition of the game, you can play the Huntsman variant by using Dwarf #14 as the Huntsman. 

Game components

Malaysia Boardgame Show on national TV

The Malaysia Boardgame Show was covered on national television. See the clip here (the video is in Malay): https://www.facebook.com/reel/4243861829210835 

The organiser Jon. My friend is on TV! 

Effendy's game Melaka won 3rd place in the Zenobia Awards

Many Malaysian themed games were showcased at the event

Malaysia Boardgame Show 2026: 2 busy days!

18-19 Apr 2026 was the Malaysia Boardgame Show. It was held at Jaya One shopping mall in PJ. In the past few years there has been several different boardgame-specific events in Malaysia, like Asian Board Game Festival (in Penang), Boxcon, All Aboard, Dice & Dine, Anigames. Not all are recurring. MBS is organised by Jon, who is currently the most active game designer in Malaysia. He has managed to gather a large group of volunteers and helpers for the event. I am hopeful MBS will become a recurring event in Malaysia. 

I participated as a local designer and publisher, and I had a small booth on the Ground Floor. The event took up two floors. The Ground Floor was open to the public, and booths selling games were all on G/F. First Floor was the activity area, i.e. the ticketed area. You had to buy a pass to access the activities here. There were volunteers bringing their games to teach others to play. You could sell your pre-loved games. Buying games did not require a ticket. There were large group games hosted (2 Rooms and a Boom, Blood on the Clocktower etc). There were also four competitions being run over the weekend, including for Dune Imperium. 

Local publisher Meja Belakang (makers of Drama Pukul 7) was right next to me and Jia Xian photobombed me. 

I still had a lingering cough after the Raya event (Dice and Dine at Lalaport) one month ago. The two days at MBS were almost non-stop teaching games. There was a good crowd. Saturday I could only take a break around 7pm. Sunday I had some breaks here and there. When friends passed by, many couldn't chat with me because I was in the middle of teaching games. 

Event keychains

This was one of the game shelves on the First Floor. Many volunteers brought their own games to place at these shelves. They taught visitors to play, and sometimes played with them. A big part of this event was the community. I think it is amazing that we have so many generous volunteers, willing to bring their precious collections to the event to teach strangers to play. If you are a visitor, you can browse the games and if there is a specific game you want to try, you look for the owner (whose name would be on the box) and he or she will teach you to play. 

I only had time to take some photos of the First Floor in the early morning before visitors started coming. Once the event started, I was at my booth most of the time. 

There were game auctions. 

Another area for games brought by volunteers. 

The red and white flags are for when you need help or need more players.

There was a Carcassonne competition and a Hikadyat competition. 

Custom-made gaming tables. 

Another game library

This is a huge box

Very impressive game components

These are wonders of the world

I sneaked up to take another photo when there were a bit more people.

I'm thinking I'm probably positioning my table (red tablecloth) wrong. It looks less welcoming. I probably should have turned it 90 degrees to be the same as my neighbours. 

On my other side was Roll Rebellion, makers of the highly successful HR Game. 

My vendor tag

There were vendors from Singapore (Ben from LaiPlayLeow) and from Thailand (Milk from BGN). Milk runs the Thailand Board Game Show which I have been to twice, and she was a wonderful host. This time it is us Malaysians' turn to host her. 

There was a section for educational games. There was even a seminar on game design. MBS was very much about the Malaysian boardgame community, about people coming together to play games and have fun. And that's how it should be. 

boardgaming in photos: 4 donkeys

Playing Bottle Imp with Alex and Ivan at ZUS Coffee. They were both highly intrigued and took learning the strategy seriously. This is a game with much depth. There are serious skills involved. This is an unusual and clever trick-taking game. 

I showed Pinocchio to Yip, Captain Fuaad and Kelvin. Right from the start Captain teased Yip that he was going to get four donkeys (and lose the game). This prediction turned out to be accurate. I rarely see someone lose a game of Pinocchio so happily. Yip wanted to buy a copy of the game immediately afterwards. 

This was a game of Monopoly Deal played at FnD Mindspot with Eric Lang and several other Malaysian game designers and gamers. Eric greatly admires the game and uses it as an example of good game design. I must say it is not quite my thing, but indeed this is an accessible game that works well for a wide audience. 

Sean Brown brought a free copy of Faiyum plus expansion all the way back from the US for me. He remembered that Julian and I are interested in the game, and when he had access to some free copies, he offered to get them for us. Thank you so much! I have played Faiyum before and I liked it. It has been on my potential buy list for some time and I was almost going to pull the trigger, just about the time Sean said he had some free copies. 

This is Carson City played on BoardGameArena.com. I have played this many years ago, and I remember it fondly. I just don't quite remember the rules anymore. This is one of the earlier worker placement games, and one unique element is you can fight others for a placement spot. 

You will build a city, buying plots of land and constructing buildings. Buildings help you make money and they have other effects too. 

This is Takenoko. You expand the imperial garden, irrigate it, grow bamboo, and feed bamboo to the panda. All these modify the play area. You score points by completing objective cards, and objective cards require specific situations in the play area. 

This was our play area by game end.

The game ends when a player completes seven objectives. He scores an additional 2 points. In our game two of us managed seven objectives. 

Pilgrim Poker concept art

The 2026 game title from Cili Padi Games will be Pilgrim Poker. This will be my fifth game published under the Cili Padi Games label. I have been making one game a year since Dancing Queen in 2022. Edwin Chong has been my artist since my first game, and continues to be my artist for this year's project. This above is the concept art for Pilgrim Poker. Since the game uses the theme of the Chinese classic Journey to the West, Edwin is going for a Chinese brush stroke style. The box front being in the style of a traditional Chinese string-bound book is pleasing and evocative, but I was a little concerned that I would not be able to put much information on it. Then Edwin explained that he doesn't intend the final box to be that blank. That's just the general concept. There will be more stuff on the front, like designer name and brand logo. Something more like this example below. 

I'm certainly excited to see the rest of the art! 

I went to one of the Casual Friday gaming sessions organised by BoardGameCafe.net to do a cold test for Pilgrim Poker. That means asking a group of players who have never played the game before to read the rules by themselves and learn to play, without me offering any guidance. This is an important test for how clear the rulebook is, and also whether the visual design of the game components helps the players learn the game. Now I must admit I was pretty confident in how well written my game rules were. After all, I have already done this several times, and I have received comments about how clear and concise my rules are. As I observed the players, I found there were several elements in the rulebook I could improve. That was a humbling experience. I know the game so well that it's hard for me to look at the rules from a fresh perspective. I am grateful I forced myself to do this cold test. 

I diligently took notes as I observed the group play. 

I joined them for the second game. 

Here are some of the improvements I made after this cold test session: 

1. I added the card distribution to the game components section of the rulebook. I did have a component list section, but I did not mention that the cards went from 1 to 13, and that each number appeared twice. This was something the group asked when they played, and this information wasn't in the rules. They would have to check the actual cards. 
2. I was not clear enough about the maximum bet amount for a round being $10. In the section for Raising, I wrote that the maximum bet amount was $10. That was misinterpreted as when you Raise, you can raise the bet amount by as much as $10. The correct rule is you can raise the bet amount to at most $10. 
3. Naming the action Side Bet caused a misinterpretation by one of the players, that you can only issue a Side Bet to one of your immediate neighbours. I hadn't considered this possible misinterpretation. However this was quickly clarified by the other players. So eventually I just stuck with the same term. 
4. In one part of the rules, I used the phrase "you determine who wins the Side Bet at the end of the round". That caused some confusion because the word "determine" was misunderstood as meaning "decide", as opposed to meaning "check". The players were puzzled why the person issuing the Side Bet could decide who won. I rephrased this to "you resolve the Side Bet at the end of the round". I must minimise the risk of misunderstanding. 
5. I did not explicitly say that you should not tell other players what their cards are. In Pilgrim Poker, everyone holds up their cards facing forward, so that you don't know your own card but you can see everyone else's cards. In the game that was played, no one specifically told anyone else what their cards were, but there were a few times the table talk almost or effectively gave away this information. I realised I should mention this explicitly, because if players openly tell one another their cards, the play experience would be destroyed. 

Biggest lesson learnt of this exercise: stay humble, and please remember to cold test the next game too. 

I am still looking for help to read my rulebook and give me feedback. If you are able to help, please email me at cs@cilipadigames.com.