boardgame shopping in Japan

I visited Kyushu, Japan on a family holiday. Needless to say, being a gamer, I looked up boardgame stores to visit well before the trip, and also took the opportunity to look for games at bookstores, 100 yen shops and such when I was there. I found some games at Don Quijote. Don Quijote is a discount store which sells lots and lots of different stuff. Most of the games I found seemed to be heavily language dependent. So I didn't buy anything. 

The Google Translate app on my phone has been tremendously helpful. I point my camera at the box, and Google Translate does the translation from Japanese to English for me. The translation is decent. I can get a rough idea of the games. This particular game above seems to be popular. It has grown into a series. 

Back of the box

This one has sold 300,000 copies! 

Something to do with marriage proposals

50,000 copies sold! Not as impressive as 300K, but still very impressive.

A game about nasty LINE messages maybe?

This is not a boardgame. This is a map showing merchant ship routes approaching the port of Nagasaki. This is displayed at a museum. When I saw this I immediately wondered whether this could be turned into a boardgame. 

I visited Sunny Bird boardgame cafe and shop in Nagasaki. It was a 4-minute walk from where I stayed in Nagasaki. I did not sit down to play, but I did take a look at the cafe section. They have a huge library. One title that caught my eye was the early edition of Power Grid, when it was still called only Funkenschlag. This was the 2001 edition. The play area is cosy, not big. The cafe is in the city area, so I imagine rent must be expensive. Space is a premium. It's nice to have a boardgame cafe and shop so conveniently located. 

The shop section was not very big, but there was plenty for me to browse. I think there were more Japanese designed titles than foreign designed titles. That was perfect for me. I mainly wanted to look for Japanese designed games. I can find international titles easily in Malaysia. The shopkeeper was friendly and helpful. He recommended me several titles. It took me a while to browse, since I needed the assistance of Google Translate. 

I found a copy of the latest Japanese edition of Ra. I already own one, but Benz had asked me to find a copy for him. Mission accomplished. This edition comes in a pretty small box. It is compact and the price point is low. JPY 2200 is about MYR 55 or USD 13.50. 

These were the games I bought at Sunny Bird. Loop is by a designer from Nagasaki itself, so this is a meaningful souvenir. I bought it not only because of that. The gameplay did intrigue me. Let's see how it plays. I have not played it yet. The third game here is not by a Japanese designer, but the gameplay description is interesting enough that I decided to buy it. 

At one of the malls I visited, I saw this shop selling lots of TCG (trading card game) cards. There were tables for gamers to play. 

The cards were arranged in shelves like this. This might be the norm everywhere around the world, just that I am not a TCG player so I'm not familiar with this sight. 

At a bookstore I visited, I did not find boardgames or card games, but I saw many tarot card sets. I think people use these for fortune-telling or self-help. 

There were sample copies provided to allow shoppers to browse the content. 

Tarot cards is a whole new world I know very little about. 

One Piece version of UNO. I saw UNO with many other IP's attached. 

I saw a shop in Canal City Mall, Fukuoka selling a Gundam TCG

These are starter sets. JPY 1650 (around MYR 42 / USD 10) for one pack. That's quite cheap. I'm assuming one set is sufficient for one player to play. 

These starter sets come with three figurines. 

Player mat for the Gundam TCG

There were people playing another TCG. I wanted to take photos, but I didn't want to interrupt them or make things awkward. I took these quick shots while walking past. That's why the photos are poorly framed. Many players brought their own playmats. The play tables had player guides printed on them. 

We visited several cities in northern Kyushu, and our last stop was Fukuoka. I was pretty happy with the few games I bought in Nagasaki. Although I knew there was a Jelly Jelly Games cafe and a Yellow Submarine shop in Fukuoka, I listed them as optional destinations. If I had time I would go. By the last day, I almost decided not to go. I only changed my mind the evening before we flew back to Malaysia. It was late afternoon. We didn't have plans for the evening. The next morning we would be heading to the airport at 5:30am. Although I was tired, I decided to visit Yellow Submarine. They were still open. 

They are on the third floor of a commercial building. If you don't know about them, you would not discover them by chance. They are a destination store, not a shop you will chance to walk past at a shopping mall. More than half the shop is dedicated to TCG's. They have play tables. However they have a boardgame section too, and for me there is a lot to browse. They too have many Japanese designs, not just foreign designs. 

This is a weird one. It is a game about investigating the colour and pattern of a lady's underwear. I guess this is humour in Japan, slightly risque. In many other countries and cultures this would be inappropriate. 

Love Letter is one of my favourite games. It has a legacy version! Unfortunately this seems to be pretty language heavy. I did not buy this. I wonder whether there will be an English version. 

Back of the box

Trendy is an older game from Reiner Knizia. I have played it many years ago. I absolutely love the cover of the Japanese edition. It looks like a fashion magazine cover. I'm already starting to regret not buying this. I remember the game was just okay. That was why I didn't buy the game. Now that I think about it, this would have been a nice souvenir or memento, even if I don't buy it for the gameplay. 

Back of the box

This is another game I almost bought but didn't. I like the art direction. I looked up reviews on BGG, and most people think it is just so so. 

I find that many games come with English rules. 

I ended up buying 7 games from Yellow Submarine, more than I expected. I didn't go to Jelly Jelly Games after that, because it was getting late, and I was already feeling a little guilty for having gone on a splurge. Ukiyo-e is a design by Michael Schacht. I like his games. This game is originally called Crazy Chicken, later published as Drive. Ukiyo-e is the Japanese edition, and it has a very Japanese theme - Japanese art. This is definitely a good souvenir for gamers visiting Japan. 

There is a game called New Old in the photo above. It looks like two boxes, one new and one old, but this is actually one game. The cover design is done this way intentionally to make this look like two games placed side by side, a worn out copy next to a new copy. 

Later I discovered that Cat Poker is actually Panda Panda. I already own Panda Panda. I didn't know Cat Poker is the original Japanese version. Rikka (六華) - the black box - is by Hashimoto Atsushi, who designed Tiger & Dragon. That was what made me buy it. I really admire Tiger & Dragon. 

By looking at the box cover and the box back of Ult: Coldburning, it seems this is mostly played with numbered cards in different suits. There are some cards with some text, probably scenario cards or something along those lines. I thought this should not be too much work so I decided to buy a copy. 

After opening the game, I realised how wrong I was. This game is fully packed with cards. It has two huge stacks. And guess what, almost half the cards are text cards! See that stack below on the right. I'm going to spend a lot of time translating all those cards. 

If I sleeve these cards there is no way they can still fit in the box. 

Sai Beppu is a superstar in the Japanese boardgame industry. So many games are illustrated by her, and she has such a wide range of styles. I also notice how prolific Kaya Miyano is. He is best known for Trio / Nana.  

I bought three decks of poker cards from various 100 yen stores. I bought one deck because during the trip I had an idea for a game design, and I wanted to playtest my idea with my family. I bought the second and third decks because they looked nice and they were cheap. 100 yen is MYR 2.50 or USD 0.60. The Sanrio deck is cute, and the fruit one too. 

Dirty Work

Dirty Work is a party game from Thailand. This is a simultaneous action selection game, and it is very much about guessing your opponents’ intentions. You are all miners mining gold, contributing to a stash of gold, one nugget at a time. Sooner or later someone will be tempted to steal from the stash. However such thieves can be caught by miners who decide to play guard. So these are the three roles you must choose from every round, miner, thief or guard. 

The game is played over multiple days, until someone has 24 gold and wins. Each day will have multiple rounds, and ends with either the stash getting stolen, or only one miner remains and takes the stash. Each round is just players simultaneously choosing a role and then all roles are revealed at the same time. First, miners work and each adds 1 gold to the stash. Now if there are thieves but no guards, the thieves take and share the stash, and the day ends. If there are thieves and guards, the stash is protected. The guard earn a small wage of 1 gold. Here’s the important rule which I find genius. A thief who is caught surrenders all his money to the guard catching him. That’s including all the money accumulated from previous days. If the game has been going on for a while, this can be a huge sum. It will be painful for the thief, but a boon for the guard. Another important rule is once you play guard, you will stop work for the day. You sit out any remaining rounds. If you play guard when there are no thieves, you earn a measly 1 gold and you’ve just wasted opportunities for the rest of the day. Choosing to guard is not a light decision. 

Being a simple miner doing honest work sounds dull. However it can be lucrative. If everyone else drops out due to playing guard or playing thief and getting caught, you earn the whole stash for yourself. 

There is one special situation. If you steal and get caught, but you have no money to pay the fine, you are temporarily on a watchlist and you cannot steal. That is a bad situation to be in. Your opponents know you only have two options and they don’t need to worry about you stealing. 

This may seem like a complicated version of rock paper scissors. You only have three options, and most of the time each of them can be the right play. Let’s say there are only two players still active for the day. The other guy has much money. You might think he wouldn’t steal because that’s risking his hard earned money, so maybe you should not guard. However he might just do it because it is out of your expectation. People may play safe and keep on mining (working). The risk of stealing is getting caught. The risk of guarding is catching no one and being forced to drop out. Yet as the stash builds up, it becomes harder and harder to resist the temptation to steal, and also to attempt to catch others whom you suspect might steal. That’s tension! I like that you do have much information and basis for deciding which role to play, yet this information does not guarantee you will make the right choice. It still depends on the psychology of your opponents. 

Playing with role cards is optional. They give you slight advantages.

This might be the Thai signature - party games which elicit much laughter. There are many types of games designed by Thai designers and published by Thai publishers, many more than made by Malaysian designers and publishers. Thai designs should not be pigeonholed. However this style of game seems to be the most successful for their market. I find Dirty Work a great design. There is much table talk, sometimes even cooperation, and of course betrayals too. 

LUZ

LUZ is a trick-taking game. The twist here is you can’t see your own cards. You don’t know exactly what cards you have, but you can see everyone else’s cards. However you know the suits of your cards, because the cards have different coloured backs following their suits. At the start of a round, based on knowing everyone else’s cards and the suits of your own, you must predict how many tricks you will win. You score points if you get it right, and you lose points if you get it wrong. You may choose to make a precise prediction, or you can predict two numbers. The latter is safer, but you score fewer points if you get it right. 

The rest of the trick-taking rules are pretty standard. You must follow the lead suit if you can. Only the lead suit can win, unless a trump suit card is played. 

This is a fun twist. Not all cards are dealt out. Although you can see all your opponents’ cards, you don’t have complete information. If you have a yellow (trump) card in hand, but based on what you see, both the 1 and the 12 are missing, you’ll have a tough time guessing how your yellow card will play out. Many of the trick-taking tactics still apply. It feels good to have so much information. Still there is some anxiety in what cards you have exactly. Your opponents’ predictions are important information. They tell you your opponents’ intentions and whether they are still trying to win tricks. 

This is an enjoyable game and if you like trick-taking games, well, you probably have already played this. 

DETROIT

DETROIT is a lovely little two player game from Japan. You compete to build three cars. You share a factory floor, where some spaces are common while some are for you only. You have six game pieces, and you need to move them all through the assembly line, in the process combining the top and bottom pairs to form complete cars. Whoever does so first wins. 

On your turn you roll four dice, and they determine how many steps you must move one of your pieces. The dice here don’t look like dice at all. They look like traffic cones. A cone which lies on its side shows one pip at the bottom, and that means one step. A cone that is standing upright means zero. You might move up to four steps, but if you are very unlucky, you might not move at all. 

Each space on the board allows one piece only. If you move into a common space containing your opponent’s piece, you knock it off and it needs to restart. This is the key element of the game. Some of the common spaces are safe spaces. You are protected from being knocked off. Three of your pieces are top pieces, and the other three are bottom pieces. When you move a top piece to a space with your own bottom piece, you combine them to become a complete car. Thereafter you move the completed car as one piece. Now if your completed car gets knocked off by your opponent, it is taken apart and both pieces need to start over and get assembled again. 

A big part of the game is managing risk and opportunities. When you have multiple pieces, you can maximise opportunities by positioning them such that no matter what you roll next turn, there is something useful you can do. The safe spaces are fun. Sometimes you choose to move a piece there even if it means leaving another piece vulnerable. Occupying a safe space blocks your opponent from using it, which means his pieces will be more vulnerable. 

You cannot assemble a car by moving a bottom piece onto a top piece. This is an interesting challenge. If your opponent knocks off your bottom piece, and you now have a top piece far ahead of your other bottom pieces, it is a little stuck because it needs to wait for a bottom piece to catch up. You have to plan how to get your cars assembled as the pieces advance through the board. 

This is the kind of game where the game components can sell the game. The good news is the gameplay is decent and meaningful too. 

designer diary: Malaysian Holidays

Malaysia is a country which has many public holidays. We have three major ethnicities and many minor ones. We have different religions and traditions. We have national holidays as well as many state specific holidays. Every year towards the end of the year, I see infographics on social media helping people strategise when to apply for annual leave in the following year. For example if a public holiday falls on a Thursday, your strategy will be to take the Friday off, so that you have a stretch of four days to rest or go holidaying. If a public holiday falls on a Monday or a Friday, you can plan for a short getaway since you will have a long weekend. It was this kind of strategy guide that inspired me to make Malaysian Holidays. I wanted to design a game which the common Malaysian (i.e. non-gamers) can play. I wanted to look for a theme which most people can relate to and like. Public holidays and going on trips are something that unites everyone. 

Malaysian Holidays is a simple set collection game. Most of the cards in the game are public holidays. Each card is set to be a specific day of the week, and you need to collect consecutive days in order to go on holidays. That means you want to go on holidays without even needing to apply for annual leave. For example you try to collect cards Monday to Friday, or cards Wednesday to Friday. Once you have a set, you get to go on a trip! In game terms this means discarding your set to score points. The first version of the rules featured a card drafting mechanism which is pretty straightforward. If you are a boardgamer, you would have seen something similar elsewhere. However upon playtesting it I quickly discovered that this was a little overwhelming for non-gamers. They felt a little lost when I explained the game, and they got confused during play too. In the original rules, everyone draws two cards at the start of a round. You give one to the HR Manager and then the other will become available for drafting. Everyone reveals their card at the same time. The start player of the round gets first pick, and he must pick someone else's card. Whoever's card gets picked will go next. Eventually everyone will claim one card. The last player to claim a card has no choice. He will be start player next round. If you are a gamer, you probably have seen this somewhere else. The idea is I want people to offer good cards, because the more attractive your card is, the higher the likelihood that it gets picked and you go next. The intention was good, but many non-gamers found this confusing. I needed to simplify the mechanism. Eventually I just let players take turns being start player. Also all cards being offered are just placed at the centre of the table. From the start player and going clockwise, everyone picks a card. This is much easier to learn, and it still works well. 

My prototype of Malaysian Holidays

In Malaysia, if a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the subsequent Monday will be declared a replacement holiday. To represent this in the game, I have Sunday cards, and you get to use them like Monday cards. From the perspective of clean game design, I am adding rules overhead for the sake of the theme, which is a bad thing. However I feel this is worth the additional effort to create a fun experience for players. It is something they can relate to, so it is not a difficult rule to remember. There are no Saturday cards in the game. This is deliberate. If a public holiday falls on a Saturday, there is no replacement holiday on Monday or Friday. Saturdays are the worst day for public holidays. So no Saturdays! 

Malaysia has both national and state holidays. Some state holidays are observed only in one or two states, some in several more. Some national holidays apply to every state except a few. All of these are represented in the game. If you want to win, state holidays are generally inferior to national holidays. Let's say I have collected Monday to Friday, but my Monday is a Penang state holiday, and my Friday is a Johor state holiday. I can't trade this set in to go on holidays. I either work in Penang, or I work in Johor. It is not possible that I make use of both the state holidays when they are for different states. 

There is a total of 28 national and state holidays in Malaysia. To simplify matters, I count all the Sultan / governor birthdays as one. Every state has one. When working on Malaysian Holidays, I learned about several state holidays I had not known about before. I have never lived in those states. 28 cards is not enough for this game to work. In the first prototype, I had 36 holiday cards. Some major holidays like Hari Raya Puasa and Chinese New Year appeared twice. I found that the draw deck ran out too frequently, which was annoying. Eventually I modified the game to have 64 holiday cards. All holidays appear more than once, but they would be on different days. For example one Wesak Day card is a Sunday, and the other a Wednesday. The only exception is Good Friday. Both copies are on Friday, of course. 

Do you know that under Malaysian law only five public holidays are mandated off days? And these don't include the big ones like Hari Raya Puasa and Chinese New Year? The real big five are: New Year's Day, Malaysia Day, Merdeka Day, Labour Day and Sultan or Governor's Birthday. In Malaysian Holidays, these five occur three times, while the others only twice. 

I want to convey the Malaysian work culture through this game. The original inspiration is a very salaryman thing - a strategy guide for applying for annual leave. The festivals and holidays themselves already convey the multicultural society of Malaysia. What I also want to inject is some humour related to the typical salaryman mentality. There are two special holiday cards which are called MC. In Malaysia, MC means medical certificate, and it refers to sick leave. These MC cards are jokers, and you can treat them as any day of the week. That means they are the most powerful holidays in the game. In Malaysia there are employees with this mindset: sick leave is annual leave, and you want to fully utilise it and not waste it. 

There is one type of card in the game called memos. These are attack cards which add some player interaction. Memos are issued by the HR Manager, and they are used for discarding someone else's holiday card. That means cancelling someone's rest day. For example you still have to go to work on Christmas Day because of a system go-live. Yeah... no one likes the HR Manager.

When I playtested with Benz, Ruby and Edwin, they all wanted to go to Japan for holidays

Half the holiday destinations in the game are local, and the other half are overseas. During game development, Specky Studio and I discussed whether to change this. My originally intended target audience is Malaysians, so the holiday destinations are places which we Malaysians frequently visit. There are local attractions like Mount Kinabalu, Genting Highlands, Melaka and Pulau Redang, and also countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Japan and China. The reason we considered adjusting this was if we wanted to use the game to specifically promote Malaysian tourism and culture, then it might be more appropriate for all the holiday destinations to be local. This can help encourage local tourism, and if a foreign traveller buys a copy of the game, it would be a more meaningful souvenir, highlighting all Malaysian tourist attractions. Eventually we decided to stick to the original concept, so you will see other countries in Malaysian Holidays. 

One very encouraging sign during the development of the game was how well received the theme was. My target audience for the game is non-gamers and casual gamers. Often when I managed to find such players to playtest the game, they instantly liked the game. One particularly memorable incident was when I met a local book publisher to pitch another game. I brought my repertoire of both published games and works in progress, to show them that I was a serious designer. Malaysian Holidays was just one of many games to be mentioned in passing. I did not plan to show it to them. At the time my prototype copy was packed in a recycled box originally for meal supplements. I only had a piece of paper glued to the box, and on it I had hand-written "Malaysian Holidays". It was just this "Malaysian Holidays" that caught the attention of the folks I met that day. They asked me what that was. I ended up playing the game with them. Malaysians really like public holidays. 

And now I am holding this game in my hand. It is an amazing feeling physically holding the final product. 

Game in play

Holiday cards

Local destination cards (1 point)

Overseas destination cards (2 points)

This is my favourite memo card. I read it, and I giggle to myself. Yeah, I laugh at my own jokes. 

The art of Malaysian Holidays is done by Lim Chi Qing of Sunny Day. I love her style and she has presented Malaysian culture beautifully. Most of my games are published under my own indie publishing house Cili Padi Games. This is my second game published through someone else. My first such game was Dancing Queen with Matagot. I first released Dancing Queen myself under Cili Padi Games, and only after publication I managed to connect with Matagot to have an international edition published by them. The Malaysian Holidays publishing project was under Specky Studio right from the start. They specialise in using games in education, and they make games that can be used for educational purposes. They are connected to many schools and teachers. Malaysian Holidays contains many cultural and historical elements. There are many aspects that can be used in education. One important reason that Specky Studio wants to release the game in 2026 is this is Visit Malaysia Year! This is a great way to share Malaysian festivities and culture with the world. 28 illustrations of holidays celebrated in Malaysia, and 14 illustrations of travel destinations. I hope you will enjoy Malaysian Holidays too!

Now I imagine East Malaysians when you start reading this blog post you are already grumbling about the box cover of the game. Why is it only showing Peninsular Malaysia? Well the reason is that cover you see at the top is just half the cover. The box design for Malaysian Holidays has two covers, on opposite sides of the box. So East Malaysia is on the other side. Hey, I'm an East Malaysian, I certainly wouldn't allow East Malaysia to be short changed. 

Boomerang: Australia

Boomerang: Australia works very much like 7 Wonders and Sushi Go. You start with a hand of cards. You pick one and pass the rest left. You keep doing this, and eventually all the cards will be claimed, and you score points based on your set of cards. This is a simple core mechanism. How the game differs from others is how the scoring works. 

Every card has several elements. They all affect scoring in different ways. Every card in the game is a location in Australia scattered across seven states. Each location you visit gives you one point, and if you are first to cover a state, you score a bonus. You get a little scoring sheet to mark off locations you have visited. 

Some cards have souvenirs, and they just give you points. At the end of a round, if your total souvenir points is 7 or less, you get to double them. If it is more than 7, no doubling. So you have a little Blackjack going on here, trying to get as close to 7 as possible but not over. Some cards have animals. You score them only when you are able to get a pair within the same round. If you are playing a 4 player game, and you see two of the same animals in your starting hand, you can hope to claim one and wait for the other to cycle back to you. However there is no guarantee that someone else might want the same card for some other reason, for example it is a location they need for completing a state. 

Some cards have activities. At the end of every round, you have the option to choose to score one or more of the activities. After you score an activity, you can't score it any more for the rest of the game. The more icons you have, the higher you score for that activity. Ideally for each of the four rounds, you focus on collecting one of the four activities. In practice, you rarely get an ideal situation. 

The first card that you claim in a round is placed face-down before you, so no one else knows what it is. The rest are face-up, so your neighbour can check what you might need and try not to pass you those cards. This is a game with adjustable depth. You can play with a simple approach, caring only about your own collection. You can also play in a more competitive way, watching what your opponents do and trying to deny them, or trying to collect what they don't want any more. Your chances of winning are higher if you are more competitive, but you will still have fun playing in a simple way. The reason for your first card being face-down is the boomerang scoring. You compare its value with the value of the last card passed to you from your neighbour. You score the difference. That's why you don't let your neighbour know that card specifically. 

Boomerang: Australia is a pleasant set collection game. It plays smoothly. You feel like you are on holiday in Australia. Nothing ground-breaking, but it is an enjoyable experience. 

High Society

High Society is a Reiner Knizia game from 1995. I have heard of it so many times that I feel like I have played it before. This is one of the classics from Reiner Knizia that always comes back in print.  

This is an auction game. Everyone starts with the same set of money cards, each a different denomination, from $1 to $25. That’s all the money you will have in the game. A deck of properties will be auctioned off, one at a time. They have different point values. There are some special cards in the mix, some good and some bad. A good card can double your victory points. A bad one forces you to discard one property. Another bad one halves your victory points. Every round one card is revealed from the deck and auctioned off. One twist in the game is you don’t know exactly when the game will end. It ends immediately when the last of the double and half cards is drawn. The challenge the game presents is you don’t know how far you should preserve your money. If you use your money too quickly you won’t be able to compete when big cards show up. If you keep too much money and the game ends early, you would have missed the opportunities to buy valuable properties. 

Your money

Good card

Bad card

When you bid, you don’t make change. If you have placed a bid and you are overbid by someone else, you can only counter bid by adding more cards from your hand. This means sometimes you are forced to spend more than you wish. 

The most important twist is whoever has the least money when the game ends is automatically disqualified. You must keep some money to avoid being the poorest. 

When bad cards are being auctioned, it is done in a different manner. You bid to not take the card. The first player to pass takes the card. Everyone else who has placed a bid must pay up. Bad cards will usually force many people to spend money. Good cards only require the buyer to pay. 

This is a simple game that is full of difficult decisions. The special cards can have huge impacts. You are torn between keeping enough money to not get disqualified and winning enough properties to win the game.