Trekking the World

This is a game about traveling the world, buying souvenirs and visiting famous landmarks. 

You have a point to point movement map. Every turn you must move and pay for your movement using cards. You replenish cards at the end of your turn. 

Souvenirs in four colours are scattered around the map (those cubes). Many but not all locations will have one souvenir. When you land on a souvenir, you just pick it up. At the end of the game you score points for sets of souvenirs as well as for having the most in each colour. If you claim the last souvenir on a continent, you gain a bonus. 

The more completed sets of souvenirs you have, the more they score

Visiting landmarks is more challenging. At any time only four landmarks are open to visitors. To visit one, you need to go to the specific location and also spend a specific combination of card colours. You get to claim the landmark card, which means no one else gets to visit it any more. Also a new landmark opens now. 

The game ends when anyone visits his fifth landmark or five continents run out of souvenirs. 

Two special actions offer additional flexibility

Hey, I've been to Ayers Rock!

This is a family friendly game which casual players can pick up easily while experienced gamers will still find interesting. I’ve played the game twice, and I find it a pleasant experience. It has a bit of Ticket To Ride feel. Slightly more complex, but not by much. In my case most of the time I only focused on doing my own thing. It was partly because I did a two player game. So the board was big and competition was low. I imagine with more players there will be tougher competition for the souvenirs, especially if players are nearby, or when they are close in the number of souvenirs they have collected. There will also be more competition for the landmarks. If two players aim for the same landmark, it will be painful for whoever is one step too slow. I think the game will be more fun with more players, because I like a bit of challenge.

interview: Hong Kong and Boardgames - Charles Yan

I made a short trip to Hong Kong in November 2025.  I looked up my records. The last time I was in Hong Kong was 13 years ago, in 2012. That time I brought my in-laws and also my daughters, who were 6 and 7 then. This time it was just the two of us, my wife Michelle and I. The main reason we planned this trip was that Michelle had promised to visit her old friend. I also took the opportunity to visit my old friend. Before the trip, I contacted Charles Yan of Hong Kong game publisher Time2Play and asked whether I could do an interview with him. He follows my blog, and we are connected on Facebook. However we have not been interacting much. I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to get to know him and the boardgame industry in Hong Kong. 

We met at Maritime Square (青衣城) in Tsing Yi 

The best known game from Time2Play is 9Upper, a party game of obscure topics and terms in which you have to pretend to know what they mean and convince the judge so. By now they have sold about 40,000 copies in Hong Kong. Time2Play has published about 10 local-designed games. They do localisation of international titles too. Charles is also the founder of Boardgame Academy. This is a different Board Game Academy from that in Thailand. Boardgame Academy (HK) is a social enterprise which sets out to support and improve the education system using boardgames. It aims to make learning more fun, and to help students learn better and enjoy learning. 

Hong Kong and Boardgames

Before I arrived in Hong Kong, I searched Google Maps for boardgame stores. I noticed that many boardgame cafes and clubs seem to be concentrated in Kwun Tong (观塘). After chatting with Charles and another boardgamer friend Jetta, I realised that in Hong Kong there is this phenomenon called private rooms. For serious boardgamers who regularly go out to play, the money they spend on boardgame cafes is quite a sum. So some of them group together to rent a small place to be their private gaming room. They can use it to store their game collections too. This ends up to be cheaper, and they can have their own place which they can use any time. Some of these private rooms are converted to boardgame clubs or boardgame cafes, allowing other boardgamers to use them for a fee. The owners of these clubs don't run these as full time businesses. They have other full time jobs. These clubs are just side businesses which help offset their hobby expenses. So these club owners do not aggressively grow and develop their businesses. 

When I was in Hong Kong, I visited a bookstore on Nathan Road, and found their boardgame section. The first thing I noticed was most of the titles were under Broadway Games. Many were international titles localised. I took the opportunity to ask Charles about Broadway Games. Their parent company is a toy manufacturer with factories in China. This parent company is a huge manufacturer, among the top ten in the world. It has been the manufacturing partner for international boardgame publishers for some time. One of their clients is Amigo. Broadway Games was established mainly to localise international games. Many of their titles are being manufactured by their parent company in the first place, so doing localisation into Chinese is a natural next step. By now Broadway has published close to 600 game titles, releasing about 40 games every year. They now publish original titles too. Another major player in Hong Kong is Capstone. They are the distributor for Asmodee and Swan Panasia of Taiwan. They have a large boardgame store in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong island. I almost wanted to pay a visit, but timing was bad and I couldn't make time for it. 

There are three major bookstore chains in Hong Kong, and they collaborate in backend operations. They handle large volumes, and because of that, they prefer to deal with only large vendors. It will be very difficult for indie game publishers like those in Malaysia to break in to chain stores like these. Our number of products and how much we can sell is too low for these big players. So this is similar to the situation in Malaysia. 

In shopping malls in Hong Kong, cash registers are typically directly managed by the mall as opposed to being managed by the shops. Shops can request for cash registers, but these cash registers are centrally controlled by the malls. The business model at shopping malls is shops pay a basic rent to mall, and they also pay a commission based on sales. That is why the malls need to have control of the cash registers. The malls want to attract more shoppers, because the more the shoppers spend at the shops, the more commission the malls will earn. Having centralised control of cash registers means the malls have the data to help them decide how to charge rent, and also whether to renew the rental agreements with the shops. 

Now some of the shops apply a similar business model renting shelves in their shops to product suppliers. You can rent a shelf to place your products. You have to pay basic rental, and then depending on your sales every month, you also pay a commission. Charles has rented such a shelf before at a large bookstore. It wasn't cheap, but it was a viable business arrangement. He made enough sales for such an arrangement to be profitable. He calculated and found that the basic shelf rental charged by the shop was enough to cover the shop rental which the shop needs to pay to the mall. This means even if the product supplier sells nothing for the whole month, the shop has nothing to lose. Any sales is a net profit to the shop. 

Boardgame Design and Publishing

Charles takes custom game design jobs. Sometimes corporates and NGO's approach him to create boardgames based on specific topics or objectives. These boardgames may not be sold to the public. Some are merchandise for a company. Some are gifts. He has designed games for anti-drug campaigns, anti-gambling campaigns, water preservation awareness and disability awareness. Little Fighter is a 25-year-old computer game which is re-releasing on Steam. In conjunction with the re-release, the makers are publishing a novel. The deluxe edition of this novel comes with a card game, and this card game is designed by Charles. 

Charles does localisation of international games too, and he says this is challenging to do. In Hong Kong, gamers are generally fine with English versions of boardgames. If there is a hot new game released internationally and they are interested, the game being in English is not a hindrance. If the Chinese version of a hot game is released later than the English version, by the time it is released, many of the Hong Kong gamers will have already bought the English version. Hong Kong uses Traditional Chinese, like Taiwan. China, Malaysia and Singapore use Simplified Chinese. If the Traditional Chinese version of a boardgame is not printed at the same time as the English international version, the volume would be small, and that drives up the cost. The volume for Traditional Chinese is not that big anyhow, so unit cost is always a challenge. Since Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese too, publishing collaborations between Hong Kong and Taiwan publishers make perfect sense. Charles knows many people from the Taiwan boardgame industry and he does collaborate with them. In Taiwan and China there is a bigger need for Chinese versions of boardgames, because compared to Hong Kong, the English proficiency is not as high. Malaysia and Hong Kong have the same challenge. We were both English colonies. With high English proficiency, there is little need for localisation. 

I asked Charles his thoughts about targeting the China market. He said that indeed China is a huge market. His full time work is with an office furniture company, and he has worked in Guangzhou before. The many cities and regions in China are all very different. They are different markets. We cannot think of China as a single big market. It may be even more complex than targeting South East Asia, with multiple countries, different cultures and different languages. Charles' China strategy is to find a reliable local partner and let them develop it. 

Some Hong Kong game designers pitch their games to Taiwanese publishers. Taiwan is a bigger market than Hong Kong. 

Charles has been to the Asian Board Games Festival in Singapore. He has come to Malaysia too, for BoxCon. He went to Essen in 2019. He doesn't think it's the right time yet for him to be exhibiting at Essen. It is better to focus on Asia first. Perhaps this is something Malaysian designers and publishers should think about too. Several Malaysian designer friends and I have been planning to apply for a government grant to exhibit at Essen. We should think hard about what we want to achieve and what preparations we need to make to ensure the trip is fruitful. 

One funny story Charles shared with me was about the box for 9Upper. For one of the print runs, the box was manufactured by a factory which also made boxes for the iPhone. That time Charles would show his game to friends and proudly declare "This is iPhone standard!" Charles has conducted a 9Upper competition at a large public event. The people who signed up did not know that the competition would be a little different form the standard rules. The core idea was still the same. Every round one highly specialised term was announced, and most contestants had to pretend to know what it was and explain it as convincingly as possible. However in this competition the participants did not play on separate tables. They had to go on stage and try to convince the whole audience. The audience voted for who they believed by applauding them. The host used a sound meter to measure the applause, and whoever had the least support was disqualified. 

I asked how 9Upper became so successful. Charles said that 9Upper was marketed primarily through channels outside of boardgame circles. Youtubers and influencers needed content, and 9Upper was a tool which let them generate interesting content for their viewers. These influencers were able to reach out to people who do not usually play boardgames. Charles had a clear target audience for 9Upper. He chose the right methods to create exposure for the game to its intended audience. This is something I need to learn to do better. 

Another effective way to promote boardgames is to collaborate with IP's outside of the boardgame industry. He did one collaboration with a Hong Kong beer brand, creating a drinking game version of 9Upper. If we want to let more people know about boardgames, we should not be thinking only about the boardgamer circle. 

Boardgames and Education

Charles' work on Boardgame Academy is relatively recent. They became more actively only since 2024. There are several active NGO's in Hong Kong, and Boardgame Academy received a grant from one. Charles and his two partners in this venture are all parents, so they care about education. Their children are going through the education system now. They see the problems with the current system, and want to be able to do something to address these problems. In the current system, children often find learning uninteresting. Learning is a chore. It is hard to relate what they learn to real life. Learning should be real and it should be fun. Boardgames is something that can arouse curiosity. When there is curiosity, learning becomes fun and satisfying. Children will view learning differently. Learning becomes something they are keen about. Such a change in mindset can transform lives. 

Boardgame Academy is now actively working with the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE). That day, after my interview session with Charles, he had an appointment at the Shatin campus to do a seminar. The Shatin campus focuses on two areas, social services and IT. Boardgames can support both of these. Charles has designed several boardgames which convey messages related to social issues. In digital game development, boardgames are a good way for students to learn about game design. 

One interesting case is how a game about Poland is used to teach and discuss history. The game is Warsaw: City of Ruins. In the game, Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is destroyed several times due to war, including World War I and World War II. When students played the game, they raised this question - is there going to be a World War III? This was an opportunity for the teacher to discuss World War III, international geopolitics, and also the Ukrainian War. Boardgames can draw people in and trigger thoughtful discussion. There is an annual book fair in Hong Kong in July. During the week-long fair, exhibitors can request for seminar slots for their guest speakers. Which slot you get depends somewhat on your speaker. Saturday and Sunday slots are the most sought after slots, usually reserved for high calibre speakers. Because of Warsaw: City of Ruins, Charles got connected to the Polish embassy in Hong Kong, and managed to invite the Polish ambassador to be his speaker. At that fair he managed to get a valuable weekend slot. 

Charles has collaborated with Rachel Chen of Taiwan and Xeo Lye of Singapore. Xeo's publishing house Capital Gains Studio has released several finance and business related educational games and they are now being used in Hong Kong. Charles was the translator for Reiner Knizia when he was in Beijing for DICE CON. That would be like a dream come true for me, being able to work with Reiner Knizia. 

As a publisher in Time2Play, Charles publishes and sells games, but Boardgame Academy does not aim to sell games. It is not pitching its own games as educational tools with the ultimate goal of selling more games. Its main goal is to address educational challenges. Whose game is being used does not matter, as long as it is the right game which solves the learning problem. 

In Hong Kong, just like in Malaysia, many people view computer games negatively. They are perceived as something youngsters get addicted to and forget everything else. Children become glued to their devices and don't develop social skills. People who want to promote boardgames say that boardgames will help to reduce screen time. I must admit I myself do this. Screentime is a pain point that many parents have. In Hong Kong, some people perceive boardgames as just a lesser evil compared to computer games. For drug addicts, one method to wean them off drugs is to allow them to take weaker drugs. It's called substitution therapy or medication-assisted therapy. Boardgames are perceived as such a substitute. Well, among gamers I would joke that boardgames are the worst drug, but on a serious note, I'm a little shocked that boardgames are perceived as a compromise and a lesser evil. A light drug. I have never thought of boardgames that way. In Malaysia, most people think of boardgames as kids' toys. People should not think of digital games as evil. I play mobile games myself. Games are entertainment. In moderation they are perfectly fine, digital or analog. 

There is a global NGO called Junior Achievement. Their Hong Kong chapter runs an annual competition called the International Trade Challenge. Students work in pairs to develop a product to be marketed internationally. They are not restricted to specific product types. In the competition last year, out of the top three, two were boardgames. This year, many entries were boardgames. It's nice to see such enthusiasm and awareness of boardgames. 

Charles is preparing to run a boardgame design competition in 2026. There will be two divisions - secondary and tertiary. For the secondary school division, teams which are shortlisted will be assigned mentors to guide them and support them in further developing and completing their boardgames. The mentors are local game designers from Hong Kong. This will be like the reality TV show The Voice of China (中国好声音). This will be helpful to the secondary school students. It's great to see game designers work together to teach and guide others. 

Another major event Charles is planning is a boardgame fair which will be on 27 Jun 2026. The main organiser will be the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education Shatin campus, while Boardgame Academy will be the co-organiser. This will be the first time a boardgame-specific fair of this size is held in Hong Kong. 

It's always interesting for me to learn about the boardgame hobby and industry in different countries. It was a fruitful trip to Hong Kong, and it was inspiring to have a chat with Charles. 

Rats of Wistar

Rats of Wistar is a game that makes me feel a little torn. Visually it reminds me of the Tom & Jerry cartoon, and I associate it with a children's game, but these are not at all what it actually is. This is a serious strategy game. After some reflection, I realise this should be classified as a heavy game. Don't let the art or the theme mislead you, as you might miss something you like. 

In this game you are genetically modified rats. You are all super smart. You have now escaped from the lab and established a colony in the countryside. As the colony grows, you decide it is time to elect a great leader. The most promising candidates will compete in a five-day contest. Whoever manages to grow and develop their family best will be made the great leader of the colony. 

The core mechanism of the game is worker placement. You will collect resources and make tools. You play five rounds, and each round you will send three of your team leaders out to perform actions. In the whole game you will have only 15 turns. The disc at the centre of the board shows 6 different main actions. The board is divided into three regions - forest, underground and house, and each region is associated with two of the main actions. There are six pie-shaped pieces on the disc. They have different numbers of spaces for worker placement. The icons next to these spaces mean additional benefits and actions you gain. The pie pieces move to new positions every round, which means in different rounds the number of spaces for the main actions changes.

To perform an action, you must place your leader on an empty space. However this is not all. You also need to have your rats (i.e. your crew) in the associated region. The number of rats you have determines how effective your leader is in performing the action. If you have two rats in the forest, and your leader collects wood, he collects two pieces of wood. If you have two rats in the house, and your leader explores the house, he performs two exploration actions. So you not only have to compete for worker placement spaces, you also need to have positioned your rats appropriately. There are some supplementary actions and also a resource type which let you move your rats about. 

One more thing you can send your leader out to do is to simply fight for turn order in the next round. This may seem weak, but it can be crucial if in the next round there is one important space you must win. When you fight for turn order, you also collect one potion. A potion is like a joker action. There are several things you can do with it, but just once. Flexible, but not very strong. Still, sometimes that flexibility can be very handy.

The player board

There are lots of things you can do in this game. Your player board starts with many bedrooms not yet excavated and beds not yet built. The two basic resources in the game are iron and wood. You gather iron so that you can dig holes and create rooms. You gather wood to build beds. Whenever you build a bed, you gain one rat. So this is like Agricola. When you can afford to have a kid (bedroom and bed ready), you have one. More rats means you can get more things done, or you can worry less about moving rats around because you have them everywhere. 

One of the main actions is drawing invention cards. These are tools with various powers, and many will be helpful. Some offer additional scoring abilities at game end. The tools themselves are often worth points too. When you draw a card, it doesn't immediately come into effect. You still need another action to play it, and you need to pay resources. 

Invention cards

Some inventions when played increase your skills - those pentagonal icons. These are things like strength, agility and intelligence. Some are needed to complete missions or objectives. Some are prerequisites for playing advanced inventions. 

Another important action is to explore the house. Initially all the doors are closed. It takes an explore action to open a door, and once it is open, everyone can pass through. The player who opens the door gets a small reward. There are closed doors between rooms too, and they work the same way. There are two types of items in the house - mission cards and guest mice. If you want to invite a guest, you must first have an empty room (no bed is okay). The guest comes to live with you and gives you some benefit. These mice might not be genetically modified, but they do give you nice perks. If you flip over a mission card, you gain a small reward, and after that all three missions on the card are made available to everyone. It's first come first served. 

To complete a mission, you must have your explorer rat in the same room as the mission card. You must fulfil the conditions specified or you must be willing to spend the resources required. Each mission can only be completed by one player. When you complete a mission, you take a cube from your player board to mark it as completed. Depending on where you take that cube from, you unlock an ability or receive some bonus.

These are heroes and they are not easy to recruit. 

I had one invention which let me score points whenever I took wood (the second one). I had another which let me score an extra point whenever I scored points (the fourth one). This was a great combo!

These are the mission cards. Those missions marked with cubes have been completed. 

There is a valuable piece of cheese in the deepest corner of the basement. 

This is a complex Eurogame. There is a lot you can do, but so little time. The many aspects of the game are interlinked. There are many opportunities to create synergies. Different things that you do can help build towards the same goal. For example when you complete a mission and get to remove a cube from your player board. You can choose the one which reduces your bed cost from 2 to 1 wood. This is half price! Building beds not only lets you have more rats, the beds themselves are worth points. The more beds you make, the higher their point values. Digging rooms works the same way. Sometimes you do it for the points, not for the rooms themselves. 

Many of the inventions offer strong powers. They will steer your strategy. Utilising the inventions well lets you do things more efficiently. At the start of the game, three objectives are randomly set up. These are quite difficult to achieve, but the rewards are attractive. They give you long-term goals to work towards, if you choose to attempt them. 

I have played the game twice. Playing Rats of Wistar feels a little weird. The first impression I get is this is a light and humourous game. However, upon playing the game I realise this is a tight and challenging game which requires much thought. I would be more comfortable with the game if the artwork were more serious, because this is a serious game. The cute art style creates a dissonance for me. The game can be brutal at times. In one particular round I was the start player, and there was only one spot for taking wood. I had lots of wood and I didn't really need more. However I noticed that Han and Jon were both low on wood. I took the wood space just to deny them. Yes, that was mean. If they were desperate for wood, I would be setting them back one full round, which is one fifth of the game! That is painful. 

Rats of Wistar is a heavy Eurogame. If you are a fan of Simone Luciani (note this is a co-designed game with Danilo Sabia), don't assume he's switching style to a lighter and more relaxing game. This is very much in his usual style, a game with strategic depth. 

Tag Team

Tag Team is a two player card battle game. Each player controls a team of two fighters. To win a game you only need to knock out one of the opponent fighters. The game system has many different characters, with many unique abilities and styles of fighting. Each character has its own deck of action cards. When you play the game, you shuffle together all the cards of both your characters to form one deck. 

A fight is always 2 vs 2

In a way, this is a programming game. Every round, both players will have a sequence of actions to execute. Your action sequence starts with just a few cards. Each card is for one of your characters. To execute a round, both players reveal their first cards at the same time. The two fighters associated with these two cards will perform actions. They may attack, they may prepare to attack, they may heal, or they be doing all sorts of fancy stuff. Once the impact of both cards are resolved, you move on to the second cards of both players. This goes on until all the cards in the action sequences have been resolved. 

When a new round starts, you draw three cards and decide which one to add to your sequence. You can decide where to insert it in your sequence, including at the start or at the end. However, you do not change the order of the other cards in your sequence. Your opponent knows your action sequence, but not this new card, and also not where you are inserting it. You need to respond to your opponent’s sequence by inserting your new card at an appropriate position. For example, if one of your fighters is heavily injured, and you want to protect him from further attack, you would want to insert a card of your other fighter in that position where your opponent makes a powerful attack. Then you will have your other fighter take the damage. However, your opponent might be thinking the same thing and he might also insert the new card at the same place, shifting his big attack one step so that he can still hit your weakened fighter. This is the kind of player psychology you have in this game.

One thing that is impressive about this game is how different the characters are. They feel very different and their special abilities are unique. They are not merely tweaked to be higher or lower in certain statistics. 

Galactic Cruise

Welcome to the age of space tourism! In Galactic Cruise you all work for a space tourism agency. You compete to become the best tour planner, so that you will become the next CEO of the company.

This is a complex worker placement game in which you have to orchestrate many moving parts to launch space trips for your clients. You have to build spaceships, obtain resources, advertise your tour packages in order to attract clients, and eventually you will launch your spaceships and send your clients to outer space. In the core worker placement mechanism, there are 12 different action types grouped into pairs. You always place your worker on a pair, and you are allowed to perform two different actions. You are not limited to performing those two specific actions in the pair. You can choose to perform actions on other action pairs which are connected to where you have just placed your worker. If they are connected by your own technology tokens, you can use those connected actions for free. Otherwise, you have to pay. You have much flexibility in this worker placement mechanism. 

Another reason why you have more flexibility is that occupied worker placement spots do not block entry. You can remove an opponent’s worker to place your own, it’s just that they will get a small reward. You don’t even have to pay for this. They take the reward from the bank. 

The player board and spaceships

In addition to the various steps required to launch space trips, many of your actions are related to improving your own abilities. For example, increasing your storage capacity for resources, and increasing your number of workers.

Trip itineraries, tour leaders and clients

Galactic Cruise is a heavy Eurogame about coordinating many elements of a project and executing your project efficiently. You have various tools and abilities which you want to utilise well to maximise your actions. 

The premise is interesting. The gameplay does not excite me. It’s a lot of work and the game has lots of stuff. If you like complicated work then there is plenty. Player interaction is mild. You don’t inconvenience your opponents much. You can grab stuff they want, but they will just need to wait a little or they can settle for something just slightly worse. There are small things you want to avoid doing so that you don’t create tactical opportunities for your opponents. For example you try not to deplete a resource completely because when your opponent performs a refill he will gain a bigger benefit. 

Take Time

Take Time was an impulse purchase when I was at the Thailand Board Game Show. I had not heard of the game before the show and discovered it there. The first thing that attracted me was the classy art. There were two versions displayed, a standard version and a giant version. I played the giant version. So don’t let these photos I took give you the wrong impression. The normal game is not in this size. 

Take Time is an abstract cooperative game for two to four players. Players need to play cards around a disk, mostly face down, without any communication or coordination. There are restrictions that must be adhered to. After all cards are played, you reveal them all and check whether you win. Cards are played into six segments around the disk. Generally you win if the sums of the card sets are in ascending order. The game comes with 40 different challenges. 

The card deck consists of 24 cards. Half are sun cards and the other half are moon cards. Each set is numbered 1 to 12. The sun and moon cards have different backs, so when your fellow player plays a card face-down, you know which type the card is. You just don’t know the number. 

This is a puzzle game. You have some information and you need to work together with your friends to solve the puzzle. Most cards are played face down. However there are a few opportunities for cards to be played face up. Anyone can use this at any time, when you think it is important to convey some concrete information. You can make deductions from your friends’ actions. Anyone can be the start player in a game. When one player chooses to go first, it means something. When a player plays a card to the highest value or lowest value slot, that card is likely a very high or very low card. The card colours help you make deductions. 

That feeling of communicating through actions is surreal. It is satisfying when you devise a way to communicate something, and your friends understand what you are trying to convey. 

The 40 puzzles are replayable, because the next time you play you will draw different cards. The rules and restrictions are the same, but the situation will be different due to the card deal. 

I have only played the first puzzle. I’m looking forward to explore this game further. 

Living Forest Duel

Living Forest Duel is the two player version of Living Forest. I think two player Living Forest works pretty well. Living Forest Duel is a slightly different game. 

One key difference is instead of revealing cards one by one from your deck on your turn, now you and your opponent take turns revealing cards from a common deck. There is still deck building and push-your-luck. On your turn you can choose to reveal a card, or if you are happy with the number of icons revealed of a certain type, you can choose to use up that icon type to perform an action. You will often be a little torn between the number of icons not being attractive enough and the worry that if you reveal a strong card you will hand your opponent a windfall. 

You can perform at most two actions in a round. Once you have done both, you must pass. If you reveal a third nocturnal animal, you will lose an action. This part of push-your-luck is still in the game. 

Of the various things you can do in the game, they now help you towards four different winning conditions instead of three. You win by either putting out enough fires, planting enough trees, filling the market with animals of your season, or pushing the evil spirit far enough towards your opponent. 

Fires spread from where the evil spirit is, and if they are not controlled well, they will lead to bad cards being added to the common deck. This is the deck building part of the game, where bad cards will lead to players finding it hard to get things done. You need water icons to put out fires. 

You need tree icons to plant trees. You need to create a 3 x 3 grid to win. Tree cards have icons along their edges. When you match the icons, you gain some benefit.

There is a mechanism to push the evil spirit along a track towards your opponent. This is yet another way you can win the game.

A slightly more complicated one to explain is filling the market with animals of your season type. Initially the market has three summer and three winter animals. One player is summer and the other winter. The common deck starts with neutral cards, which can be used by both players. If you buy and add a card which matches your season, in the future, when it is drawn, its icons will only help you and not your opponent. Normally, you would want to buy animals which match your season. However, you are allowed to buy your opponent’s animals. They will not be useful to you when they are drawn in future. However, when you buy them, their slots in the market are replenished using your animals. If you manage to fill the market with your animals, you win immediately.  This way of winning requires that you do something bad to yourself. It is a little risky.

This is a game of making threats and forcing your opponent to react. There are four ways you can threaten to win. It might become a race, when the players decide to rush for two different conditions. However, most likely you won’t be able to resist trying to slow your opponent down. Pushing the evil spirit and filling the market with your animals are two things where your opponent can undo your progress. Planting trees and putting out fires are areas where your progress cannot be undone. If you are doing well, your opponent will have to try to overtake you or they have to try to be faster winning using another approach.

This is a tight game. You cannot go in expecting a nice family Euro style game where you can happily explore and everything gives you some points. You need to be deliberate about what you want to do and how you want to win. You need to be efficient and focused, else it is easy to fall behind and never recover. Some attacks are feints intended to waste your time defending. Yet you cannot completely ignore them in case that avenue becomes a viable winning condition for your opponent. 

I like the original a little more, but it might be because I played it first.  Living Forest Duel delivers a slightly different experience. Like the predecessor, I like how you need to be constantly thinking about the four different winning conditions. There is always a sense of urgency.

Chinese Flower Card

Chinese Flower Card is a Malaysian designed game from Specky Studio. It is based on the 24 solar terms and the 72 pentads in Chinese tradition. Before I wrote this post I did not know these English words "solar terms" and "pentads". I only know the original Chinese terms 二十四节气 and 七十二候. One pentad is 5 days in the Chinese calendar, and one solar term is three pentads. The Chinese calendar is neatly divided as such, and every solar term has its own name. Some of them mark the solstices and equinoxes. There are various traditions associated with them. The game is also partly inspired by Japanese hanafuda cards. This is a set collection game. The cards have various point values, and when you collect cards of the same month, you score bonus points. 

The basic cards in the game score 1 point each. Cards with animals, insects, relics, special sceneries and farmers are worth more points, ranging from 2 to 5. Cards are grouped into 12 months, and there are six cards for each month. As soon as you start collecting the second card of a month, you score bonus points. If you collect all six cards of a month, you will score a whopping 15 points.

Every round, twelve cards are drawn from the deck and laid out in a 4x3 grid like this. Each player has three butterflies in their colour, and you take turns placing them along the edges of the grid. Only one butterfly can be placed in a segment, so if somebody has placed a butterfly, you cannot use the same spot. However, each row and column has two ends. If only one end is occupied, the other end is still available. When you place your second and third butterflies, you get to claim cards at the intersections marked by your butterflies. Make sure you mark 2 columns and 1 row or 1 column and 2 rows, never 3 columns or 3 rows. That would be pretty dumb. Normally you will claim two cards per round.

The core mechanism is very simple. The game is for two to six players, but the play experience can be quite different at different player counts. With two or three players, the game is quite chill, and this is the exact word one of the designers Buddhima uses to describe the game. Most of the time you will be able to get valuable cards. With five or six players, the game is more challenging. Not only will you find it harder to get what you want, sometimes you might not even get two cards.

Specky Studio specialises in educational games. The concepts in Chinese Flower Card are all based on the Chinese calendar and Chinese tradition. You get a glimpse into Chinese culture and history. Every card is a painting, and the elements in the paintings have meaning behind them. If you look closely at the cards, you will find tigers mating, because that particular card indeed represents mating season. If you are a teacher familiar with Chinese culture, this game offers many opportunities for you to tell stories and share knowledge. Since this is a simple game, non-gamers and even primary school children can easily pick it up and enjoy it. One story which Buddhima shared with me was how this game became a shared pastime between a grandfather and a grandchild. It created moments of conversation and passing knowledge to the next generation. Yes, games are just games, and at the same time they are also our heritage and shared memories. 

Ultimate Railroads

Ultimate Railroads is a collection of games in the Russian Railroads series. The series includes variants of the original Russian Railroads, built on the same core engine, a worker placement engine. This is for fans who want more of the same. So far I have played German Railroads and Asian Railroads. Both contain tweaks to the original, while retaining most of the original mechanisms. 

This is all familiar

One new element in German Railroads is customisable tracks. There are several track sections in dotted lines which are blank. When you first have a track piece enter such a section, you get to choose a section tile to place on that section. You have several options, and you can pick one which helps you most in your strategy. These section tiles are first come first served. Players will end up with different railroads. 

There are many options for those customisable sections (first three rows)

One more new thing in German Railroads is how there is a split in the Munich line (the middle one). When you get to the fork you have to make a choice. Depending on the branch you choose, you will have different rewards to work towards. 

Allen recruited many engineers (tiles on the right)

Han spent much effort on upgrading the middle track

Asian Railroads is more different. The biggest one being the shared industry board. Player boards no longer have the industry track. Industrialisation is all done on the same shared board. There are some optional detours which let you perform specific actions. Like the base game, you can only advance past certain positions if you have placed a factory to link up the path. Here the board is shared, which means if your opponent has placed such a factory, you can say thank you and use it.  

Another new element is the wagons. These are your pieces which can be placed on the industrialisation board. Sometimes you get to place these next to factories. On your turn, instead of placing a worker you can exhaust a wagon to perform the action associated with it. 

The three train routes have some train slots which are initially locked. You need to make progress to certain positions before you can unlock these slots. When you have the opportunity to unlock, you have to consider carefully which route will need that additional train slot.