Malaysia Design & Play Game Design Competition 2026 Results

The results of the Design & Play Game Design Competition 2026 have been announced on Malaysia Day, 16 Sep 2026. Congratulations to Muhammad Aiman Haqiemi Mohd Shaipul (Jalan Jem), Anas Maghfur (Unlawful) and Andrew Tan Kui An (Malaysia's Last Tigers). I am one of the six judges for the competition. We had our judging day on 12 Sep 2026 at Lalaport. It was one full day of everyone playing every finalist game. I will briefly introduce our finalists before sharing my thoughts. 

1st Place: Jalan Jem by Muhammad Aiman Haqiemi Mohd Shaipul

Everybody hates traffic jams. Everybody blames the stupid motorists switching lanes all the time worsening the traffic. But we are traffic! We are all part of the problem. Jalan Jem puts all of you on the same highway. The slow, middle and fast lanes have different capacities. If there is too much traffic in a particular lane, your travel time will increase. If traffic is smooth, it increases less, or you might even save some time. Your goal is to reach your destination in the shortest time possible, by avoiding traffic jams. 

Everyone has a die representing their vehicle. You roll your die every round, and the value represents traffic. Everyone decides simultaneously whether to stay in the same lane or switch to an adjacent lane. Note that you can't switch two lanes at one go, e.g. from slow lane straight to fast lane. That's reckless driving. The lanes from slow to fast have different risks and rewards. The slow lane has a bigger capacity and thus less risk of getting jammed. However staying in the slow lane always adds some time to your road trip. In case it gets jammed, it only adds 10 more minutes to your trip. Not too bad. 

The middle lane has a smaller capacity. If there is no jam (i.e. all the dice added up is less than or equal to the capacity), you add no time to your trip. But if it gets jammed, you are going to add 40 minutes to your trip, which is horrible. But not as horrible as when the fast lane gets jammed, like this photo below. 

The fast lane is easiest to get jammed. If it doesn't get jammed, you shorten your trip by 20 minutes. But if it does and you get stuck in that jam, you are adding 60 minutes to your trip. The fast lane is high risk, high reward. 

This game is about guessing the intentions of the other motorists on the road. It is most fun with the highest player count. 

2nd Place: Unlawful by Anas Maghfur

Play the role of a lawful trader or a pirate during the era of the Melaka Sultanate. Being a trader, you need to collect cargo of either the same type or of different types to score points. You can also support the sultanate in fighting pirates. If you decide to turn pirate, the actions that become available to you will be completely different. It takes time for you to build up your capabilities, but once you do so, you can earn many points. 

The game is complex and competitive, and players often find they need to work together to prevent others from running away with the game. There are such uneasy alliances in several aspects of the game. If you are the raid leader, sometimes you are forced to agree to let someone join you to score points together, because otherwise he will disrupt your plans. Sometimes the traders must all agree to claim dice of a particular colour to prevent the pirate from capturing a die colour he wants. 

You use the two cards on the right to track your points. 

The back of your character card is your pirate identity, if you choose to turn pirate. You will capture dice to be placed here. Dice placed here determine the actions available to you. You can have at most one die per column. As you move the die up, you will have more options - all visible squares below the die. 

3rd Place: Malaysia's Last Tigers by Andrew Tan Kui An

This is an asymmetrical 2-player game. One player is the poacher, and the other the ranger. The poacher tries to capture the tiger, while the ranger must protect the tiger or capture the poacher. 

Every round the ranger performs one action, and then the poacher, and then the tiger will move using a die roll. The actions of the ranger and the poacher are very different. The ranger has dice to manage, and the dice rolled determine the options available to him. The poacher has no dependency on dice. 

The tiger moves along a jungle path of four face-down cards. If the card it lands on is a trap, the tiger is injured, and the poacher has the option of attempting to capture it. The ranger will try to heal the tiger so that it gets moving again. If the tiger is trapped a third time, the poacher wins the game. There are five trap cards in the game, and one thing the poacher gets to do is to insert a trap into the deck. The ranger can try to look for traps in the deck. He can reveal cards, and he can remove cards. Removing cards without having seen what they are is risky, because some cards are helpful to the ranger. Many cards are action cards that can be used by both the players. If the ranger is able to remove three traps, the ranger wins. 

The ranger can attempt to directly capture the poacher. However the poacher has an escape card which protects him from capture. The ranger will first need to exhaust that card and then perform another capture to actually arrest the poacher. The poacher is able to refresh the escape card only by using specific game cards. 

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The following are the other finalists in no particular order. 

Rempit Gang! by Chua Cher Yen

This is a push-your-luck game about riding your motorbike up the hills. The further you can ride, the more points you will score. You must place dice in ascending order, and the dice placed must be less than or equal to the card values. The push-your-luck comes when you need to decide whether to attempt the next card. 

Road Trip Sabah! by Jeyna Lim

Players build their own 3x3 grid of cards, trying to create pairs of matching icons, and rows and columns of the same colours. The active player rolls dice to determine actions available for the round, then claims one die to perform an action. This die is no longer available to the others. The other players may use any of the remaining dice to perform an action. Actions include taking cards from a market of available cards to add to your own grid, drawing a card from the deck, removing a neighbour's card, and exchanging a card with a neighbour. 

haUNTUNG by Alwyn Wong

The surveyor knows how much it takes to complete a construction project, and tries to convince everyone to contribute as much as they can. If the project is completed successfully, the surveyor pockets any surplus. If the project fails, the player who contributed the least is penalised. 

Pawang Rangers by Khai Aswandi

This is a cooperative game and you play ghostbusters. You start with fighting minor ghouls to level up. As you level up, you will roll more dice when fighting. You also unlock special abilities. Eventually you have to fight the bosses. If you can defeat them all before the map runs out of cards, you win. 

Viral Food Dishes by Jeremy Ooi

This is a two player game about making food dishes that get the most likes on social media. Every round, each player gets to play two cards, and at then you must compare who has the most likes. If one has more than the other, he scores 1 point. Get to 3 points and you win the game. Every food card has some ability, and some of them are handicaps. Two food cards of different types combine to make a dish. Three make a completed dish, and completed dishes are safe from attack. This is a game of fully utilising the card powers to stay competitive. 

Niah Caves by Yong Qian Ee

This is a team game. The illegal explorers want to explore all corners of the Niah Caves, while the police needs to catch them. You unveil the map as you explore. If a police officer has line of sight of an explorer, they run faster by two steps. 

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This was the second time I did judging for the Design & Play competition. In the first round of judging when we had to score the entries based on short video and rulebook, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall better quality of the entries. There were several games I was keen to try, and not all of them made it to the final round. In the final judging round of the nine finalist games, unfortunately I was disappointed with several of them. There were games which sounded promising based on the premise and or the game concept, but in execution did not work or were unbalanced. I felt some of the games were not playtested enough. Making a good game is not easy. A good idea is not enough. In fact even a great idea is not enough. The execution and the development are crucial in making a robust and enjoyable game. 

Back: Chee Kong, Logan, Haireey, Jon. Front: Chok Sien, Buddhima.

Throughout this competition the six of us judges looked through 65 different games. Behind every game, a designer has spent time and effort bringing an idea to life. To me that is an amazing thing. This is what running a game competition is about. How we incubate innovation. How we encourage people to get their hands dirty in creating a game. How we ask people to go through that creative process - the ideation, the iterations, the playtesting, designing components to make the game as intuitive as possible, constructing a clearly written rulebook. We are game lovers who enjoy making games, we encourage others to join us. Let's make great Malaysian games! 

Azure

 

This is a game I have been keen to write about since I played it. In recent months, my to-do list of blog posts to write has been hovering around 15 to 20 items long. I generally write in a first-in-first-out manner, but sometimes some blog posts cut queue, for example when I write about exhibitions I attend. I have heard a little about Azure, and I thought it was just another flavour of the month thing. In the past year there were several hugely popular games which I found uninteresting. Azure took me by surprise and it will be one of my favourite new-to-me games in 2026. 

Azure is a two player game. To describe it in the most boring way, you take turns placing stones onto the board until one of you win by reaching 25 points, or until one of you lose by being unable to place a stone. Let me describe how the game works in more detail for you to see the beauty. The board is randomly set up using four pieces. Each segment corresponds to one of four heavenly creatures - dragon, tiger, phoenix and tortoise. The creature piece is placed on a mountain in the section belonging to the creature. Players compete for the creatures, which give various benefits. 

Notice that every space on the board has one or more icons. To place your stone in a space, you must pay cards in the colour of the segment, and you must pay as many cards as the number of icons. You start the game with 2 or 3 cards, which means in the early game you don't have many options. When you place a stone, you gain the benefits on the space. Most of the time it is points, or cards in a specific colour. You must make sure you have enough cards to keep playing. If you are unable to place a stone, you lose immediately. 

The importance of a placed stone is it gives you a discount for any space in the same column or row, unless blocked by a mountain. You notice some spaces have as many as 6 or 7 points. That means you need to pay 6 or 7 cards in the right colour. Spaces that give you cards only give 1 or 2. To place a stone on a 6 or 7 point space, you must rely on discounts. 

Every time you place a stone, you are building your network of discounts. To get to those high valued spaces, you need to have placed stones in the same rows and columns. You must plan ahead. You will be competing with your opponent for those juicy spaces. Can you beat your opponent to those spaces? 

You claim the creatures in a similar way as those discounts. For the dragon and the tiger, as soon as one player has two stones in the same row or column as their mountain, that player gets to claim the creature. The other player can win the creature over only by exceeding the influence of the current controller. The dragon and the tiger are worth 3 and 2 points respectively. You win the phoenix not by placing stones in the same row or column as its mountain, but by placing stones in its segment. When you claim the phoenix, you gain 2 more cards. If you lose it, you discard 2 cards. Claiming the tortoise also works a little differently. You claim it by having placed stones in serpent circles, and these serpent circles are scattered around the board. The tortoise isn't worth points either, but it allows you to place one stone on its mountain. This stone works just like your other stones. 

This is a confrontational game. It may look zen, but every space that you manage to claim is a space you have prevented your opponent from using. Other than the initial card draws, this is a perfect information game. You know which cards your opponent has taken, because which cards to take are listed on the board. You have to fight for the creatures. Allowing your opponent to dominate puts you at a huge disadvantage. You must constantly pay attention to your control over the creatures. Placing stones must be done strategically, helping you towards those high valued spaces. Sometimes you place stones for the sake of getting the right cards. You do still need cards to place stones in specific spaces. You need to build a good discount structure across the board, and at the same time you try to prevent your opponent from doing the same. You fight a multi-front battle, competing for the four creatures and building your power structure. The rules are pretty straightforward, but the game is strategic. You must think ahead. 

Zombicide

Zombicide has been around for quite some time. I have never been a zombie fan, so I never got around to trying it until recently, when I played the second edition of the game. This is a cooperative game. Every player controls two characters. You try to survive in a zombie apocalypse. The game is scenario based, and every scenario has a different set of winning conditions. Sometimes you need to escape through a certain location. Sometimes you need to find certain items. If any of your party dies, you lose. 

The game is intuitive to learn. Every character has some action points. You spend them to move, attack zombies, break doors, search for items, exchange items with other characters and so on. After every character has acted, it is the zombies’ turn to act. They move towards you, or if they can’t see you, they move towards noise. Making noise to redirect zombies is a valid tactic here. Zombies in the same space as you attack you. You don’t want to end up in the same space as any zombie still alive. Hah! “Alive”! 

One mechanism I like is how zombies slow you down and even completely bog you down. Moving costs one action point, but it costs an additional action point for every zombie in the same space. You really don’t want to share space with zombies. If there is just one, you can try to kill it first then move. If you are swamped by several, you are probably going to die and lose the game, unless you have some special ability or powerful weapon, or your friends manage to help you. In one game I was trapped by four or five zombies. Thankfully I had the legendary Japanese sword which could deal much damage. I barely managed to kill that group of zombies which surrounded me. 

Characters have either two or three life points. You die quite easily. Once anyone dies, everyone loses. Every character has an adrenaline meter. Various things increase this adrenaline value, like killing zombies and completing missions. As your adrenaline reaches certain thresholds, you unlock new abilities for your character. This is fun. However adrenaline value also increases the number of zombies spawned. The spawn rate is determined by the highest adrenaline level among all characters. There’s escalation in the game. Your characters get stronger. You also get more zombies, and stronger zombies. Sooner or later you will be overwhelmed by zombies. You must complete your missions before you get overrun. The build-up of zombies is effectively a timer. 

One exciting element I like is how searching for items can get you unexpected zombies instead. I always like searching. Maybe I like that lucky draw feeling. Now I have learnt (the hard way) that you probably shouldn’t search with your last action point. If you find a zombie, you won’t have any action point left to try to kill it. 

I like that the scenarios are pretty challenging. This is not a feel-good cooperative game. You need to play purposefully and not waste actions. I find this an accessible game. There is a fair bit of rules and the many characters, weapons and zombie classes have various abilities. However the rules are intuitive so you don’t feel you have to learn them. You’re just doing what you’d be doing if you were in a zombie apocalypse. 

Quick takes: Neon Reign, Mercado de Lisboa, Jurassic Snack

Neon Reign is a simple game I have played several times, and still don't understand. This is a 2-player card game about those 1v1 fighting arcade games. There are several characters you can play, and every character has their own deck of cards. To win, you need to reduce the opponent's life points to zero. 

You have a hand of seven. Your cards are mostly button presses or joystick moves. Some are specific defensive moves like blocks and throws. On your turn, you either play cards to attack, or you draw to seven. Some cards when played in combination give you extra effects. For example extra attack points, or storing energy for your power attack. Some cards can be used in response to your opponent's attack, possibly cancelling some of their card plays. 

These are the various combinations and their effects

Every character has a different power attack. You need to store energy for this. Once the energy bar for this is full, you unleash the power attack. Usually you'll deal some damage, and there are usually other effects as well.

Although I have played three games, I feel I have been doing the equivalent of button-mashing. I still don't quite know what I'm doing, and I am losing consistently. I always complain that when I play complex games on BGA, I don't have patience to learn the game properly. Neon Reign is not a complex game, and it's not hard to learn. I don't know why I am so clueless about this game. Is this just a pretty random game? Or are there tactics I have not discovered? Looking at how consistently I am losing games, my hunch is I don't really get the game yet. I need to play this more. 

So far I have been mostly playing as many buttons and joysticks as I can, until I'm out of cards, and then I replenish. I suspect that is not necessary the best move. Maybe I should be replenishing more to try to get better combos. Also I suspect I need to be building up my shields more. Possibly I need to be saving cards for defence. Maybe I need to anticipate attacks and keep cards that can break the opponent's combos. 

I can't conclude about this game yet. I'm still need to figure it out, despite it being such a simple game. 

Mercado de Lisboa is a game about opening market stands, placing restaurants, attracting customers, and most important of all, making money. 

This is a tile laying game. You will place market stands, which will cost money depending on how crowded the row and column are. You will also place customers along the edges. When you do this, all market stands in the row or column which sell something the customers want make money. The board starts with some restaurants. When market stands are placed next to matching restaurants, they can earn more money. If a market stand is placed on top of a grey restaurant, you claim that restaurant and you can place it (coloured side) on a future turn. 

You win by having the most money. In the early game, you need to earn money to fund your subsequent market stands. This means spending victory points to earn more victory points. Money is victory points. This is a perfect information game. You have to plan carefully how to position your market stands well to make the most profit, and at the same time try not to help your opponents. A market stand can potentially earn money from four customer tiles. Customer placement spots are valuable and you have to watch out. The game looks simple, but I think if you want to play well you have to play thoughtfully, considering your opponents' possible moves. 

If you claim restaurants (the round tokens) but fail to place them all before the game ends, you will lose $1 per restaurant. Restaurants don't belong to anyone. They help all matching market stands next to them. 

Customer values go from 1 to 4. You can play the higher level customers only when a row or column has the required number of market stands. It is important to position your market stands to score big in late game. I think the game is deeper and more serious that it appears to be. 

Jurassic Snack feels like a children's game. Maybe it is. It is an abstract game for 2 players that plays in about 15 minutes. 

You move your dinosaurs in straight lines (like rooks in chess) to eat vegetation. When you eat a patch of vegetation, you flip over the tile to see what's in front. 

Some of the vegetation tiles show special powers, e.g. you can fly one dinosaur anywhere, or you give birth to a new dinosaur. Tiles have point values (represented as number of leaves). 

Two of the vegetation tiles show a T-Rex. Once a T-Rex comes into play, on your turn you can choose to move it instead of one of your dinosaurs. The T-Rex moves in a straight line too, but it eats dinosaurs instead of vegetation (of course). 

If you manage to have a T-Rex eat all of your opponents' dinosaurs, you win, ignoring the points scored from eating veggies. The victory points only apply if the game ends in a normal way - when players are not able to eat anything on two consecutive turns. 

Technically the T-Rex doesn't eat your dinosaurs. The rulebook clearly says it just scares them away. If you are playing this with your child, please use the proper term. 

See you in Klang

I'm going to booth at a mid-autumn festival event in Klang on Saturday 19 September, 5pm - 10pm. If you are in Klang, come play with me! 

Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends

 

Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends is a 2013 game from Vlaada Chvatil. This guy is a genius. He made Through the Ages, Galaxy Trucker, Codenames, Mage Knight, Space Alert, and many more. Most of his games are very different from one another. Tash-Kalar too is very different form his other titles. He makes bold publishing decisions. 

The basic premise is you are two teams of fighters in an arena. There are several game modes, and I have only played one of them. You have pawns that you can deploy into the arena. There is a basic action of deploying a common pawn on any empty spot. Your fighters come in three levels - common, heroic and legendary. You can deploy common fighters directly, but heroic and legendary fighters can only be summoned by fulfilling conditions on your spell cards. One thing that's very unusual in this game is you can't move your fighters anywhere you like. Your fighters can only move as the result of triggering spells, and spells are triggered when you have fighters positioned in specific orientations. 

You have your own deck of cards, representing your faction. In your hand you will have basic cards, advanced cards, and a catch-up card. Configurations on basic cards are easier to achieve. Those on the advanced cards are much harder, but the effects of these cards are more powerful too. The catch-up card can only be used if your board position is much weaker than your opponent. 

You can activate a card when you have fighters on the board which fulfil the criteria. Some cards let you deploy fighters, or upgrade fighters, or kill enemy fighters. You rely on these cards to get yourself heroic and legendary fighters. Cards allow you to move fighters too. 

Red and green spaces on the board are sometimes relevant to card effects. Red means danger, and usually that's where fighters get killed. Green means life, and sometimes fighters get deployed or upgraded here. In the screenshot above you can see that the light green faction has all three levels of fighters. Most of the time fighters can only kill enemies of the same level or lower. If you manage to kill enemies on your turn, you score them at the end of your turn. You gain 1 point for every two common fighters, 1 point for every heroic fighter, and 2 points for every legendary fighter. In the game mode I played, we raced towards 18 points. 

This advanced card is quite hard to activate because two of the fighters in the configuration must be at least heroic fighters. You need to find ways to either upgrade common fighters in those positions, or somehow move heroic fighters into position using other cards. 

Tash-Kalar is certainly an interesting game. There are tons of team-based tactical battle games, but I have never seen anything quite like this. This is certainly refreshing. I wonder what it feels like to play this game at a higher skill level. When you know your own deck well, you will be prepared for the kind of configurations you will need. You will place your fighters in the patterns you expect to need, before you draw those cards. When you know your opponent's deck well too, you will try to place fighters to prevent them from making the patterns they need. In the game I played, since it was my first game, I played in a mostly tactical manner. I just tried to make use of the cards I had. I tried to use them under situations where their effects would be maximised, e.g. being able to kill an enemy fighter. It is satisfying to plan a combo play of your cards. You can use some cards to set yourself up to use other cards. It feels great to pull off those advanced cards.