Behind the scenes: Taking Sides

My boardgame hobby has been changing. In recent years I got into game design and publishing, and am no longer purely a player. In a way, I'm playing a different game. It's a complicated economic game. How does an indie boardgame designer and publisher survive and thrive in a highly competitive market, where the barrier of entry is low and there are already many established players. I use my blog to record my boardgame journey. It started as a blog about the games I've played. Now I'm also sharing about my design and publishing journey. 

One thing I have seen for many years and never really understood the appeal of is designer diaries. I rarely read designer diaries. They normally talk about the design and development story behind a particular game. They talk about behind-the-scene details which the regular consumer wouldn't know. Most of the designer diaries I see are not by particularly famous designers or about particularly well known games. That is why I am rarely interested in reading them. If I already like a game and I come across the designer diary, I would be interested to read the story. Now that I am doing game design and publishing, I can better appreciate how designer diaries are a marketing tool. Well known games and designers don't really need them. It is the lesser known games and designers who will benefit more from them. The fact that designer diaries continue to exist means they are effective. It's just that they don't work on me as a marketing tool. 

Since this blog is just my personal journey, I decided to do a designer diary for one of my games - Taking Sides. This game is not published yet. In fact I haven't even decided to publish it. So it seems silly to write a designer diary for it. It certainly serves no marketing purpose. There is no product yet. However I am enjoying the development process of this game. So this designer diary is just about recording the fun I am having with it. 

The Game

Taking Sides is (at least for now) a card game for 3 to 8 players. Every round the players will split up into two alliances. You get to choose which side you want to be on. There is loot to be won each round. The winning alliance wins the loot, and it must be divided equally among the alliance partners. If the loot cannot be divided equally, any leftover stays in the prize pool for the next round. The game ends when someone reaches 10 points. Highest scorer wins. 

What's interesting about the game (at least I think so) is the character cards. Everyone gets a random character at the start of a round. A character card has a strength value which ranges from 0 to 9, and a special power. When you pick teams, you don't know yet the identities of the other players. At least you don't know for sure. They can tell you who they are, but can you trust them? If you get into an alliance of losers, you are probably doomed. So the weaker characters will want to join the stronger ones. However, there is no absolute weaker or stronger. The strength value is just part of it. The special power can be crucial to the alliance winning. Some powers weaken or disable opponents. Some boost teammates. Some powers combine well. 

This is the game in a nutshell. 

This is the setup for 6 players. Everyone is dealt a character card. Those not dealt are revealed, except for one which is kept face-down. With 6 players, there are only 5 blue alliance tokens and 5 red alliance tokens. This means there are at most 5 players on one alliance. At least one person will be forced to join the other alliance. You add 6 victory point tokens to the prize pool every round, i.e. the same as the number of players. If the alliances is 3 vs 3, then members on the winning team will earn 2 victory points (VP) each. If the competition is 4 vs 2, and the larger team wins, they will earn only 1VP each. However if the smaller team wins, they will each earn 3VP. That's a 300% difference! In the most extreme case, you can have a 5 vs 1 situation, and the lone player winning. If this happens, that lone guy is scoring 6VP. If there are points left over from the previous round, it can be even more. 

The Core Ideas

I checked my records. The initial idea for Taking Sides was written down in May 2024. One source of inspiration was Citadels by Bruno Faidutti. This is a highly successful game. When I first got into the hobby in 2003, it was already a hit. It was one of the earliest games I bought. It is still a popular game now after more than 20 years. It has become an evergreen title.  In Citadels every player gets to choose a character, and you don't know which character your opponents have chosen. In Taking Sides, you don't get to choose your character. Instead you get to choose a team to join. The idea I want to express in Taking Sides is how fleeting alliances are. It is everyone for themselves, and alliances are but a tool for selfish gain. Alliances of convenience are temporary. Next round, you get all new alliances.  

I want to create a game with high player interaction. I create that through players negotiating and discussing possible alliances. You want to know whether these potential partners can actually help you win. You want to be on the winning side. 

I like to make games with some secret information, with the possibility of gaining an edge with secrets you have, and with the challenge of guessing secrets others hold. Cards are a good way to create secret information in games. Having secrets in a game means people may lie about what they know or don't know. Social deduction games are popular and there are many such games out there, like Werewolf, Secret Hitler, The Resistance. You don't know who is friend or foe and a big part of the game is figuring that out. Having played several such games, sometimes I find this aspect of the game tiresome. With Taking Sides I try to turn this upside down. You get to choose your team, and it is public information. You don't get to choose your character, and it is secret. 

How the Theme Evolved

This is a mechanism-first game. The first theme I picked was Street Fighter II. For no specific reason. I knew each card needed to be a character. It would be best to use some characters people were familiar with. Randomly deciding on SFII characters is showing my age. I Googled and found these nice drawings of SFII characters, and used them in my first prototype. 

Later on I saw that the prestigious Hippodice game design competition was open for registration. I decided to give it a shot. For this competition I couldn't use other people's art without permission. Using someone else's intellectual property wasn't appropriate either. So I needed to find a different theme. The SFII theme didn't quite make sense in the first place. I thought about using a war era in history. I considered the Warring States period in China. Eventually I decided to use the more popular Three Kingdoms period. Simply because more people are familiar with the historical figures of that era. It is also what I am more familiar with. I Googled cute Three Kingdom characters, and found these:

I couldn't use them directly, so I drew my own versions in a similar style. One reason I picked the Three Kingdoms theme was I wanted to express the character combos in the game. It would be fun when the characters in the story matched the combos in the game. For example Card 4 hurts Cards 7, 8 and 9, turning them to 0. However if these four cards gang up, Cards 7 to 9 would have little to fear and they would be a very strong combo. So I made Card 4 Zhuge Liang, the strategist, and Cards 7 to 9 the three sworn brothers Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. People who are familiar with Three Kingdoms will naturally want to group them together. This makes learning the game easier too. 

As I work further on this project, I don't know whether I will continue to keep the Three Kingdoms setting. This is a rather overused setting, often seen in boardgames, comics and mobile games. I'll worry about this later. There's more work I need to do on the game mechanisms. 

How the Mechanisms Evolved

(1)

My first prototype involved dice. They were used in the loot mechanism. I wanted to inject variability in the loot available each round, and also wanted to make sure the loot was not always easily divided among the winners. You determine the loot available every round by rolling dice. The pips are the victory points. Players in the winning team take turns claiming a die, until the dice are all gone. The number of dice won't always be exactly divisible by the number of members on the winning team. That means someone will get fewer dice. Also die values will differ. If you want to, you can negotiate how to split the loot up front, before you decide who to partner with. The intention behind the variability in the loot is to create a reason for negotiation. 

The moment I started playtesting this, I found it too much trouble, and quickly gave up. The hassle wasn't worth it. It's good that I got rid of the dice. That means lower production costs. The latest loot mechanism may be simple, but it manages to achieve one important thing I want. Having many partners may increase your chances of winning, but it also means the rewards are spread thinly. So going with the smaller team (and winning) is more lucrative. This tempts people to want to take chances with the apparent underdog. 

(2)

Bigger is stronger is a problem. Now I know it is logical that when you have more people in your alliance, on average, the sum of your strengths would be higher than that of the enemy alliance of fewer people. I have designed the character powers to disrupt this. Some powers help the smaller alliance win. However when I playtested the game, I found that the bigger alliance not only had a higher total strength on average, they also had more powers they could activate. So the problem was with those powers, not just the strength numbers. I addressed this by limiting the number of powers the larger alliance was allowed to activate. The larger alliance may only activate as many powers as there are members in the smaller alliance. 

Two of the powers are "bad" powers, and they are mandatory. Let's talk about Zhang Fei first. He's a 9, the largest number in the game. However if he is not in the smaller alliance, he becomes a 4. He is himself only when he's the underdog. Even in an equal fight he would feel unmotivated. If he is in the larger alliance, the alliance must use this power, taking up one valuable slot. 

Zhang Fei

I haven't decided what to call the other guy with a mandatory power. Maybe he will be Dong Zhuo. His ability is good for himself, but not for his alliance partners. If the alliance he is in wins, and the loot cannot be equally divided, he takes the leftover. Imagine this. 7 points need to be divided by 4 alliance partners. Normally each only gets 1 point. However if Dong Zhuo is present, he gets 4 points! His (temporary) friends won't be too happy. 

Dong Zhuo maybe?

Both these powers are mandatory. If the larger alliance has these members, these two powers must be activated and there will be fewer slots for other powers that can help defeat the other alliance. 

(3) 

In one of the iterations of the rules, I gave the players an opportunity to change characters. This is how it works. Once everyone has chosen an alliance, beginning with the start player, everyone has one chance to switch to another character. The start player picks up the only face-down card at the centre of the table, and decides whether to switch to that character. Regardless of whether he switches, he passes the unwanted character to the next player. This goes on until everyone has had one chance to switch. After knowing who is on which team, a character change can potentially affect the outcome of the battle. One benefit of this mechanism is it makes players feel a little bit more in control. You are not destined to be one specific character. You can change your destiny. 

Later on I decided to take out this mechanism. I felt it dragged the game. It was interesting, but when one person is contemplating the switch, there is downtime for everyone else. Maybe I can consider making this a variant. 

(4) 

Let's talk Lu Bu. From the start I wanted to have a character who could choose to betray his mates. I thought this would be fun. The initial design was this guy can decide whether to jump ship after everyone has chosen sides. This is to be done before the characters (and thus strengths) are revealed. You don't pick after already knowing which alliance will win. Being able to jump ship is already a nifty ability. I gave him something more. If he jumps, his strength increases by 2. This may sound counterintuitive. Shouldn't he be paying a price for using the jump ship ability, i.e. be penalised instead? My thinking is I want to incentivise him to use that ability. So he should be initially joining a team he plans to betray, and then he jumps ship. This will mess with everyone's plan, and this makes the game more interesting. 

When I think of Three Kingdoms characters related to betrayal, Lu Bu is the first person who comes to mind. However Lu Bu is also one of the strongest warriors of the era. Making him a 0 doesn't seem quite right. Any other suggestions? 

Later on I further adjusted his power. The bonus for jumping ship was increased from 2 to 4. Now it is ever harder to resist being a traitor. 

The reference drawing I used was probably not Lu Bu. It might be Cao Cao. 

How the Components Evolved

(1)

During playtesting, one thing that I found annoying was the need to keep counting the strength totals. Most character powers modified the total of one alliance or the other. There was a lot of recounting involved. It was messy. So I decided we needed a strength tracker like this: 

This is formed using two cards. Once the characters are revealed, add up the strength totals of both alliances and mark them here. Only after that you apply the powers, and adjust the totals accordingly. Having the strength tracker makes things much easier. 

Then I found a graphic design problem. I coloured the spaces red and blue, which corresponded to the colours representing the two alliances. The strength markers are red and blue. When I needed to place a red marker on a blue space, I felt a kind of cognitive dissonance. It didn't feel right to place a marker on a space with a different colour, the opponent's colour. So I changed the colour scheme of the strength tracker. 

Multiples of five are in grey, to make moving markers easier. 

(2)

The first version of the character cards had their faces in all four corners. This was based on the design of standard playing cards. You have the suit and value in all four corners. There are reasons for this. When people hold a hand of cards, they normally fan them, so other than the first card in front, you can only see one corner of all the cards. Thus the placement of important information in the corner. You need to place at both left and right corners because people fan their cards in different ways, some left and some right. You need to place at both top and bottom corners so that people do not need to worry about the orientation of cards when they shuffle or reassemble the deck. This is convenience for the user. 

So this was why in the first version of my card, I had the character's face in all four corners, and I had the strength at both ends, top and bottom.

I later changed the card layout to this: 

Here's why. In Taking Sides, you will only have one card in your hand. There is no fanning of cards which will block other cards. So there is no need to squeeze important information into a corner, nor is there a need to duplicate this information in the other corner. The cards come with text, which means they need to be held in a specific direction. There is a right side up, unlike traditional playing cards. So there is no need to take care of the bottom corners of the card. One idea is duplicating the block of text and having it in both orientations, upright and upside down, but I think that's going to be confusing and ugly. Now I can have my strength value larger, so that it can be seen from across the table. This is important in this game. 

(3)

I have arrow icons on the character cards. They are for determining order of resolution of the character special powers. More arrows means earlier in resolution order. At first I used stars and not arrows. During playtesting I realised a problem. People tend to interpret stars as quality, not priority. Stars are misleading. 

The original number 1 character was Chun Li

I needed to get rid of the stars, and change to something that represented speed. I went with boots with wings. This would usually be interpreted as speed right? 

Later when I decided to switch to the Three Kingdoms setting, boots with wings did not seem so appropriate anymore. This was a more western thing, more suitable for themes like Greek gods. So I switched to arrows. 

The current number 1 is Chen Gong, a strategist. His ability increases the strength of an alliance partner. This sounds appropriate. Strategists don't fight but they help you win battles. 

Other Characters

Let me also share other characters and their special powers. The core mechanism in Taking Sides is simple. I have tried playing it without the character powers. I don't think the game works that way. It's rather dull. The powers create fun interactions and give the game character. 

From the beginning I wanted to have a power which directly helped the weaker team win. This particular character had undergone several adjustments. The basic idea is if he's in a much smaller alliance, that alliance immediately wins without even needing to compare strengths. This character becomes a threat everyone needs to be alert of at all times. It makes people avoid creating alliances with big differences in numbers. I think it is a good thing to have a character which people will pay attention to. This is what makes a game have character. 

At the moment I name him Xiahou Dun

The next guy is Sun Quan. When I referred to other people's art, I didn't really know for sure who was meant to be who. The most famous characters like Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang were easy. The rest I wasn't 100% sure. The idea behind character number 5 is to create combo play. I wanted players to look for specific partners to team up with. I wanted to create some incentive for players to disclose their characters, so that they could find the right partners. 

At the moment the strongest character is probably number 8. So I made Guan Yu number 8. 8 is already the second highest number. His power seems weak, only adjusting someone else's strength by one. However this can combo well with other character powers. Zhuge Liang turns any character with strength 7, 8 or 9 to 0. If Guan Yu partners Zhuge Liang, and the enemy alliance has a 6, he can turn the 6 to a 7, and then Zhuge Liang turns that 7 to a 0. Let's look at another example. Let's say Zhuge Liang is in the enemy alliance, and number 9 is an ally. Guan Yu can turn that 9 to a 10 to protect him from Zhuge Liang. Guan Yu's weaknesses are Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei. Zhuge Liang turns him into a 0. Liu Bei halves his strength. So Guan Yu will do better allying with them. 

Number 2 is Zhao Yun. He has a power I like - you get to cancel one special power. You can use it to help your alliance win, e.g. cancelling an enemy Zhuge Liang's power to protect your alliance partners. You can use it to cancel an enemy Xiahou Dun, protecting your much larger alliance from instant defeat. You would be the saviour. Zhao Yun is also important for stopping Dong Zhuo, whose power is to claim any leftover loot. Winning alliances often don't welcome Dong Zhuo. If you have Zhao Yun on the team, you can neutralise Dong Zhuo. It is important to remember that in this game, your friends are not your friends. 

Number 4, Zhuge Liang, partners well with Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei (7, 8 and 9), because none of them want to be on the opposing alliance. 

I kind of took an easy way out when designing number 7, Liu Bei. His ability is to half an opponent's strength. There's a problem here. What if the strength is an odd number. Do you round up or round down? I decided to make his ability work only on even numbers. This solves the problem and there is an additional benefit of making him slightly weaker. 7 is already a high number. Liu Bei combos well with Guan Yu, because Guan Yu can turn an odd number into an even number, which can then be targeted by Liu Bei. 

 

Next Steps

Taking Sides is still under development. There is more playtesting I need to do. Can you help me with playtesting the game? I have made the rulebook and print-and-play components available for download. If you play the game and have any feedback, please contact me at cs@cilipadigames.com. Or you can also leave a comment below. 

Download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1quZRdI8bH6ZXNtJerr5LjjNK_ie5_jWD/view?usp=drive_link 

SEX

 

True story. 

I recently met an attractive lady at a business networking event. She is an interpersonal relationships consultant and coach. This is somewhat related to my full-time work as a leadership trainer. I do sometimes cover the topics of interpersonal relationships and personality analysis. I mentioned to her that one thing I do in my training is I use giant boardgames to convey leadership concepts. I told her I have a side gig as a game designer, and that I have published a few card games. She said she enjoys boardgames  and card games too, and one recent game she likes a lot is SEX. I was stunned for a moment. I carefully said I have not heard of this game before. If this were a guy, I might have come up with some naughty joke. At that moment I didn't really know what to say. Then she elaborated further. The name of the game was spelt S, E, T. SET. Oh! Then I have heard of this game before, just that I have not tried it yet. The event was a little noisy, so I had misheard her. Thank goodness I didn't say anything inappropriate. That would have been embarrassing. 

If you would like to try SET, you can get it from my friends at BoardGameCafe.net. I'm not making this up to help them sell SET okay. 

Photo above from Wikipedia. 

misc notes: Pegasus pitching session

In September Pegasus Spiele held a 3-day pitching session, called Designer Days. They welcomed game designers from all over the world to do online pitching sessions with them. You are given 10 minutes to pitch a game. This was my first time participating in an activity like this. Applications opened about a month before the event, and about one week before the event they notified everyone their allocated slots. I pitched Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Although I am already self-publishing it, I am only able to market it in Malaysia and I do want to look for an international publisher for it. 

It was a great learning experience! That means I didn't get past the selection process. But truly it was a good experience seeing how the professionals worked. My slot was 3:10pm Malaysia time or 9:10am in Germany. I went online about 15 minutes early. There were two Pegasus representatives in the waiting room. There were already two other designers in the room when I got in. I assume they were coming for the 9am slot. The reps were friendly and professional. They joked that we could relax and not feel too nervous because the guys in the pitching rooms were friendly. 

I think there were two pitching rooms. I got Room 2. There were two assessors in my room. After I got in, we just did short greetings and I started immediately. We only had 10 minutes so every second counted. I had prepared slides beforehand. In fact I spent quite a lot of time on them, mainly to do a semi-automated demo of a round of play. I used slides to show game setup and some game components. I explained the core gameplay verbally with the support of photos of the game in play. I think the assessors were pretty happy with my presentation, because it was clear and concise. I spoke for about 7 minutes, and we moved on to questions. Their questions went straight to very specific details about the game. They only needed 2 or 3 questions. Then they could already tell me they would not proceed further. They explained why too. They thought the player might feel helpless due to a lack of options. They where quite humble and quickly added that this was their view based on the quick introduction I gave. I would know my game better and I should assess their feedback carefully to decide whether it made sense to incorporate it. I thanked them and said goodbye. All this done within 10 minutes. 

It was great to be able to practise pitching to an established publisher and to experience working with professionals. Pegasus seems to be this twice a year. I certainly plan to try again when I have other suitable games. 

I met online with my Hong Kong friend Jetta and we played on BoardGameArena.com. We were originally planning to play some premium games, but we only reactivated our subscription that day, and the reactivation was not immediate. So we ended up playing some free games. I taught him some games I knew. I don't play on BGA very regularly. They now have a ton of games. Not all the popular games are premium games. There are several which are free, which surprise me. This is really a public service. The BGA subscription is not expensive either. It's great value for money. 

I had not played Hive for years. I used to have a physical copy, but since I rarely played it, I had given it away. This is a good 2-player abstract game. 

I still have a copy of DVONN at home. I bought it many years ago when I was still building up my game collection. At the time I thought a proper gamer's collection should have at least one abstract game, so I wanted to pick one game from the YINSH series. 20 years ago this series was well known and highly respected. They are still good games. 

I taught Jetta Regicide. This is one of my favourite games in recent years. It is a cooperative card game from New Zealand. Only after playing on BGA I realised I had played one rule wrong. While fighting a boss, the cards used to attack the boss remain in the play area until the boss is defeated. Previously I played those cards directly to the discard pile. I think there is some impact but it's not too big. 

If you have not tried Regicide there is no reason not to give it a go. It's free on BGA. 

Essen 2024 note 5 - an old-timer's Essen first-timer experience

Essen 2024 was my first time going to Germany and also to the Essen game fair. I have been a boardgamer for 20 years. Essen is the biggest boardgame event in the world. Everyone in the hobby knows about it. For many years it wasn’t something I thought I’d go for. It’s far and expensive. But the day came when I thought I should go at least once in my life. It wasn’t about just playing and buying games. It was also about being part of a congregation of tens of thousands boardgamers from around the world coming together to celebrate this hobby of ours.

Having now returned to Malaysia and also having had some time to gather my thoughts, here are those gathered thoughts in a not very organised manner.

I now have to admit to myself I’m not a heavy eurogamer anymore. That has been my identity for many years. I had noticed the change in my gaming tastes, but I had not been able to let go of this identity. During Essen 2024 there were many more simple care games which attracted me than complex strategy games. I realise I now tend to see most heavy eurogames as yet another resource conversion exercise. There are simply more and more convoluted ways to score points. I admit sometimes convoluted is fun. It's just that now, to me, convoluted is mostly just convoluted. Maybe I've come to the grumpy-old-man point in life where you just don't have patience to go around in circles. I want games that get straight to the point, that have something new and clever to offer, without wrapping multiple layers of busy work around them. I'm now a Japanese minimalistic game fan.

Good art is important. I've seen so many games with excellent art at the fair. If your art is drab or does not look professional, people will ignore your game. Generally I think this is a good thing. As an industry we are improving. The minimum expectation is increasing.

I like the art of Joyride Turbo

Keep the Heroes Out is a game from Canada

Forests of Pangaia

So many themes are overdone. But then, maybe I'm just being a Karen. With more than 1500 new games being released at Essen 2024, of course there are many games which clash in themes. There were two tea games. There were many Japanese themed games, not necessarily from Japan. Chinese themed games. Tons of fantasy themed games. Space games. Civilisation games. Cat games. Even a cat poop game. The nature theme is popular. Horror. Rock bands. Cities, traveling and locations around the world.

One theme I found interesting was the game 1984, based on George Orwell's book of the same name. Another one was Age of Comics, which was first released last year.

1984

Age of Comics

I think I saw some Azul rip-offs. I saw a few games with Azul-like tiles grouped into sets.

Essen is about celebrity spotting. The first celebrity I spotted during the fair was Bruno Faidutti. I was having a chat with a publisher in their office, and Bruno popped his head in to say hi to the publisher. It was in French so I didn't understand a word. In my head I was going OMG that's Bruno Faidutti I've been following his blog and playing his games for 20 years should I go and shake his hand and take a photo before he runs off? Eventually I had to resist the urge since I was halfway through a discussion. During the fair I spotted Friedemann Friese, Martin Wallace, Eric Martin and Zev Shlasinger. I saw Matt Leacock standing quietly in a corner when someone approached him and spoke for a while. I thought they were talking business, and only after some time I realised the guy who approached him was a fan too. He spoke for quite long and I was thinking c'mon don't take up so much of Matt's time. Matt looked like he wanted to escape but was too polite to do so. When the other guy finally left, I quickly went up to Matt to shake his hand and chat a little. I promise, just a little. I thanked him for making many great games which my family and I have enjoyed.

I went for a signing session of Reiner Knizia. It was on Saturday 4pm, and I only found out about it on Friday. I arrived around 3:35pm, and there was already a queue. I'm glad I was a little early, because that queue grew much much longer afterwards. My turn only came around 4:35pm. It was great to meet a designer I greatly admire who has made so many games I've played.

For a Malaysian Chinese, going to Essen is like going to Hong Kong. You get so excited when you spot Hong Kong movie and TV stars on the streets.

Essen is four days of speed dating / speed pitching. Those four days were intense. I wanted to look at every booth at the fair. Every interaction with a booth is a mini pitching session by the booth to me as a visitor. I look at the booth to assess what it sells. If it's not something I'm interested in, I can make the decision to skip. This is probably a 2 second decision. If they sell something I might be interested in, I come closer to take a better look. Is the art attractive enough? Does the production look professional or amateurish? Does it look like just-another-game-I've-seen-before or does it promise to be something a little different? Many questions and evaluations already go through my mind before I even decide whether to ask the staff to explain to me what the game is like. So that's the next step in the process. I don't even ask to play the game. I want an overview first. And that's assuming there's someone available whom I can ask. Sometimes the booth staff are too busy teaching others to play. Sometimes I pick up the rulebook or the game box and read it myself to find out more about the game. Having someone give an overview of the game is usually quicker.

At the fair, most play tables were occupied most of the time. I didn't often get to choose what I played. It depended a lot on what was available. I could only choose whether to sit in those free seats I was lucky enough to encounter. Sometimes I passed because the game didn't seem interesting. More often I would settle on watching others play a game that looked interesting, or I'd skim the rulebook or the back of the box, or I'd ask for an overview. If it was a game I was interested to try, but there were no available seats, I didn't wait for a table to be freed up or sign myself up on the play schedule (some games had those). Too time-consuming. I found that among the games I had played, only a handful ended up being purchases. Most of the time it was for me to understand how the game worked, and I could decide it wasn't really for me. I didn't play all games to completion. In many cases I just played a round or two to understand how it worked. Only some shorter games were played to completion.

Imagine this non-stop speed dating process, for four days. Thousands of games getting to different stages of catching (or not catching) your attention. Most games stop at the first few stages. Some make you want to spend a bit more time to learn more. Some make you want to sit down and play a round, or a full game. It's a mentally demanding exercise. Imagine you are an HR manager looking through 1500 CV's and interviewing hundreds of candidates over four days. That's a lot of work!

After the event, I read other people's reports on the fair, and I noticed that the games which they wrote about and liked were not even registered in my mind. I might have completed missed those games, or I did see them, but my brain auto-filter had already failed them in the initial scanning stage. I probably missed many good games this way. But that's okay. You can't play every single good game in the world. Just be happy you have good games to play and good friends to play them with.

R-Eco is an older game from Japan and a successful one. 

A series of dexterity games from itten, Japan

A game from Lego

A deluxe version of Ra from DiceTree

Language tags is a good idea. At many booths the staff wore a tag indicating the languages they spoke. When I imagined myself going to Essen before I had decided to do so, I imagined myself wearing a small placard saying I spoke English, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese and Malay. I never got around to doing it, but hey, now I know this is a good idea. Just a simple and small tag was sufficient. No need for a placard which would look awkward. I didn't see any visitor wear any language tag. Just staff. One thing that surprised me a little was how much English was used at the fair. Basically all the people I spoke to at booths spoke English. Some might be less fluent, but they managed to explain how the games worked. So Essen is pretty international.

I remember one particular guy showcasing a fantasy battle game related to King Arthur and Mordred. I think he was American, based on his accent. He was super enthusiastic when explaining the story and the game. So energetic. He reminded me of roleplaying game players. They really know how to create drama and they seriously get into character. Now I realise I never took any photo of the game. It wasn't a game I was interested in. I don't even remember the name of the game. But I remember the guy's enthusiasm. If I ever recruit anyone for a booth, I'd want someone like this. And I should learn to introduce my own games to others like this.

My wife said the international edition of my game Dancing Queen will probably be out by Essen 2025, and asked whether I would want to go again. It would be a meaningful trip because it will be the first time my game is released internationally. I did this Essen 2024 trip purely as a gamer, and not a game designer or publisher. I was a consumer spending money, not a business trying to be profitable or trying to create business value (e.g. marketing). I think as an indie publisher in Malaysia, it's difficult to make a booth at Essen profitable. The cost is high, and I'd need to sell many games and gain many benefits for such an expenditure to be justifiable. If I get a lot of good exposure which in the long run leads to more sales, that's good. If I get connected to other publishers or retailers and work out business deals to license or sell games to more countries, that's good. It's not easy to work out the numbers. Maybe Malaysian game designers and publishers need to pool resources together, like how Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Thai publishers have done and are doing, to make trips to Essen more efficient, cost-effective and productive. Or I can be just happy going again as a consumer. 

I probably won't be making Essen trips an annual thing. It's expensive. Before I went, I had been thinking this might be just a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Now that I've experienced it and enjoyed it, well, maybe I'll go again some time. And here's my humble loot shot. 

This will probably be among the smallest loot shots you see people share. Most loot shots have boxes stacked and you can only read the game titles on the sides. Most of the games I bought were card games. 

I bought two Carcassonne maps, Great Britain and Germany. Thankfully they were sturdy and there was just slight damage after the flight back to Malaysia. 

The large black bag and the lanyard (and also the boardgame Loot) are part of the loot bag sold as an add-on to the fair tickets. Not too expensive. I bought them as souvenirs when I booked my ticket. The other bag was given free by Saashi & Saashi the Japanese publisher at their booth. Clever marketing strategy. It was practical and I was grateful I had it during the fair. 

That wooden or bamboo coaster at the bottom left was the only non-game-related souvenir I bought this trip to Germany. The others were various free gifts at the fair. 

A gift from my game manufacturer MagiCraft

Joy from MagiCraft. She has been very supporting throughout both my projects with them so far. I knew they were going to be at the fair, but I wasn't sure whether she was going. I had only exchanged emails and messages with her throughout our projects. I thought it would be nice to meet her in person. I went to their booth on Day 1 of the fair, and the first person I met was her. We had a nice chat. 

So many versions of Exit. This was at the Dusseldorf airport.