designer diary: Malaysian Holidays

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

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

My prototype of Malaysian Holidays

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Game in play

Holiday cards

Local destination cards (1 point)

Overseas destination cards (2 points)

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

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

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

Boomerang: Australia

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

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

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

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

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

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

High Society

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

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

Your money

Good card

Bad card

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

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

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

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

Legions

Legions is a 2-player card game set in the world of Abyss. There are five regions between the two players, and you play cards to compete for dominance in each of these regions. There are two ways you can win. If you manage to capture five banners, you win immediately. Banners only appear on some cards, and it is not easy to achieve this victory condition. If no one achieves this by the time the draw deck runs out, whoever has more points wins. Many cards in the game have point values, so this is probably the more common way to win. 

Cards come in five suits, corresponding to the five regions. There are also many cards which do not have suits. They are jokers and you can play them anywhere. Every round you choose a card to play simultaneously to your side of the board. The player with the lower card goes first, and will also have first pick when replenishing his hand from a market of two face-up and one face-down card. However the second player will have the opportunity to attack the first, in a region corresponding to the card he doesn't take from the market when replenishing. Attacking means turning your opponent's cards face-down, temporarily disabling them. He can revive them by playing a new card in the region. 

When you have more cards in a region than your opponent, you control it and get to enjoy its special ability. For example one region breaks ties for all other regions. One region gives you a banner if you control it. After you play your card, you draft a new card from a shared pool. This means your opponent can keep track of what you have been taking, and this gives him clues about your intentions. 

When you have three cards in the same region, or one card in every region, you get to claim a hero. This is how you can score banners and points. You claim a hero from a hero pool, and you must move two of your cards to accompany that hero. The hero and these two retired cards contribute to your points and your banners. Since you are required to remove two cards, you become weaker in the regions they were in. 

Getting to five banners is a threat you can use against your opponent. Since this is a sudden death victory, your opponent cannot let you get too close. The game is tactical. You want to maximise the small advantages you get here and there, like the region powers. 

Legions is a light strategy game that can be a filler for gamers. 

Pilgrim Poker - master and disciples

Here's another teaser for my upcoming game Pilgrim Poker. These are the four main characters in the story of Journey to the West. 

Modern day Master Tang Sanzang sits on a gaming chair and plays a handheld gaming device. I like his intensity. I find it funny. 

Modern day eldest disciple Sun Wukong is a delivery boy. His Somersault Cloud is transformed into a motorbike. I think it's an electric bike. 

Zhu Bajie (Piggy) was the first character Edwin drew. 

Sha Wujing is not a numbered card. I put him on one of the action cards. Among my number cards (from 1 to 13), only three numbers have special powers, 4, 8 and 10. So unfortunately I did not have another number card I could put him on. 

This was the first version of Sha Wujing. I felt this wasn't quite right and asked for a change. He is indeed a chill guy, but not in the sense that he is relaxed and carefree. He is chill in the sense that he is usually calm and he plays the moderator role in conflicts. He is the pacifist. Also he is always the hardworking and reliable guy. 

The master and the disciples are on the back of the box. I had originally written two paragraphs for the back of the box. Edwin decided to convert the first paragraph into a comic drawing. I think that's a great idea. 

This is the master and the disciples in my prototype. I found these drawings as a set on the internet. 

Who is your favourite among these four? 

Sabah National Tabletop Con 2026 - my first time exhibiting at my hometown

I was back in my hometown of Kota Kinabalu (we call it KK) for the Sabah National Tabletop Con over the weekend of 20-21 Jun 2026. This was my first time exhibiting in my hometown, so it was a meaningful event. This same event was held last year, but unfortunately I couldn't attend. This year it was held at the Sabah Art Gallery. We had many exhibitors from Malaysia and Singapore, and also one from Brunei. 

At the front entrance of the art gallery with Buddhima of Specky Studio. 

I feel so classy now that my games have been exhibited next to proper art work at a proper art gallery. Hey, I'm making art too! 

There was some drama leading up to this event. My latest game Malaysian Holidays was due to be released at the event. This game is published through Specky Studio. We arranged for an early shipment to be sent by air straight to Sabah. The idea was my father would receive the shipment for me a few days before the convention, before Buddhima (Specky Studio) and I arrived. We had planned for buffer time, and the games were shipped out early. However during the transit period we were told there were issues. We regularly checked the tracking website. I was shocked to see that the expected delivery date was Monday, the day after the convention ended. My game would completely miss the convention. The status showed that the shipment had already arrived in Kuala Lumpur Wednesday morning. I thought why is it taking 5 days to reach Kota Kinabalu? I kept contacting customer support to see if the shipment could be delivered earlier. If the shipment could reach their KK warehouse by Friday or even Saturday, I could go pick it up myself without needing them to deliver to me. There were complications because Fedex works with a local delivery agent for this shipment. I had to contact Fedex several times, and finally on Friday one of the customer service reps was able to find out for me that the shipment was due to reach Kuching that day, and would arrive in KK Saturday afternoon. However their local agent doesn't work weekends so they could only deliver on Monday. I said I could go pick the shipment up myself. The rep said he would put in a remark to ask the local agent to call me and arrange for me. He couldn't guarantee that they would do it, because this was not their normal process. I thanked him for trying his best. There wasn't much else I could do. I had to wait and see whether I got a call the next day, Saturday. 

Saturday morning shortly after I reached the art gallery and completed setup, I received a call from an unknown number. Normally I decline such calls because 99% of the time they are scams or salespersons. This time I eagerly picked up the call. It was the Fedex local agent! The shipment had just arrived at their warehouse. They asked whether their driver could deliver it that afternoon. At the time the driver hadn't reported for duty yet. I said no need, I'll come and get it myself before lunch time. What a relief. Malaysian Holidays arrived in time for the con! 

I'm very happy with how the game turned out. Specky Studio picked a great artist for this project and I really like her work. 

The box opens this way. My Cili Padi Games logo is on the box too. Yay!

Game in play

Holiday cards

Overseas destination cards are worth 2 points

Local destination cards are worth 1 point

My favourite memo card

I was thrilled and relieved that the game arrived just in time.

Buddhima (Specky Studio) is my publisher, and he presented the first ever copy of Malaysian Holidays to my mum. This is a meaningful moment for me. My game first landed in my hometown and my mum is the first to own a copy. 

Game in play

This is a promo card which is unique to the first edition of Malaysian Holidays. Yes, Specky Studio is already thinking about a second edition. This is a destination card which you can claim to score points. Normally short holidays (Mon to Wed, or Wed to Fri) are worth 1 point, but this one is worth 2 points. This card conveys that the most valuable holiday is the one we spend with our families. 

Malaysian Holidays in play

Kuehku is a game from Brunei. It is doing well and this is already a second edition of the game. 

I almost managed to try it. I sat down for the rules explanation, but halfway through there were some other visitors who were interested, so I asked them to take my seat. This is a simple and accessible set collection game. You collect various types of local delicacies and they score points in various ways. This reminds me of Sushi Go and Kuih Muih. 

The game also has some action cards. The core rules are simple, and I think you need to play the game proper to fully feel the game. Hopefully I will have the chance to try this at the next event. There were some other games I was interested to try, e.g. from Ameba Games Singapore, but I was busy most of the two days and I didn't manage to play the games of other designers. I wanted to try Demon Contract too, just two booths away, but I didn't even manage to steal a slot for that. 

Dancing Queen in Sabah

Pinocchio in play. This was the game I demoed the most, because it is easy to learn and quick to start having fun with. There were some Australian tourist families at the art gallery, and they enjoyed Pinocchio a lot. All of them bought the game after trying it. It is satisfying to see people have fun with my game. It also makes me happy when I hear them say that one of their friends or family members will like this game, and they want to show the game to these friends / family. 

The art gallery has three floors. The ground floor is a small reception and a souvenir shop. The building is in the shape of an upside down cone. So the first floor is wider than the ground floor, and the second floor is the widest. Malaysian exhibitors are on the first floor, and international exhibitors are on the second floor. 

Super happy because this customer bought all four games at my booth. On Saturday he came and played with his wife and a friend. I think he played two of my games on Saturday. He was planning to come back again on Sunday to get me to teach him the others. However he didn't have time to play and only came to buy the games. His wife came too, and brought family, and taught them to play Pinocchio. I was serving another customer at the time. It is amazing to see your own customer teach your game and recommend it to others. 

When I was teaching a group to play, some visitors stopped by to take a look. Jia Xian of Meja Belakang jumped in to help me explain my games to them. Thank you so much! 

Erwin is from Pontianak, Indonesia, which is near Kuching. He runs two boardgame lounges in Pontianak - Meeple Board Game Lounge, which is what we call boardgame cafes in Malaysia. The night before the con there was a meet and play event and many exhibitors attended. Erwin did a presentation to share his experiences and the boardgame scene in Pontianak. 

Pontianak has a young population, and many people like hanging out at cafes. They have many cafes and they do good business. People chat chit at cafes, exchanging gossip. Some young men play mobile games together at these cafes. Erwin introduced boardgame lounges because he wanted to convert people to boardgames. He has a definition of 5 levels of gamers. Level 1 is people who only know the common classic and mass market games. Level 2 is people who play gateway hobby games. Level 3 are the hobby gamers who play some heavy games. Levels 4 and 5 go into more complex and hardcore stuff, and they may run boardgame businesses, do game design, organise community events and so on. He sets a clear goal for himself. He focuses on converting Level 1 to Level 2. From Level 2 to 3, 4 or 5, these people will convert themselves and he doesn't need to help them. Converting Level 1 to 2 is how he grows the community and promotes boardgames. He picks the appropriate games for this purpose and offers them at his lounges. After many years doing this, he has further refined and defined his problem statement. He learned that there is a category he had previously missed - the Level 0 gamers, who don't even know much about common boardgames. Also, thinking of only Levels 1 and 2 is an oversimplification. He needed to further consider the levels 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and so on. Some people need several smaller steps before reaching Level 2. He learned that he had to cater for that too. 

Erwin bought some of my games to be played and sold at his lounges in Indonesia. Cili Padi Games is going to Indonesia! Woohoo! I taught Erwin Dancing Queen, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly he picked up the strategies. It was satisfying for me to see how he appreciated the design behind the game. 

Malaysian Holidays was demoed at the Specky Studio booth, which was right next to mine. 

I played an updated version of Jon's prototype On Three. This was an updated version after getting feedback from Daryl Chow. He was in town recently and we did some playtesting together. I already liked the previous version, but I must say this was even better. The river, or the shared cards, are not revealed automatically after every round. You must use club cards to peek at them. Instead of three lanes, you now have four lanes. Instead of creating a personal card market you can swap cards with as you take damage, the damage tracking using cards is removed, and players get a shared card market now, right from the start of the game. This is a short but thinky game. It is probably not something Jon or I will publish for the Malaysian market. It is not suitable for a casual crowd. I do hope this gets picked up by an international publisher. This is something gamers will like. 

This was how I displayed my games.

My secondary school friends Hsiung and Sheng came to visit. 

My mum and dad came to visit, but I wasn't able to accompany them much because I was busy teaching games. They came both days. All of us wore red - brand colour of Cili Padi Games! 

I gave a short presentation sharing my journey as a game designer and indie publisher. My Sabahan friends told me I should come back and be a politician because I spoke well. What? I talk like a politician? 

I just noticed most of the photos I took with customers showed Dancing Queen. It wasn't the game I sold the most of. The game which sold the most was Pinocchio. 

I didn't realise that my parents wanted to take a group photo with me. I was too absorbed with teaching Dancing Queen. Buddhima took this photo for us. 

Buddhima, Jon and I. By now we have been to many boardgame exhibitions together. This photo was taken at the Kota Kinabalu airport before we flew back to Kuala Lumpur. 

This trip back home was a short and tight trip. I arrived Friday afternoon, and departed Monday morning. The con was 10am to 8pm Saturday and Sunday. I barely had time with my parents. They visited me at the con both days. I felt bad because when they arrived on Saturday, I was out to pick up the game shipment. I couldn't spend a lot of time with them because most of the time my booth was busy and I had to teach or demo games. In a sense it is good. There was good interest in my games and I managed to teach many people my games. Definitely better than me being idle most of the time. 

The crowd at the con was much smaller than last year, according to my friends who were here last year. The con was at Imago shopping mall last year, and that is the busiest mall in KK. Although my booth was mostly occupied, sales was so so. There wasn't much foot traffic. There was a concurrent event happening outdoors on the art gallery grounds, a food and handicraft fair. I was hoping this would attract some crowd, but the crowd wasn't very big. Parking was a challenge. The art gallery car park was small. 

I didn't have much time to visit other booths at the con. I walked one round on Saturday, and I had hoped to drop by again to play some of the games that afternoon or Sunday. However I was so busy I didn't manage that at all. 

I'm hoping to go again next year, and hopefully I can stay longer and spend more time with my parents and my friends.