designer diary: Pilgrim Poker

 

Pilgrim Poker is named so because the setting is Journey to the West, the Chinese classic novel. The characters are transported to a modern setting. They are on the first leg of their pilgrimage, taking the train to Dunhuang. Guess what they are bringing on this trip? Pilgrim Poker of course! Five years ago when I started working on this game, it was very different. It certainly was an unexpected journey for me. 

The core idea in Pilgrim Poker is that everyone gets one card and holds it up facing forward. You can see everyone else's card, but not your own. Based on this, you need to bet on whether you are going to win. Only the highest card will win. The game was inspired by Hanabi and Kobayakawa. In Hanabi, you can't see your own cards. There are other games using this concept, like Pikoko and Luz. In Kobayakawa, you do just one round of betting, to decide whether you're in or out. Very minimalistic, but the decision-making can be tricky. Pilgrim Poker was initially called Saikoyu, which is "psycho you" modified to sound Japanese, a nod to both the games which inspired it. 

The first prototype had Malaysian fruits and four suits

In the first version of the game, after cards are drawn and held up, you take turns naming a bet amount. This is done for only one round. After everyone has named an amount, the bet which everyone must place into the pool is the second highest named amount. The reason for this is if most people think one particular player will win, they can all name a low amount, so that even if that single player names a high amount, he won't be able to win much. This is done in turn order as opposed to simultaneously because whenever a player names an amount, it is a clue to the other players. A player who names a low amount is likely seeing a high card. If you don't see any high card, then you might be holding that high card. 

There are some special cards which modify the core rules. Anyone holding the 10 wins or loses double. 10 is strong, but it is not the strongest. The numbers go from 1 to 13. Getting 10 is good, but it will be painful if you lose to an even higher number. If the 4 is in play, it is the smallest card which wins instead. When you hold the 4 and you see that everyone has high cards, you might think there is no hope of winning, but you would be wrong. If anyone holds the 8, it turns all odd numbers to zero. That means the 8 beats 9, 11 and 13. It only loses to 10 and 12. These cards add a twist to the game. You have to think carefully as you observe the actions and expressions of your opponents. 

Playtesting session

The Control Problem: Players feel there is little control

One big problem I had was players feeling helpless. When two players feel confident (or desperate) enough to want to name a high bet amount, you will be forced to put in a large bet, even when you are pretty sure you will lose it. This feels bad. I didn't want to add more rules to handle such a feel-bad situation. I thought maybe that should just be what the game was. But still, I had a nagging feeling this wouldn't work. I was stuck for a long time, and I had to set the game aside. It took more than two years for me to revisit the game. I am glad I did, because I had an idea that helped to move this design forward. Well, it wasn't exactly my idea. It was just poker. I applied the poker mechanism to the game. 

Everyone must commit to an ante. During a round, it is possible to raise, and when anyone raises, you can decide to fold, sacrificing your ante. This is simple, and most people understand this, because most people know a little about poker. By using a tried-and-true mechanism, I not only solved my problem about the feeling of control, I also made the game more intuitive to learn. 

Prototype in play

The Information Problem: How much information is enough?

When a round starts, you have no idea what your card is. I want to make sure there are ways for you to get clues. Your opponents can't and won't tell you, but I want to make sure their actions will give you hints. Or there are things you can do to try to get information. One mechanism I introduced for the purpose of helping players gain information was the Side Bet. Making a Side Bet means challenging another player to a duel. You state a bet amount. If your target agrees, you resolve this at the end of the round. If your target declines, he must pay you half the bet amount immediately. As you can see, this is a chance for you to bluff and intimidate an opponent into giving you money. Of course, if you happen to be holding the 1, this will backfire, and everyone will laugh at you. The Side Bet action gives information. Normally the player with the lowest card will be targeted. If you are being targeted, you probably have a low card. The bet amount named is also a clue. If you are being targeted but the bet amount is low, then maybe your card isn't too low. 

Here is one hilarious situation that I came across when playtesting. One player was the target of a Side Bet, but he saw that another player had a lowly 2. Since the active player did not target the 2 and targeted him instead, he knew he probably had an even smaller card, the 1. Throughout my playtesting, it was moments of realisation like this which truly tickled the players. 

Another funny situation was the player holding the 4 confidently issuing a Side Bet to the lowly 1. When 4 is in play, the lowly 1 becomes the strongest card. The active player didn't know he had a 4, well, at least until the other players started giggling. 

Game prototype

The Existential Problem: Isn't this just Indian Poker?

I found out rather late in my development journey that there is already a public domain game very similar to Pilgrim Poker. It's called Indian Poker. Indian Poker is not widely known in Malaysia where I live, so I had no idea there is such a thing. It was depressing to find out what I had been working on was something someone else had already made. Eventually I decided to still proceed with the project. Pilgrim Poker is not exactly Indian Poker, due to the special characters and also the action cards. So I felt I still had something new to offer. 

The Theme Problem: Why Journey to the West?

I must admit, Pilgrim Poker has a pasted on theme. This is a mechanism-first game. I did not start with any theme. Most of the other games I have published under the Cili Padi Games brand have fairy tale themes - Snow White, Ali Baba and Pinocchio. This time I thought why not pick a Chinese fairy tale. I chose Journey to the West because it is a story every Chinese knows, and many non-Chinese too. A familiar theme will attract attention, make the play experience more enjoyable, and also make learning the game a little easier. I do feel a little guilty because Journey to the West is supposed to be about Buddhism, and here I am with a gambling game... 

The final pilgrimage team in the game

There are many characters in Journey to the West, so I had more than enough source material to use. The pilgrimage team consists of four main characters, Master Tang Sanzang, eldest disciple Sun Wukong the Monkey King, second disciple Zhu Bajie (Pigsy), and junior disciple Sha Wujing (Sandy). Among the number cards, only three of them - 4, 8 and 10 - have special powers. That means I had to exclude Sha Wujing and move him to one of the action cards. Strictly speaking the pilgrimage team has five members, the fifth one being the horse. That horse is not just any horse. He is a dragon prince. I did not include him at all, since most people think of the team as just those four. 

10 became Sun Wukong, because he is the strongest fighter. 4 became Zhu Bajie. Zhu Bajie is often depicted as the greedy and lustful one. His flaws remind us that we are just human.  

Other characters in the game

For regular number cards (i.e. other than 4, 8 and 10) my original idea was to put some generic minor demon character. Some minions. My artist Edwin Chong suggested the Bull Demon King. Now the Bull Demon King is certainly no minor character. He is a big shot demon. I loved how Edwin turned him into a tired modern day salaryman, carrying a laptop bag and standing in the train. In Pilgrim Poker when you initiate a Side Bet, that's an act of aggression. I thought Red Boy would be most fitting. He is the fiery character in the story. In many chapters, it was the Goddess of Mercy (Guan Yin) who came to save the day, when the pilgrimage team got really stuck. So I put her on the Change Card action card. This is a card that can completely turn things around. Halfway through a round, you can discard your card and draw a new one.  

Pilgrim Poker was released in Malaysia in August 2026. It started as "Saikoyu", and now it has a theme of Journey to the West, which in Japanese is "Saiyuki". If this game ever gets a Japanese edition, it might be called Saiyuki Poker. 

Finally, the end product

Game components

Action cards

Number cards

Start player card (night side)

94 coins

Game page at Cili Padi Games website: https://www.cilipadigames.com/pilgrimpoker 

Play Play Asia opens for business!

We have a new physical boardgame store in downtown Kuala Lumpur! Play Play Asia is located in GMBB Mall, which is a local hub for arts. The shop specialises in Asian games, with much focus on South East Asian titles. This is a collaboration between Origame from Singapore and LUMA from Malaysia. You will see many Singaporean and Malaysian game titles at the shop. Can you spot my games Malaysian Holidays in this photo above?

The place is on Level 1, at a corner lot. 

I went early on opening day (Sat 15 Aug 2026) before the crowd came

Merdeka Day (independence day) is coming so Malaysian titles are spotlighted

I am given a whole section for Cili Padi Games titles! Woohoo!

There are play tables for you to sit down and play

This is like home - comfy!

This shelf is for demo copies. It is already full! 

The boss (Daryl Chow of Origame) is busy arranging the shelves

Since I have been to quite many game fairs around South East Asia, I thought I'd have seen most Asian game titles. I still found many I had not heard of before. 

Game components as wall decoration

If you are in KL, go take a look! 

boardgaming in photos: repacking Pinocchio and playing Syzygy

When I was in Kota Kinabalu I asked my mum to playtest my Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) game with me. I wanted to get it played by different kinds of players, and senior citizens is not a demographic I often have access to. This was also the first time younger daughter Chen Rui played. I have told her about the game before during video calls when she was overseas, but she could only play the physical game when she was back in Malaysia for summer holidays. 

I told my mum this was just like gin rummy. She plays both gin rummy and mahjong rummy. Still, it wasn't easy for her to grasp the game. I did have a meld concept, but it was very different from conventional rummy. A meld in the Red Chamber game requires a very specific combination of cards. In conventional rummy, it is 3 or more cards which are a straight flush or cards of the same value. Even the simple rule of always drawing a card at the start of your turn did not always stick. Sometimes my mum discarded a card before she drew one. Well, maybe I need to learn to teach the game better. 

I saw this wonderful arrangement of my game Malaysian Holidays done by Bukutani. I knew I had to save this photo and share it here. 

This happened in one particular game of mahjong rummy I played in KK. It reminded me of a funny video. This is how that video goes. A lady and a man meeting for the first time are attracted to each other. They are both shy and they are hesitant to approach each other. The lady smiled, and she is missing two front teeth. The man is surprised. Seeing his reaction of shock, the lady becomes self conscious and embarrassed. She feels hurt and starts to turn away. The man quickly stops her. He gently smiles at her. He is missing all his teeth, except for his two front teeth. They perfectly complement each other. 

This is an amazingly lucky hand in mahjong rummy. In this game (well, at least the version played in Sabah), you win and lose money based on how many aces and jokers you have. As a gamer, I frown upon this, because this is purely luck. There is no skill involved. In fact, having more jokers already gives you an advantage. You should not be further rewarded. From a game design perspective, you should lose money for each joker, to make the game more balanced. Aces are a different matter. They are worth 15 points each if you are unable to play them. That is bad. The winner is the player who is able to go out, or the player with the fewest points. So it's a bit more logical that you gain some money if you have aces. However when you have 3 or more of them, you can already play them as a meld. You don't need to worry about them being stuck in your hand. 

Aces and jokers are just a secondary way you gain and lose money. The bigger amounts still come from winning the game. This is a traditional gambling game, and not a hobby game. It serves a different purpose. So I should not be applying my expectations on it. The experience you want from mahjong rummy is not the kind you want from playing a hobby game. 

I invited Chung and Moh Yen to come play some of the game I brought back from Japan. One of their favourites that day was Rikka. In many ways this is simplified mahjong. 

When Pinocchio was release last year, I had this problem. Some boxes were damaged during transit. I designed the box to be larger than needed for the cards inside, because I wanted to let players sleeve their cards and still be able to fit everything inside the box. Since this was a tuckbox, it was easily dented, even with just mildly rough handling. Thankfully my manufacturer Magicraft quickly came up with a solution. They made replacement boxes for me and shipped them to me. I appreciated the support and quick action. I would have to do some repacking, but I wouldn't waste those damaged copies. 

Freshly printed boxes

Elder daughter Shee Yun helped me with repacking

It is a little sad to see this collection of damaged boxes. Off to the recycle bin. 

Sat 1 Aug 2026 was the Jom Gerak event, a fun run related to elderly care. This year the event also included the disabled. Several of us local game designers and publishers were invited to showcase our games. Boardgames is related to mental health. This was a good opportunity for us to do outreach, showing modern boardgames to people who don't know about them. Introducing boardgames to the general public is something we as an industry in Malaysia need to keep doing. 

Coincidentally, all six judges of this year's Design & Play game design competitions were present - me (1st from left), Logan (2nd), Jon (5th), Buddhima (7th), Haireey (8th) and Chee Kong (9th). The submission deadline has passed. We have 65 submissions. For the first stage, participants need to submit a rulebook and a short video. 

Arboretum on BGA. I had played this before, and it was nice to revisit this game. I find the game very strategic. I am probably spending more effort trying to avoid releasing cards my opponents need than trying to take cards I need. You want to create paths in your personal play area starting and ending with the same tree specie going from low to high. Every path scores points depending on whether it has other tree types mixed in and how long it is, provided at the end of the game you hold cards of that tree specie and your total value is the highest. It's a huge dilemma trying to play as many cards as you can but also needing to keep some so that you can score the specie in the first place. 

This was one huge scoring set. Needless to say, the owner has the 8. 

I attempted to play Twilight Imperium 4th Edition on BGA. It wasn't a good idea. This game is too complex to play on BGA given my situation. It is entirely my problem and not the game's. I don't have enough patience to learn complex games properly when playing on BGA. We played in async mode. We were not sitting around a table together, so we were not able to help one another with the rules. We couldn't discuss effectively. I mostly wasn't sure what I was doing. Eventually we agreed to abandon the game. If I'm going to play TI4, I should do it with the physical game. 

This was our board setup. I was at the southern tip.

This is a space conquest game. You start on single planet at the edge of the galaxy and expand towards the centre. You colonise new planets. You fight other factions. You can try to capture the planet at the centre of the galaxy, which is lucrative. Your goal is to score 10 points. 

This was my faction sheet

I own Red7 but had not played it for quite some time. This is a delicious design from Carl Chudyk. It was great to play it again on BGA. It was like missing an old friend. You meet again and you are so happy you wonder why you have not arranged to meet up again earlier. 

We played with the advanced rules. Some cards have special powers that must be applied. The lower cards have good powers which help you or hurt your opponents. The higher cards have bad powers which handicap you. 

Syzygy is pronounced SIZ-uh-jee. It means several things being in alignment, for example when sun, moon and earth are in syzygy, you have a solar eclipse. This is a new word to me. Apparently this is a popular word in Scrabble. It can score a ton of points. 

This is a game from Japan which Jon taught a few of us to play. He has played it before. We didn't have a copy, and just played with poker cards and coloured cubes. This is a cooperative game. Your goal is to arrange nine cards numbered 1 to 9 in the correct order. The cards are shuffled and laid out face down in a line. You don't discuss beforehand which end should be 1 and which should be 9. You have four tokens per player (in a four player game). On your turn, you place one of your tokens on a card, then look at it, and then you must move it to another position. You cannot look at or move a card you have already moved before. Most importantly, you cannot speak to your fellow players. The only thing you can say is "Oh my god". You can use intonation and volume to convey meaning, and nothing else. 

This is a very interesting group problem solving exercise. I have only played this once, and we did not manage to solve the problem. We were close though. One thing I do wonder about is how replayable this is. Now I have not read the rules. I was taught by Jon who was in turn taught by Ji Li. I might be missing some details. Part of the challenge is not knowing which end should be the 1. The players need to figure that out by looking at a card someone else has moved. If you see a 9 at one end, you know the player who has moved it there wants to make that end the higher end. Now you are aligned. It takes some turns to have everyone in the game aligned. It will be a problem if before you are aligned, you have been arranging cards in different ways. You somehow need to agree on the direction mid way through the game and also do some damage control, without explicitly communicating. I thought, what if you are playing a second game in a row? Wouldn't you be automatically aligned to use the same direction as your previous game? If that's the case, would the game be much easier to beat? 

Another thing I have been thinking about is how you use the phrase "oh my god". If you play several games, you will probably establish some convention. For example saying it in a low pitch means the card you have seen is a low card. Once such a convention is established, I think the game becomes easier. 

Give this a try, and don't tell your friends about any of these tactics. See how things turn out. This was certainly fun for me to work out, even though we failed. 

Quartermaster General: South Front

Having played Quartermaster General: East Front recently, Han and I moved on to play the South Front version. The South Front of World War 2 refers to the Mediterranean theatre. The game has a long map that stretches from Gibraltar in the south of Spain to Iraq in the Middle East. You have North Africa, Italy and the Balkans too. On the Axis side you have mainly the Pact (I think these are mostly Italians) and then you have some Germans too. On the Allies side you have the British and the Americans, and one French infantry. The Americans only enter the war mid way though. The game starts with the Axis invading North Africa. The British controls Egypt and tries to hold on. The Americans won't be coming yet for some time. However the tide of war will turn, due to how the decks are stacked. The game will develop in a more or less historical way, but things can develop in unexpected ways. 

That blue infantry is the French

In general this works like Quartermaster General: East Front. It has fewer pieces, so it feels a little closer to the original Quartermaster General. However this still feels more tactical, like East Front, and less strategic, like the original. You play through a fixed timeline. You score points at certain intervals. If any side outscores the other by 10 or more, it achieves an instant victory. Else you compare points at the end of the game. The game is card driven. Both sides have their own decks. You only play one card on your turn, unlike East Front where you play two. 

One new thing here is neutral countries. You can choose to attack them. They will join the other side, but if you capture them, some of them give victory points. Some cards let you bring neutral countries to your side. Neutral countries don't actively attack your opponent. They just have infantry defending themselves. 

Transports play an important role here. Often you need to ship infantry and tanks around. Naval battles can be crucial. There are few game pieces, so losing a piece can be painful. Also you can easily run out of pieces and you can't deploy more even if you have a card that lets you do so. So you have to think about where you want to have units. They can't be everywhere. 

In the first game I played against Han, I was the Axis and he was the Allies. I played aggressively and pushed hard toward Egypt. I was able to capture it, but I had a bad feeling. I realised I was running out of cards, when Han still had a lot. I think the Allies have more cards and normally their cards will last longer. I wasn't prepared for that and I had not been conserving my cards. Thankfully I managed to outscore him at mid game, and won an instant victory. Otherwise it would have been downhill for me all the way from then on, and I am sure I would have lost. 

As the Axis I vacated Italy and poured everything to North Africa.

Contingency cards are always available. You know your opponent's contingency cards. They are single use and they are played just like normal cards. 

I was the Axis and I was completely surrounded in Tunisia. At this point the Americans had entered the war (dark green pieces).

This was our second game and I was the Allies. Han was active in the Balkans and captured some territories. I had to respond by activating my own allies and even sending an infantry. He pushed aggressively towards Egypt. The situation was bleak for me. Then something unexpected happened. His whole army about to invade Egypt was wiped out due to their supply lines being cut off. I did deliberately try to send lone units to disrupt his supply, but I thought all I would achieve was distraction and delay. He misunderstood part of the supply rules, and did not re-establish his supply line in time. It was disaster for his huge army. Needless to say, things went downhill for him from that point onwards. 

The Axis soldiers still put up a good fight on the Italian peninsula. However the Allies simply had overwhelming numbers. One thing that worked out differently from our first game was I established a supply depot on the tiny island of Malta. In the first game I didn't feel Malta was important and as the Axis I didn't even bother to capture it. However in the second game I realised its importance when as the Allies I used it as a supply source. I still don't quite know why the lone French infantry in the game though. Just for flavour? 

Near final push up the Italian peninsula

Rome has fallen

South Front, like East Front, is a little scripted. You are not just re-enacting history though, you try to do at least a little better than your historical counterpart. That's how you win the game. You don't have many game pieces, and the board is not big. Sometimes it feels like you don't have a lot to do. The beauty in the game is how you decide to use your cards. In an ideal world, you draw all the right cards at the right time, and you fully utilise the card powers. But most of the time you have to work out how to best use your cards given your situation. Sometimes you spend cards not for their powers but for basic actions. Some actions require you discard cards. This is when you sacrifice some cards in order to be able to use other cards.