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. 

Dog Poker

Dog Poker is first in a series of animal poker games from Japan by Kaya Miyano. I bought both Dog Poker and Cat Poker when traveling, and only later realised I already own Cat Poker. Cat Poker is the original Japanese version of Panda Panda. Although named poker, neither game is similar to poker. Or maybe animals play poker differently. 

In Dog Poker every card is a dog. There are seven species, and the number of cards is different for the species. Some are common, some are rare. You collect cards using a draft and pass mechanism much like 7 Wonders. All cards are dealt out to the players at the start of a game. Every round you must pass some cards to your neighbour. In the first round you pass four cards, and every round this reduces. By the fourth and last round, you only pass one card. Then you do scoring based on the cards you have. 

I need to turn back the clock and talk about what happens before you start passing cards. Every card in the game, in addition to being a dog, also has two scoring criteria. One specifies the point value of a single dog. The other specifies the point value of a specific combination of dogs. At the start of the game, everyone chooses one card from their hand to be used for scoring at the end. That means everyone knows one specific scoring card and can prepare accordingly. At the start of every round, one scoring card is revealed. As the game progresses, players will have more and more information about which dogs and which combinations will score.

You will play several games in succession, until someone reaches 100 points. The player with the highest total score is the ultimate winner.

Playing this game is about deciding which cards and combinations to go for. You start with limited information so you can only make guesses. Combinations are attractive. When you try to make a combination, you are taking a gamble that your neighbour will pass you the cards you need. The cards your neighbour passes to you can be important information to help you guess what kind of combinations he is trying to make, and this which cards he will or will not pass to you. Choosing which cards to pass to your other neighbour can be quite a dilemma. You don’t want to unwittingly give him cards which help him score big, but if you keep a card which you think is critical, you might be forced to pass a card which is also useful to you. 

One funny situation we had was Chen Rui managing a huge combo at the end of the third round. That combo needed all seven cards. We still had a fourth round to play, which meant she must pass one of her cards. Her only hope was to get back the same card from her other neighbour. Unfortunately for her, that did not happen. She would’ve won the game if she received the right card.

I think this game should be played with exactly four. With fewer players, you need to create dumb bots to play for the missing players. They are just stacks of cards sitting between human players which you randomly draw cards from or insert cards into. When playing with bots you lose some player interaction. 

Rikka

Rikka is from the makers of Tiger & Dragon, which I greatly enjoyed. The use of mahjong-like tiles is nice. Although not absolutely necessary, it does make the game experience better. 

You can consider Rikka simplified mahjong. It does feel like mahjong, but there are some important differences. You start with a hand of 5 tiles. On your turn you take a tile then discard a tile. Tiles in the game are like dominoes. They have two halves and each half is a number between 1 and 6. Numbers are expressed as firework patterns. You win a round by making a valid 6 tile combo. There are three possible combos, with different point values. You play multiple rounds and win the game at 10 points. 

All tiles in the centre start face down. When you draw a tile, you can draw any tile, including any previously discarded and face up tile. This is very different from mahjong. You have access to more and more known tiles as the game progresses. Another interesting twist is when a player wins a round, other players may also score. If someone else wins, but you are only one tile away from winning, and there is one face up tile that would have allowed you to win, you will score too, as if that tile is in your hand. Due to this rule, you can choose not to win yet when there is such a tile, and wait for an even better tile that will create a better combo for you. The downside of doing this though is you are giving your opponents more time to make combos too. With this rule, it is possible that a player who only scores but does not win scores more points than the player who wins. You certainly don't have this in mahjong. 

The three combos in the game have one common requirement - the bottom number must be the same. You can rotate and rearrange your tiles at any time. If the top numbers make a perfect sequence of 1 to 6, your combo scores 6 points. If your top numbers make two sets of numbers in sequence, your combo is 3 points. Otherwise, your combo with just the bottom being the same number scores 1 point. 

It is important to take note of what your opponents are taking and discarding. If anyone takes a face-up tile, he must be trying to make a combo with one of those two numbers on it. When a player discards a tile, he is probably not attempting either of those numbers. 

The game comes with six optional modules. You can play with any combination of them, even all at the same time. One module allows you to say uno. Well, kind of. When you are one tile from winning, you can declare so, after which you may not change any of the five cards on your rack. If you draw a tile and you don't win with it, you cannot keep it and discard another tile. You must discard it. If you win the game after having made such a declaration, you gain an extra point. 

Another module is the direct hit. If you discard a tile which another player can win with, he declares so and wins immediately. In this case he doesn't take points from the bank. He takes the points from you! With this module, you have to play much more carefully and defensively. 

The other four modules add more combos. This changes things up a little. You don't necessarily need to have bottom numbers that are all the same. It becomes harder to guess what your opponents are trying to do.

I find the game enjoyable. It's certainly much easier to learn than mahjong, but it still has many fun aspects of mahjong and more. This is a game in which you must consider what your opponents are trying to do. Since you can take any face-up tile, it is possible to switch to collect tiles of another number if you see many tiles of that number being discarded. You only need six tiles. In one game we played, Chung saw that no one wanted any 4. The rest of us knew he was trying to collect 2's, and we deliberately avoided playing any 2's. He switched to collecting 4's, and managed to win. Maybe we should have taken some tiles with 4's to stop him. But then we would be spoiling our own hands. 

The game is short and easy, yet there are interesting decisions to be made. There is certainly some luck. Sometimes you keep drawing the tiles you need. The fun is in taking a gamble when both of your options seem equally viable. You need to consider risk and reward. Do you go for an easy win, or do you attempt to make a strong combo. This game gives me an urge to buy Tiger & Dragon.