It's a Wonderful Kingdom

The Game

This is a two player game of card drafting and tableau building. Every round you get a hand of cards, but these are not yours yet. You need to go through a drafting process to determine which cards you actually get. There are two groups of cards on the table. You will be adding two cards into one or both of the groups and then your opponent will pick a group to take. The groups do not necessarily have the same number of cards. After going through this drafting process, you will likely get some cards from your opponent and you will likely also get some of the cards you were initially dealt. The rest of the round will be about using your cards. Some can be discarded for resources. Some will be constructed as buildings. Buildings generate resources or give you points.

In this screenshot you can see two groups of cards with one card each, and your hand of cards from which you pick cards to add to one or both of the groups. 

One twist is sometimes you can add cards to a group face down. The reason for this is there are some bad cards which penalise the player holding it. Your opponent won’t know whether a face down card is a good card that you are trying to scare him away from picking, or a bad card which you want to trick him into taking.

This is a typical card. Top left corner is the cost to construct the building. Top right corner is the resource you get immediately if you discard it. Along the bottom is the production ability of the building if you own it. 

This is a bad card. It forces you to discard a card as long as you still hold it. You need to spend 3 armies (top left corner) to get rid of it. If you still have it by the end of the game, you lose 4 points (bottom right corner). 

This is an expensive card. It gives you a one-time bonus of three armies the moment you construct it (icons above the card name). At game end, it scores 2 points for every blue building you have (bottom left). 

The Play

I played the game with Jetta on boardgamearena.com. A big part of the game is about reading your opponent correctly. I did poorly in this, often taking the bad cards when I claimed groups containing face down cards. I had a poor start, and that had a cumulative effect. My resource generation engine was weaker and I could not keep up with Jetta. We ended the game with a huge gap.

On BoardGameArena.com, constructed buildings are placed at the bottom left of the screen. These were my buildings. 

These were Jetta's buildings around the same time. 

These were his buildings at game end. 

The Thoughts

The game has a somewhat interesting I-divide-you-choose mechanism. The threat of bad cards and the option to add cards face down is clever. The building construction, resource production and point scoring parts of the game are pedestrian. Nothing to write home about. As the players start building their kingdoms, there will be a tendency to collect buildings which combo well. So there will be more basis to guess what your opponent wants. You will also be able to better determine the value of a card to your opponent. Overall, I feel most of the game could have been made simpler. Do take this with a grain of salt, since I did so horribly at the game.

Young Buddhist Association of Malaysia Boardgame Design Competition 2024

YBAM organised a game design competition this year, and several local designer friends and I participated. The prize-giving ceremony was 24 Nov 2024. The results were only announced that day. There was a public play event in the morning, and the ceremony itself was in the afternoon. 

The event was at Pearl Point shopping mall. There were tables where the public could play any of the 12 finalists. My submission Tradition and Innovation made it to the finals, so I was able to take part in the event. This photo was taken before the event started. The organising team got everything ready early. 

The Secret of Shanhaijing won third place. The art is fantastic. Unfortunately the designer couldn't attend the event, and I didn't manage to try the game. 

The cards and the game board

The game board art is beautiful

Every player has a little booklet, and you use it to collect cards (creatures) 

The creatures in the game

JOM Kluang is one of the consolation prize winners.

Learnux Board Game is a game about the Linux programming language. 

Cherry Cake is a consolation prize winner and the prettiest game at the show. 

Delicious with the cherries added

Consolation prize winner Upland

My game Tradition and Innovation won a consolation prize. 

I taught some of the volunteers to play my game. 

Cedric (right) submitted two games, and they both won prizes. I meet him and chat regularly because we are both in TTGDMY (Table Top Game Designers of Malaysia). This game is Sea of Samsara, and it won a consolation prize. 

Sea of Samsara is a dice game. 

This is Cedric's champion game, Giant Prayer Wheel. It comes with a unique mechanism and game component, the rotating board. 

Evan came all the way from Penang. His submission is Zero Impact: The Sustainability Challenge.  It is a simple card game with a memory element. 

Toast Jump Jump and Fight is a two-player dexterity game. You use your finger to flip your toast. If it lands on top of an opponent toast, that toast is eliminated. So this is a battle arena game, with toasts! If your toast trips and falls out of the arena, you lose it. 

One side uses plain toasts and the other garlic toasts (with spots)

Poon Jon's Work Dice Balance won second place. Too bad he couldn't be present to receive the award himself. He sent a representative. This is a roll and write game, and a pretty clever one. Jon was at the Asian Board Game Festival in Singapore. He was an exhibitor. 

Malaysia Rainforest Animal Rescue Program is a simple game which uses some mathematics. It matches the competition requirement well - games must be playable by primary school students. 

The square blocks are player pawns. In this game, you use cards with numbers and also the plus and/or minus signs to create specific numbers. What you create will be the number of steps your pawn must move. You move about the board to rescue animals. 

Open play area

The judges were Wu Ta-Te, Cheng Ning and Rachel Chen, all of whom are highly experienced in the boardgame industry. Cheng Ning and Rachel Chen flew to Malaysia all the way from Taiwan. Wu Ta-Te couldn't make the trip and did judging with them online. I had many good takeaways from the sharing from the judges. I learned more about the Taiwan and the China boardgame markets, about game design and also the game industry in general. I brought my published games Snow White and Ali Baba, and since the open play event was very free-form, some players asked and I showed them these games. I received good feedback and suggestions. 

Riftforce

The Game

Riftforce is a 2-player card game which is light yet strategic. Let me state up front that I can’t quite get into the fantasy mage story so my description won’t be accurate. The game lore says that the earth has cracked open and it is leaking energy. You are mages fighting to control five locations along the crack. There are 9 types of fighters in the game. At the start of every game you will take turns drafting fighter types. You will eventually form your card deck with four fighter types. Your opponent will have four types different from yours. During the game you deploy fighters to control locations and attack enemies. You score points for dominating locations and killing enemies. First to score 12 points wins. 

Each fighter type has cards numbered 5, 6 and 7. There are more 5’s and fewer 7’s. All fighters of the same type have the same ability. Only their values, which represent life points, differ. You have a hand of 7 cards. On your turn you may play cards, activate cards, or draw cards. It’s simple. When playing cards, you may play up to three cards of the same type or the same number, to up to three adjacent locations. When activating cards, you may activate up to three cards of the same type or number, at any location. The card abilities are mostly related to attacking enemies at the same location. Some cards have higher attack values than others. Some cards can move about. Some cards attack enemies other than the main defender (frontliner). Refilling your hand is not automatic. It’s a specific action you choose to perform. When you take this action, you also check whether you control any location and you score points for this. Controlling a location means having fighters there while the opponent does not have any. 

You start every game by drafting fighter types

That's the crack in the middle. You play cards on opposing sides. 

This fighter type might not be strong, but it is mobile and also can help you score points directly. 

This fire type has a powerful attack. 

You normally deal damage to the opponent frontliner. They accumulate damage tokens until the number reaches their health value. Then they die, and you score a point. 

The Play

You often have a dilemma between choosing number or type. You want to maximise your turn, so ideally you can play or activate three cards, but you don't always have three cards of the same number or type. Sometimes one particular fighter is positioned to make a great move, but if you activate it, you can't activate any other fighters of the same type or number. Aaah... juicy decisions. 

You hope to play the more robust 7's on your frontline, so that they last longer. However there are fewer 7's in your deck, and you may not always be able to wait for three 7's to deploy them all together in one move. Again, difficult decisions. 

You have only four fighter types, but there are plenty of clever tactics you can pull. There is a tricky balance of scoring points from killing enemies and scoring points from controlling locations. You are always under pressure to move fast, because if you let your opponent control too many locations, they will quickly rack up the points. 

By spreading out thinly, I am at risk of my fighters getting killed by Jetta's focused attacks. However when spread out and being able to control multiple locations, I can quickly score points and rush for 12 points. 

The earth (brown) fighter type can be very powerful. In the fourth column Jetta had four fighters, and it would not be easy to defeat them all. However the earth fighter dealt damage to every enemy in a column. When Jetta had so many of his fighters all lined up, it was perfect for my earth fighters. The meta level game is important. By knowing what fighter types your opponent has, you adjust how you play. 

The Thoughts

I had not heard of Riftforce before playing it. Or probably I had, but I had forgotten. The theme and format are pretty much forgettable to me. However once I played the game, I realised how clever it is. This is one of the most enjoyable discoveries I've had lately. I looked up the game and found out it was a recommended game under the 2021 Kennerspiel des Jahres awards, and also a 2021 Golden Geek Best 2-Player Game nominee. I had completely ignored it because of the theme and the general premise. I'm glad Jetta suggested the game. If you have not tried it, do give it a go. This game deserves much praise. 

DONUTS

I played DONUTS on BoardGameArena.com. It is a 2-player abstract game in which you try to form a line of five donuts of your colour. The first player to do this wins. 

On the board the spaces are divided by a line in different orientations, and this is an important part of the game. 

When you place your donut, the line on the space determines where your opponent must play next. It must be aligned with that line on your space. This is how you restrict where your opponent can play next. You need to be careful not to leave him no place to play a donut, because if that happens, he gets to play anywhere instead. It is dangerous to give your opponent this much freedom. 

Early game

White is on the verge of winning

There is one special rule which allows you to convert opponent donuts to yours. This works in the opposite manner from Othello / Reversi. When you form an uninterrupted row of your colour with both ends being the opponent colour, you can flip those two opponent donuts to become yours. This is a bit tricky and when I first played it was unintuitive. I easily missed opportunities and also was not able to defend against it well. In the screenshot above, there are two black donuts in the second row. If a white donut is placed between them, they would both be flipped to the white side. 

White wins

I only realised after playing the game that it is by Bruno Cathala. This is a perfect information and luckless game. It's a serious game that will have you pondering several moves ahead. Yet the play time is short. 

Short takes: Counter Spy, Co Ca Ngua, That's You

These are three games I tried and watched at the recent Thailand Board Game Show. All are from South East Asian designers. 

Counter Spy is from Vietnam. It is a 2-player deduction game. During setup, reveal one card to be the murder victim, and place one card face-down at the centre to be the murderer. The rest of the cards are dealt out to the two players, becoming their starting hands. Your objective is to find out who the murderer is. There are only 15 cards in the game. They come in four colours, and the numbers range from 1 to 7. The distribution is as follows. 

This is a notepad for taking notes when you play. 

You can already eliminate many cards from suspicion once you get your starting hand. The rest will take a bit more work. On your turn, you have two options. You either attempt to guess the murderer, or you give a card to your opponent. The round ends when you take a guess. If you are right, you score 2 points. Otherwise, your opponent scores 1 point. You win when you score 3 points. So the game will go at least 2 rounds. 

The more common thing you do during the game is to give a card to your opponent. When you do this, you must also share information in a specific format. E.g. you can say that you have 3 yellow cards, including the card being given, and that card must also be yellow. Information can be based on colour, or number, or number of cards in sequence. E.g. I have a sequence of four consecutive numbers. You use the information you get to work out who the murderer is. You have to mindful of what information you give to your opponent. You want to minimise helping them. 

Cards given to you are placed face-up before you. 

Victim, murderer and point card. 

I had two black cards and that is lucky. The black cards are numbered 5, 6 and 7, and this distribution is different from other colours which come in 1 to 4. I did my best not to reveal any information about my black cards. This way, it was very difficult for my opponent to determine the murderer. If he had the black 6, and he felt the murderer was a black card, he would have only a 50% chance when taking a guess. If he didn't have the black 6, his chance would be just one third. If I could eliminate the possibilities of all other colours, I would know the murderer was the black 6. 

This is a microgame. It's short. It's clever. I like how it doesn't need to rely on special abilities on the cards to make the game interesting. It's only numbers and colours. 

Coca Ngua is not exactly the correct way to type the name of the game. I don't know how to type Vietnamese. This is a light roll-and-move race game. Before you dismiss the game, let's take a closer look. 

The characters are cute. 

The race track is assembled randomly using cards. You only need to make one lap to win. There are four sections, each with four number cards. They must always be in ascending order. On your turn you roll two dice to attempt to move. If there is a card of the number you roll in front in the same section, you get to advance to that card. When you reach the last card in a section, you will get a free move onto the corner card on your next turn. After that you enter the next section. 

This is certainly not only a roll-and-move game. There are several other mechanisms which add some tactical elements to the game. You have hand cards. Whenever you fail to move, you get to draw a card. Cards can be used in several ways. If you play a pair, you get to advance to that specific number. If you play thee cards, you take an extra move. You may also play a card to modify the race track. Remove a vacant card and insert your card instead. The section must still be sorted in ascending order, which means you may be helping yourself towards the next corner (by removing a card before you) or you may be slowing down an opponent (by inserting a card before them). 

From the second section onwards, you can attack other players. When you land on the same space as another player, you knock them over. They lose a turn. There is a catch-up mechanism in the game. If you trail the lead player by at least one section, you get to roll three dice instead of two, and you get to choose which two dice to use. This makes it easier for you to make a useful combination. 

It is still a simple game, but the options you have give you a bit more control and allows you to do some strategic planning. 

That's You is a party game from Indonesia. It is a cooperative game. You don't exactly win or lose. You just try to work together to score as many points as you can, like in Hanabi. 

Every player gets one chance to be clue giver. Once everyone has had the chance to do so, the game ends, and you check to see how many points you have scored. When you set up a round, you draw six cards from the deck. The cards describe a person. For example mommy's boy, or someone who is always friend zoned, or someone can't even hurt a fly. Each card will be assigned a token facedown. One of these tokens mark the correct answer, and only the clue giver knows which one it is. The clue giver has three discs to give out. This is the only way you can give clues. There's a disc labelled "Most Likely", which you should give to the person best matching the description on the correct answer. There's a disc labelled "Least Likely" which of course you would give to a person who does not fit the description at all. Then there's a third disc which is double sided. You have to choose which side. One side says "More Likely", and the other "Less Likely". 

If you play with old friends, you will be giving clues based on how well you know them. If you are playing with new friends, it will be based on your first impression of them. Both cases are interesting and fun, and trigger discussion. 

Once all three discs are given out, all players except for the clue giver must work together to eliminate the wrong answers one by one. If you do poorly, you will lose points. If you manage to find all five wrong answers, you score 3 points. 

The fun in this game is the table talk about how we perceive one another. You may be surprised by how your friends perceive you. The cards in the game come in two types, a normal type and a whacky type. The whacky type has some silly descriptions and also some fantasy-based descriptions, like necromancer. You can play with one or the other type, or mix them up.