Locco Hidden Market event

Over the weekend Locco had an event at Stadium Merdeka, and there was a section for local game designers to showcase their games. I couldn't attend as an exhibitor, since I had work, but thankfully I was able to visit the event on Sunday. 

I played Rasis' rice paddy game again - Sawah Padi. There has been some adjustments. He is still tuning the mechanisms and the scoring. 

You dig irrigation canals and plant rice fields. One side of your cards is always a rice field. However the other side can be a grasshopper, a bird, or a scarecrow. Grasshoppers and birds eat rice, and you can use this to steal your opponent's cards. Birds eat grasshoppers too. Scarecrows get rid of birds. The challenge is you don't know what's on the other side of your opponents' cards. 

KisRa is a game by Aziz. This is an educational game about the life of Prophet Muhammad. It is a roll and move game, mostly similar to Snakes and Ladders, just that you also get to collect cards, and the cards describe events in the Prophet's life. Some cards are mini tests. So this is also a trivia game. 

The artwork is pretty. The gameplay is that of typical traditional mass market games. I assume Aziz has not played many modern boardgames yet. The three of us players who tried his game suggested some tweaks, since the game was still a prototype and was not yet mass produced. The other two players were game designer exhibitors. We immediately played the game again with the tweaks added. These were all using the same components without the need to introduce anything new. 

One simple change was allowing the player to roll two dice and then pick one to use. This already introduced some meaningful decision-making. The player is not passive and his movement is not 100% dictated by fate. The path was originally a one-way street. Since the map was drawn with crossroads, we changed the game to allow following any branch you want and also moving in either direction. That sounded weird if we treated this as a chorological account of the Prophet's life. So we had to think of it as us being scholars studying his life. Then it made more sense because as scholars we didn't have to study history in strict chronological order. 

This is Ahmad's game Usolli. This was what I was looking forward to try. I got to know Ahmad only several months ago, online. He is a Malaysian now residing in Perth, Australia. I met him in person for the first time only recently. I found his games to be well crafted and mature. The box cover of Usolli intrigued me the first time I saw it. 

Usolli is a game about Islam. It is about the five prayers which Muslims perform daily, at different times of the day. You collect cards in order to perform prayers. When you manage to complete a prayer, you score points. The play area is made up of 12 cards. You move your pawn around the play area to collect cards. The card colours correspond to the five prayer times. You need a specific number of cards of the same colour in order to complete the prayer for that time. 

These five cards are the five prayers you can perform. A track runs across these five cards, and that's your timer. When the marker reaches the end, the game ends. It's bedtime. When you complete a prayer, you collect a round chip. The first chip is always worth the most points. So there is a race element. 

Your pawn movement in the play area is limited by the movement icons on the cards. They determine both direction and range. If the icon is a star, then you are free to go anywhere. Also if you are willing to discard a card, you may choose to go anywhere too.

The art is excellent. This is professional level. That icon at the top left represents cleaning. You must clean yourself before prayers. When you collect cards to perform prayers, at least one of the cards must have this icon. 

There is a fart card in the game, and it is an important aspect of the game. Ahmad explained that if you do fart, you have to clean yourself again before you do the prayers. I learned something from the game. 

The game comes with basic rules as well as several advanced rules which you can mix and match. I find the basic rules already quite complete. This is a light- to medium-weight game. 

The grey cards are jokers. 

If you are interest in Usolli, scan the QR code above, or visit the Kickstarter page. The Kickstarter campaign will be running around March 2025, during the Ramadan month.