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. 

Hippo Crates

The Game

This was a game I played at the MASAGA Conference 2024. MASAGA means Malaysia Simulation and Games. It is a community which uses games in learning. Learning can vary from corporate training (which I do) and tertiary education to primary schools and even teaching children with special needs.

In Hippo Crates, everyone starts the game drawing one hippo card. The card you get determines what kind of fruit you like. You only score points for this fruit type. During the course of the game you will collect cards. The only cards which score points for you will be this fruit type. There is one special hippo which is confused. He doesn’t score points for collecting cards. Instead he score points based on cards collected by everyone else which do not match their hippos’ preferences. He scores 1 point per card this way.

This hippo only eats pineapples

The confused hippo

When the game starts, three cards are set up at the center of the table, starting three separate rows. Every round, players each pick one card from their hands and reveal them simultaneously. In order from lowest to highest card, you try to add your card to one of the three rows. If your card is smaller than the smallest card in a row, you may add it to the left of that row. If it is higher than the highest card, then you may add it to the right. If you can’t add your card to any row, that is good news. You claim all the cards in one of the rows and leave your own card there to start a new row.

The game ends when the draw deck runs out.

There will always be three rows of cards, with at least one card in each row.

The Play

There are some similarities to 6 Nimmt / Category 5. One big difference here is you want to take cards, not avoid cards. Playing a lower number probably gives you more control, because if you are lowest, you go first and decide where to place your card. However if your card is very low, likely you can find a spot to play it, and you won't claim anything. The middling cards might be better, because chances are higher that you can't find a slot. You probably want to have a middling card that is just a bit smaller than the other middling cards, so that you will be first to get into the situation of being unable to play your card. After you claim a row, your card will start the new row, and likely the others after you will be able to place their cards in the new row you just created. 

How you play your cards depends on the situation on the table. It also depends on what cards you have in hand. You can plan a little for the next round, e.g. playing a food type you want hoping you can win it next round. There seems to be not a lot of control, especially when there are many players. You only have a hand of three cards, so you don't have many options. With the uncertainty of what cards others might be playing, it seems difficult to deliberately plan to win the food type you want. But perhaps I had this feeling because we were all new to the game and we didn't know how to strategise our plays. The game might become more strategic and less random when the players start working out the tactics. 

Hand size is three, so you can't plan ahead as much as in Category 5, but maybe this is intentional, because you will be less prone to analysis paralysis. 

The game feels a little swingy. The card values range from 1 to 9. If you manage to win the higher cards in your food type, you will likely win. It is already hard to win food types you want, so scoring your high valued cards feels like it's about getting very lucky. 

There is an advanced variant where your hippo type is not known to your opponents. This way, you need to guess your opponents' preferred food types by observing how they play. 

The Thoughts

Hippo Crates is a light family game. There seems to be little control, so it feels a little chaotic. It seems difficult to do any effective planning ahead. Capturing the high cards of your preferred food type will likely determine whether you win. I have a gut feeling that the game can use some more development and fine-tuning, but then I might be completely wrong, since I have only played with fellow beginners and most are non-gamers. 

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.