boardgaming in photos: working, playing and testing

I used a game I designed in one of my recent leadership training sessions - Tradition and Innovation. The game was not originally designed for training or learning purposes, but I realised it was fitting for the particular training programme I was doing, on leadership. The core idea I wanted to convey in Tradition and Innovation was that two competing factions have a common objective, but they pursue two very different ways to achieve it. The game was originally designed for 2 to 6 players. To turn it into a training activity, I made it playable for 12 participants. 

You have the tradition faction and the innovation faction. Both want prosperity for the world. However one wants to achieve this by honouring tradition, while the other believes innovation is the only way forward. In game terms, the tradition faction wins by pushing prosperity level and tradition level to 20 or more. The innovation faction wins by pushing prosperity level and innovation level to 20 or more. They have a common goal - prosperity. The game is played over at most 6 rounds. If neither faction achieves their winning condition, the game ends with both of them losing. 

The game was designed to explore human nature and human interaction in an organisation where people have both common goals and conflicting agendas. If an action would help the other party a lot, would you choose not to do it even if meant hurting yourself a little? Since there is a common goal, will you then focus your resources only on your own goal, and just let other people take care of the common goal? Because it's in their interest anyway? How willing are you to contribute to the common goal? 

This training activity I ran turned out to be very exciting. In Round 4, one of the factions already had a chance of winning. However the events had to be resolved first to see whether the two required levels could be maintained. Unfortunately one of them dropped below 20, so there was no victory yet. In Round 6, again one faction was poised to win. So now it came down to the last three event cards. Event cards were all bad. It was a matter of which stat was hit. At this point the innovation level and prosperity level were both above 20. The innovation faction would win if they both stayed at 20 or more. The first event card revealed affected the tradition level. No problem. The second event card affected the prosperity level. Thankfully it dropped from 23 to 20. That was still good enough. So it came down to the very last card in the very last round. And... innovation level dropped below 20. The innovation faction groaned in disappointment. The tradition faction cheered so happily it was as if they had won. In fact they were just happy the other team lost the game together with them. I teased them - you should be ashamed of yourselves. 

This was a boardgame gathering with my BNI friends. They are all non-gamers, so I mostly bring light games. I often bring my game design projects to get some playtesting done. This round I brought some prototypes too, but we were so engrossed with playing other games I forgot to bring them out. Blokus is very easy to teach, but as you play, you'll learn that it can be quite tricky and strategic. 

I was finally able to play Potato Tomato, which I brought back from the Thailand Board Game Show. I also managed to play Jinx-O from Indonesia. More and more games checked off from my to-play list. 

Ubongo is a game with a spatial element. It requires a different kind of brain power. Even if you are smart and strategic, you may not have that spatial reasoning ability. Alex is one of the smartest guys I've met, and he had difficulties with Ubongo, so Susie had to come to the rescue. Susie grasped the techniques quickly, and was often first to solve her puzzle. 

The gems of Ubongo

18 Jan 2025. TTGDMY playtest session. This is Jon's Dive for Gold, a push-your-luck game about diving for treasures. You keep revealing cards hoping to get valuable treasures. Each card comes with an oxygen cost. If you exhaust your oxygen supply, you will be forced to return without taking any treasure. So you need to decide when is good enough. If you decide by yourself to return, you don't necessarily claim all the revealed cards. You only get the most recent cards, up to a weight limit. You must take treasures beginning from the most recent, and you must take as many as you can, up to the weight limit, even if it means some are rubbish. 

You can take at most 10 treasures. Once anyone has 10, the game ends. The bikini is a treasure with no value. It just takes up a slot. 

This is Chee Kong's new game. He continues to develop new games using components from Zodiac Go. If you have a copy of the game, you will keep getting new games. You can download them from the Zodiac Go website. This particular new game in development has a bit of trick-taking. You win tricks to compete in five areas. 

I continue playtesting and developing Taking Sides. Number 7 is Liu Bei (from Three Kingdoms). I am now focusing on playtesting the 3 and 4 player variant rules. The game has 10 characters, each with a different strength value and special ability. Every round, you draw a random character, and then you have to decide which of two factions to join. For just that round, members of a faction fight as a team, but next round they may be on different teams. Now that I am using the Three Kingdoms theme, I name these two factions the loyalists (to the Han Dynasty) and the rebels. In the early days of playtesting, I mostly played with 6 to 8 players. At a high player count, many character powers came into play, and there was enough interaction between the powers to make the game interesting. However at a low player count, the game became less interesting. That is why I want to introduce variants for the 3 and 4 player games. The idea is I want to always have at least 5 characters in play. 

With 4 players, during round setup, one of the unused face-up cards becomes the Han Emperor, an NPC (non-player character). This character is already in the loyalist faction. After knowing who is already in the loyalist faction, the (human) players take turns deciding which faction they want to join. Knowing which character is already in the loyalist faction affects players' decisions. If my character works well with the Han Emperor, I probably want to join him. If my character's power can neutralise the Han Emperor, I will not be afraid to join the rebel faction. 

With 3 players, in addition to the Han Emperor NPC, there is another NPC - the Yellow Turban Rebel. In the Three Kingdoms story, the downfall of the Han Dynasty usually starts with the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which is a religious movement. When playing Taking Sides with 3 players, the identity of the Han Emperor is known. There will also be four characters face-up at the centre of the table. When players take turns choosing a faction, whoever is first to pick the rebel faction gets to claim one of those four face-up characters. This will be the Yellow Turban Rebel, who of course joins the rebel faction. Being able to choose an NPC teammate is attractive, especially when one of those four combos very well with your character. When you see an opponent pick a character to be the Yellow Turban Rebel, that gives you some clue too as to who that opponent's character might be. 

This was a smaller playtesting session with just the five of us. Erin left slightly earlier. Darryl was camera-shy. Thus only the three of us (me, Chee Kong, Jon) in this photo. 

Chatting Rivers and Lakes with Tao

 

Brian Bankler from Tao of Gaming, a blog I have been following for many years, read my recent post on Rivers and Lakes, a business simulation activity I designed for my leadership training work. He was intrigued and contacted me to chat more. We did an interview through email exchanges. We went into more details about the activity itself, my experiences running it, and also the thinking processes behind the design. Here's our conversation. 

If you are interested in my leadership training, contact me. 

Email: cs@simplifypeople.com

Website: simplifypeople.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiewchoksien/ 

Dungeon Roll

The Game

Dungeon Roll is fantasy dungeon crawling designed as a dice game. You play three rounds, in which everyone takes a turn to explore and plunder a dungeon. After three rounds, you compare points to see who wins. 

White dice are the player dice. They represent the party of adventurers you explore the dungeon with. Black dice are the dungeon dice. They represent the monsters and also the treasures you encounter. Most faces of a white die are different adventurer types, like fighter, cleric and thief. They have different abilities. They are used to defeat black dice. Treasures and potions on the black dice need to be "defeated" too. You need to spend white dice to open treasures and to quaff potions. However you do get something in return. 

Exploring a dungeon means fighting through it level by level until you are defeated or decide to retreat. There are 10 levels, and every level is harder than the previous one. You only roll one black die for the first level, two for the second level, three for the third, and so on. Every time you clear one level, you have to decide whether to retreat and keep the score you have so far, or to attempt the next level and hope to score more. In case you fail to fight through a level you are attempting, you won't score points for the whole adventure. The next level will have more black dice. You will gradually use up your white dice. Some abilities let you restore some of them. At the moment I can't imagine how you can get to Level 10. By around Level 5 it already feels like the max. Maybe I need to learn to play better. 

The different types of adventurer have different abilities. By default they can always defeat one monster. However they specialise in certain monster types. E.g. a single cleric can defeat any number of skeletons. So if you roll many skeletons, and you have one cleric, you're in luck! 

When you use white dice to open treasure chests, you get all sorts of treasures and equipment. A thief can open any number of chests. Some items behave like a specific adventurer type. You keep them for future use. Some items have point values. Potions you quaff let you restore white dice. One of the black die faces is the dragon. Rolling a dragon means you are starting to disturb it. Dragon die faces are set aside. Once you reach three dragons, you wake the dragon and must fight it in order to complete the current level. Defeating the dragon requires three different adventurer types, so it's not easy. If you manage it, you score points and gain a treasure. 

Scrolls, which appear on white dice, let you reroll. Sometimes this can be a life saver. Sometimes it makes things worse. 

Every player gets a character card. You have one ongoing ability, and one once-per-excursion ability. When you reach a certain experience level (which is also your victory points), your character upgrades and both your abilities change. 

The Play

This is mostly a solo game. Only one player is actually playing at any one time. The others spectate. The only player interaction is thinking about well your opponents are doing and deciding how much risk you want to take in order to catch up to them or stay ahead of them. Rolling dice is exciting. There's an element of surprise and uncertainty. The game is tactical in nature. You do your best with what you roll. Overall it's pretty straight-forward. Still, the dungeon crawling theme comes out pretty well. You do feel like you're fighting your way through monsters and traps. The fact that you need to roll dice makes the experience one of risk-taking. 

The character card being tilted 90 degrees means you've used your single-use power.

The Thoughts

Dungeon Roll is a light and brisk dice game, and it's flavourful as a fantasy adventure game despite the simplicity. 

Happy New Year

 

Rivers and Lakes

 

My full-time work is leadership training. I am a corporate trainer and I specialise in the topic of leadership. Leadership is about leading and managing people. It is about understanding people, being able to communicate well with people, and being able to influence and motivate people. There are techniques and methods that can be applied. I have been a boardgame hobbyist longer than I have been a leadership trainer. Attending training can sometimes be dull. For learning to be effective, the lesson needs to be engaging. As a learner I want to know how I can apply theory to practice. I designed a business simulation activity for my training courses called Rivers and Lakes. It uses many concepts from boardgames and it plays like a giant boardgame. 

The Activity

Rivers and Lakes is a weird name. It is a literal translation of the Chinese word "jiang1 hu2" (江湖), which refers to underground societies. The setting is Hong Kong gangster movies of the 1990's. Imagine The Godfather in Asia. In the activity there are many Hong Kong movie and TV celebrities, and also scenes from gangster movies. You play gangsters from two powerful clans, the Kong family and the Woo family. If the number of students is high, I add a third clan, the Lee family. There is a hierarchy within each clan - the bosses, the seniors and the juniors. Each clan has a reputation level. That's your victory points. At the end of the game, a clan wins by having the highest reputation. Individuals in the game have three personal stats - money, skill and relationship. Every player has a secret personal goal, and usually it is to gather as much as possible one of the three stats. So the team has a goal, and the individual has one too. 

The game is played on a giant map of Hong Kong. Part of the game is area control, like Risk. At the start of the game, each clan chooses a base. You get that territory for free. For the rest of the game, you need to commit resources to capture any new territory. Every territory has four stats. There is a reputation value. Capture the territory and your clan reputation goes up. There is a personal stat, i.e. money, skill or relationship. Capture the territory and everyone in your clan increases this particular stat. However, if you lose this territory, everyone decreases the stat too. The last two stats of a territory are resistance and defence. Resistance represents how hard the territory is to capture when not yet controlled by any gang. Defence refers to the defensive bonus when a gang controlling the territory defends it against an invading gang. 

Before the activity starts I ask my students to select a character to play. Every clipboard is a different character. The profile photos are all Hong Kong celebrities from the 90's. So Jackie Chan's photo is from that era - you get to see the young Jackie Chan. The characters have various starting stats - money, skill and relationship. Picking a character is pretty random. People just choose based on the celebrities they like, because at that point I have not explained the stats yet. 

You get to choose your own name for the activity

There is no fixed number of rounds for the game. I normally play around 6 rounds. I adjust this based on the situation during training day, i.e. how fast the students are in making decisions and completing rounds of play. Every round, the clans simultaneously decide a territory to attack. They can invade uncontrolled territories or another clan's territory. Sometimes they end up attacking one another's territories. I announce a crisis at the start of a round. There are many types of crises. For example there is one called pirated VCD's. If a certain number of members of a clan participate in resolving this crisis, the whole clan gains some benefit (e.g. more money). Otherwise, they get nothing, or they may even be penalised. 

Every round, the most important procedure is the circle. This is a voting mechanism. Here's how it works. 

Every student gets three pebbles - red, white and brown. When performing the circle, all members of the same clan stand in a circle, hold one stone in their fists, and extend their fists towards the centre. They then open their hands at the same time. Now you can discuss all this and coordinate who to hold which colour beforehand, but you still have to go through the procedure. From a gamer's perspective, this seems weird and unnecessary. In practice, I do see students making mistakes due to miscommunication or misunderstanding. It takes conscious effort to coordinate the actions of these big groups. 

The stone colour in your hand means different things. If you have a brown stone, you participate in resolving the crisis. The outcome will be different for your clan depending on how many commit to this. If your stone is black, you participate in offense. If your clan is attacking an unoccupied territory, you need to have enough attackers to overcome the resistance. If your clan is attacking an opponent clan's territory, only members holding black stones may join the fight. If your stone is white, you are a defender. When being attacked, only defenders may participate in defence. There is a fourth option - holding out an empty hand. No stone means you are going for training (self improvement). You may increase (not by much) any one of your three personal stats. When your clan attacks a territory or resolves a crisis, the stat you gain may not be the one which is your personal goal. Only when you go for training you can choose which stat to increase. 

There are several different crises. There is one about internal strife. Some members get promoted while others get demoted. There is one about betrayal. Some members are forced to join another clan. Crises are my way of creating different scenarios and presenting tough decisions. 

Normally in the first few rounds the clans expand peacefully, because there are still many unoccupied territories. But the map is not that big. Sooner or later they will clash. They will try to capture one another's territories, and they will fight. Fighting is simple. For each battle, a die is first rolled to determine which personal stat will be compared - money, skill or relationship. Attacker and defender simultaneously assign three fighters (who have the corresponding stone colours), and their personal stats are compared in a series of three one-on-one fights. You need to win 2 out of 3 to win the battle. If the attacker is victorious, they capture the territory. They gain reputation and the personal stat of that territory, and the defender loses these. This is often a huge swing. However if the attacker fails, they have just wasted one round achieving nothing. That is painful. 

The white vans are attack markers

When the time is about right, I declare that the next round is the final one. I have designed quite a number of rounds. If I were to play every round I have designed, the activity may take 6 hours. Normally I will play the first 5 rounds or so, and then I skip to the final round. The final round is specifically designed to create a climax. Unoccupied territories have their resistance lowered to zero, and clans get to make three attacks instead of just one. This change can result in a major shake-up. 

At the completion of the last round, the reputation levels of the clans are not yet final. There are still some bonus points to be awarded. All students are grouped according to their personal goals and then ranked. For example students whose goal is to be as rich as possible line up from richest to poorest. Those in the top 30% earn bonus reputation for their respective clans. After these bonuses are awarded, the eventual winning clan is declared. Only at this time I explain who the true winners are. The true winner needs to be in the winning clan, and also need to be in the top 30% in their category. If you fulfil only one of the two conditions, you are only a partial winner. 

If you think of Rivers and Lakes as a boardgame, it's not very complicated, at least from a gamer's perspective. It's just a little unusual because it is designed to accommodate a big group. I have played it with around 15 players at the lowest, and around 90 at the highest. Based on the many sessions I have run, the ideal count is 20 to 50. With too few, the game is not challenging enough. I designed it to simulate difficulties in communication and coordination in large organisations when people have different agendas. With a low player count, the activity is not as challenging as it is intended to be. At a high player count, the activity becomes difficult to manage. To non-gamers, this is not an easy activity to learn. With a large group, some will fail to keep up, and they give up. They let their teammates handle the activity, and they go sit at the back of the room to chit chat. This is the bystander effect. People feel that there is someone else who will handle the problem, so they don't need to contribute. This problem is often too much for the students to handle. The activity itself is hard enough for them to need to also manage this behaviour which emerges in large groups. However there were groups which managed to keep this in check. I salute them when they can do that. 

I use slides showing movie scenes

The Learning Topics

Having fun is good and all, but this is a training activity, so the objective is learning and not just having fun. This activity explores leadership by putting the students into a difficult situation. Learning the game is not easy. Organising themselves is not easy. Managing communication is not easy. All this while they also need to compete against the other teams. All this simulates real-life situations, when we need to work under stress and uncertainty. We need to keep learning and stay flexible. When people come together to solve a complex problem, they learn something about themselves. They learn what they are capable of. They also learn what their weaknesses are. Whether they succeed of fail in the game, they gain insights that can be applied to real work. 

In the activity you have organisational goals and individual goals. The message I want to convey is the importance of aligning them. As a leader, if you want your team to be motivated to work towards the organisational goals, the organisation too much help the individuals achieve their personal goals. When these two goals align, the individuals will help the organisation succeed. Some individuals pursue wealth. Some pursue personal growth. Some want to belong. When a leader is observant and supports their people in achieving their personal goals, they will earn the respect and support of their people. They build strong teams. 

When I run this activity, I always pose this question at the end: Do you know the personal goal of your teammate? Very quickly someone will object: But you said our personal goals are secret! I then say: I said you must never show your personal goal card to anyone else, but I never said you cannot tell your friends your personal goal. At the start of the activity, I intentionally mislead my students. At this point, there will always be a few who tell the group that they do know the personal goals of their teammates. They know not because their teammates have told them. They know because they have been observant about the choices and suggestions their teammates made. When there is mutual understanding in an organisation, people are able to collaborate more meaningfully and effectively. Everybody wins. 

Rivers and Lakes can be used to explore many other leadership related concepts. For example the different roles which top executives, middle management and frontline workers play. Why is it that in the activity when the bosses decide on which territory to attack, there is still the need for a certain percentage of clan members to show a black pebble for the attack to be successful? In the real world, if most people in a company do not believe in the direction the CEO sets, the company probably won't be successful in pursuing this direction. 

The Design Considerations

Designing an educational game or a training activity is very different from designing an entertainment-only game. The objectives are different. A training activity is meant to teach concepts and foster learning. When people learn through a game, it is much more engaging and memorable. The experience is immersive. You get hands-on experience. Doing is always more effective than passively listening. You understand better, and you learn to apply. The design for Rivers and Lakes started with the learning objectives. The game mechanisms were all built around that. I chose the gangster movie setting simply because it was entertaining. Also I do believe running a criminal organisation takes just as much leadership skill as running a business organisation. 

One challenge in designing this activity is how to keep everyone engaged. How to make everyone feel they play a significant enough role. The circle mechanism is one way to try to achieve this. Doing the circle properly requires everyone to understand the mechanism. The clans need to work out a way to coordinate. Everyone must pay attention. Even just one person messing up can completely ruin the clan's plan. Everyone having their own clipboard to manage and their own personal stats to update is another way of creating ownership and engagement. The personal goal is something you have to be responsible for, and no one else can do it for you. It is also a core part of the learning objective. 

Many training activities out there are boardgames, supporting about five players at most. If there are 30 attendees, you need six sets, and the attendees will be playing separately at six different tables. When designing Rivers and Lakes I deliberately wanted to create something which everyone played together. Not at separate tables. I want my students to face the challenge of managing complex organisations and conflicting agendas. There are difficulties that come with this design direction. There is less individual contribution compared to if students play at tables of five. If there are only five people at your table, you will have more opportunities to speak up. If there are fifty, it's more challenging. And that's part of the point. 

I use a giant map for the sake of visual impact and presence. The photos I take at the training sessions look great! You feel like some general or tactician poring over the map of a battlefield. I bought two chopping knives for the sake of immersion. Sometimes I flash a knife when running the activity. That always invokes wows and laughter. The background music I play are Cantopop songs mostly from the 90's. That's the era of Alan Tam, Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, George Lam and Aaron Kwok. 

When I got into the boardgame hobby in 2003, I would not have imagined that boardgames would become part of my work. For many years boardgames have been just entertainment. Now, they are also a teaching tool and a communication strategy. They are part of my livelihood. This is great fun and highly satisfying for me. I look forward to creating more such games. 

If you are interested in my leadership training, contact me. 

Email: cs@simplifypeople.com

Website: simplifypeople.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiewchoksien/ 

Addendum 29 Jan 2025: Brian Bankler from Tao of Gaming read this article and contacted me to chat more. Here's our conversation which discusses more details about the training activity. 

Finca

The Game

Finca is a 2009 game. I remember it was popular then. At the time I wasn't particularly interested in the setting or the general mechanism, so I didn't actively seek it out. This box cover above is from the 2024 edition. I managed to try the game online recently. It's a pretty decent game. No wonder it was picked up for publication again after 15 years. 

Finca is yet another game about collecting resources and fulfilling contracts. Don't let that deter you. What's interesting about the game is this rondel on the left. It is how you collect resources. Every segment specifies a resource type. Each player will have multiple workers on the rondel. You move your workers to collect resources. Where your worker lands determines what resource you get. The number of workers (whether your own or those of other players) where you land determines how many resources you collect. The number of steps your worker moves is not decided by you. It depends on the number of workers in the starting space. This is a tricky part of the game. 

At the 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock positions you can see a donkey icon. When one of your workers move past these positions, you claim a donkey. You need donkeys to fulfil contracts. They are how you deliver the resources. So you need to plan the movement of your workers to collect both resources and donkeys. 

There are 10 regions on the map. At each region there is a stack of four contracts. These are all first come first served. You compete with everyone else to fulfil the topmost visible contract of each stack. The easiest contracts require only one resource. The hardest, six. Naturally the harder ones give you more points. The game ends when a certain number of stacks run out. Each time a stack runs out, a bonus is given to the player who has delivered the most of a specific resource. This is something you want to pay attention to. Either you want to do well in a resource type which you think will soon score, or if you are already doing well in a specific resource type, you want to exhaust that specific stack which will reward you for that resource. 

One interesting rule is how the resource tokens in the game are limited. When you run out, it is not the active player being out of luck and unable to collect resources. Instead everyone must surrender this resource type to the common pool, and the active player does get to collect resources. This can be quite scary. You don't want to stockpile a lot only to waste it all. This rule applies to donkeys too. You may be collecting resources and donkeys to make a huge delivery, but if the donkeys run out and someone claims another, you will lose all yours, which can severely set you back.

We played with both the small expansions. One of them was these four square tiles. They gave once-per-game special abilities, e.g. one of them was a large donkey cart that could deliver 10 resources instead of the usual 6, and another one allowed completing contracts with one resource fewer. 

The Play

I played Finca with my Hong Kong friend Jetta on BoardGameArena.com. The core mechanism - the rondel - is interesting. Generally you want to be efficient in collecting resources. Within the same turn, being able to get three lemons is generally better than one. However you do have other tactical considerations, e.g. which is the next contract you want to fulfil, and what resource type you need. You also need to watch out for any resource type running out and forcing everyone to return them to the common pool. The efficiency in gathering resources is the tactical aspect of the game. The strategic aspect is scoring the bonus points when contract stacks run out. You need to deliberately plan which resources you want to be strong in, and you want to manipulate which stacks run out at what time. 

The other small expansion we used was that little white disc. If you fulfil all six types of contracts valued from 1 to 6, you score a bonus of 7 points. This is a long-term planning aspect. For experienced gamers, adding the two small expansions are fine even if it is your first game. For casual gamers it will be better to exclude them in the first game. 

That little house (i.e. finca) at the top left is the countdown mechanism. With 2 players, there are 4 houses used. Whenever a stack of contracts is exhausted, you place a house. Players have some control over how soon the game ends. You want to manipulate the pace of the game to your advantage, ending it when you are ahead. 

The Thoughts

Finca is a mid-weight strategy game with a pleasant play experience. It's resource collection and contract fulfilling, but I enjoy the clever resource collection mechanism. 

Hanamikoji

The Game

Hanamikoji is a 2013 game, so it's no longer a new game. I've heard many positive reviews, but only managed to give it a go recently. It is indeed a wonderful design. Succinct and clever. Hanamikoji is a 2-player card game in which you compete to win the favour of seven geishas by presenting them gifts. 

The seven geishas have different point values, from 2 to 5. If you manage to get 11 points, you win. You can also win by winning four geishas. If the players each fulfil one condition, the player with 11 points wins. The point value of a geisha is equal to the number of cards in the deck (gifts) which are for her. The players sit on opposite sides of the table, and the geishas are lined up between them. Gifts are placed on the two sides of the row of geishas. Scoring is done only at the end of a round. Whoever has more gifts on their side of a geisha wins that geisha. So far, this doesn't sound unusual. What's interesting in the game is how the cards are played. You don't directly choose where to play the cards. Instead, you get four different actions every round. You must perform every action exactly once. You just choose the order in which you do them. It is through these actions that cards go into play. 

On your turn you first draw a card and then you must pick an action. One of the actions requires that you play three cards. Your opponent picks one of them to place on her side, and then you place the other two on your side. Another action requires that you play two sets of two cards. Similarly, your opponent picks a set first. Deciding which cards to play and how to group them is difficult. Since your opponent picks first, you need to avoid giving good options to her. That's hard to do. 

Only one action allows you to choose one specific geisha to influence. You play one card face-down. This is the only time you have direct control. The last action is to discard two cards. This is a painful decision to make, because you are giving up opportunities to influence up to two geishas. 

At the start of a round, one card is removed face-down. This creates uncertainly, making it hard to card count. 

As a round progresses, cards will get played and you can assess the game situation better. However scoring is only done at the end of the round, when you and your opponent reveal that one secret card you have committed. 

Scoring is done after both players have completed their four actions. If you have more cards played on a geisha, you win her favour and move the round token to your side. If anyone scores 11 points or wins 4 geishas, she wins the game. Else, start the next round. The second round onwards becomes interesting, because by now you will have some geishas on your side. If your influence ties with that of your opponent, she stays on your side. So you have a slight advantage, and you can afford to fight harder in other areas. 

The Play

The rules are simple, but this is a brain-burning game. The overall feel is a little like Lost Cities, Riftforce and Battle Line. You sit on opposite sides of a row of things to fight over. However in these other games you have much freedom where to play cards and which cards to play. Hanamikoji turns this upside down. You need to think hard about your every move. For two of your actions, your opponent picks the cards first. This is I-divide-you-choose. It's difficult to create options in a way that no matter how your opponent chooses, you will benefit more than her. This mechanism means often the options are equally good. There is always some unknown, so you cannot calculate precisely. There is the one card removed from the round, the one card which your opponent claimed face-down, and also the two cards she discarded. 

You have the same actions, and the game mechanism creates a tendency for the players to be equally matched. It's easy to end up having the same influence over a geisha. When you want to fight hard to win one geisha, it means you must give up on another. The outcome tends to be balanced. The trick is to make small wins beyond this natural equilibrium. You want to force your opponents to use more than the minimum resources to win a geisha. Small efficiency wins can lead to ultimate victory. 

My gut feel is it's hard to win the game within the first round. You'll probably get into at least the second round. The second round becomes very interesting because by now both players will have some geishas on their sides. The landscape is different. You just need to tie in strength with you opponent on these geishas who are already on your side. You want to focus on winning over those who are not yet on your side. If you can win over a geisha currently on your opponent's side, you are both reducing her points and adding to your own. 

The Thoughts

The game is short, simple, yet brain-burning. It is an excellent design and I highly recommend it. This is not the kind of fast-paced card game. It is thoughtful and deliberate. You'll play a bit quicker once you have a better grasp of the tactics. The decisions you have to make remain difficult and interesting. 

Nine Tiles

Nine Tiles is from Japanese publisher Oink Games, but the designer is Jean-Claude Pellin from Luxemburg. The Sanrio characters version I have is not the first edition. The very first edition uses just generic abstract icons. There are six different icons in the game. It is an abstract game, and it is easy to paste any theme on it. There is a Disney version, a Chainsaw Man version, a Pokemon version, and even a Moomin version. It is a real-time game. A speed game. Players race to solve a puzzle and whoever is fastest scores a point. 

Everyone has a set of 9 tiles. The tiles are double sided, and the characters on the two sides of a tile are different. Every character appears exactly three times, on three different tiles. You arrange your tiles in a 3x3 grid. When a round starts, you flip over the top card from the deck, and everyone races to change their own grid to look exactly like what the card specifies. This is all done in real time. You can flip your tiles and swap their positions. Whoever is first to make their grid look exactly like the card claims the card. You keep going until you run out of cards, and whoever has won the most cards wins the game. So the rules are super easy. However making the combination is not always easy. The pattern may require two Hello Kittys, but you are not exactly sure which two. You likely need to do much trial and error to figure out which side of each tile you need to use, to create the required combination. 

I'd say this is mostly a children's game, because of the simplicity. It is easy for non gamers to learn too, and may entertain them for a while. For gamers this would be too simple, and it likely won't have much replayability. It's probably the kind of game you keep for those occasions when you bring games out for casual gamers and non gamers. It can also be a filler or opener for game night. 

Dancing Queen international edition coming soon from Matagot

Super excited that the international edition of Dancing Queen from Matagot has been announced. It will be available in English and French, 21 June 2025.

Betakkuma's Fart & Furious

Betakkuma is a character from Japan. I know him from WhatsApp. I currently use a set of stickers based on him. I find them funny. Now this game Betakkuma's Fart & Furious was bought when I was at the 2024 Essen game fair in Germany. I bought it at the Thailand pavilion. The publisher is Thai, and they licensed the character for this game. A Japanese character in a Thai game sold in Germany. That's globalisation! 

When I was at Essen, the Thailand pavilion was impressive. They had many designers and publishers, and also many games. Seeing our neighbouring country do so well was an encouragement for us Malaysian designers and publishers. Fart & Furious caught my attention because of the character. After listening to the brief description, I didn't immediately buy a copy. It is a party game about farting in the lift (elevator). That's a hilarious premise. I put it on my potential list. I was conservative about buying games because I didn't want to go over the weight limit. My plan was other than those I was determined to buy, I'd put games on the potential list, and I'd decide only by Sunday afternoon, the last day of the fair, which ones to buy. Now this was a little risky, because some games sold out early. Thankfully when I went back to the Thailand pavilion to get Fart & Furious, it was still available. 

The Game

This is a simultaneous action selection party game. Every round you pick a card to play, and everyone reveals their card at the same time. You only have five cards. When you play a card, it stays on the table. You only get all your cards back into your hand after having played them all, or when you successfully play the exit card (to exit the lift). If you are willing to spend the effort to remember what cards have been played, you will know what cards your opponents still have in hand. 

The three simplest cards are fart, breathe and hold (your breath). If you fart and someone else smells it, you score points. If no one smells it, you lose points. If you breathe and no one farts, you score points. If someone does fart, you lose points. If you hold your breath and someone farts, you score points. Otherwise, you lose points. This is very much like rock paper scissors, and these actions all make sense. You try to guess what your opponents might play. You don't always have a good basis on which to make your guess. After some cards have been played, you will have more information to help you guess. If everyone has farted, you know you can safely take a deep breath. 

One of the cards is the exit card, which means you are getting off the lift. Now the twist it this card only works if you are the only one trying to exit. If more than one person wants to exit, you all end up fighting at the door and no one gets out. If anyone farts, you all smell it (and lose points). 

The last card is the focus card. It doesn't have any effect by itself, but it doubles the effect of the card you play next round. If you manage to score points, you score double that. If you lose points, you lose double too. An exit card paired with a focus card gives you priority over regular exit cards.  

This building is your score track. For the short game, play till the 8th floor (8 points). For the normal game, play till the 13th floor. 

The Play

I didn't buy the game immediately at Essen because based on the short overview, it seemed like a pretty simple party game. The premise was funny, but the game mechanics didn't seem particularly new. Now that I have actually played the game, I realise some aspects of the detailed implementation are quite clever, and I admire that. So this is not a simple silly game designed by non-gamers. This is a simple silly game designed by gamers who know what they are doing. Yes, it's still a party game, and there's still luck, but there's also some thinking and strategising involved. You can decide to play without thinking too much. After all this is a farting game. You don't need to take it very seriously. 

When I played this with younger daughter Chen Rui, nephew Oswald (11) and niece Lauren (9), we discovered one particularly potent combo - focus plus breathe. If you breathe when no one farts, you score 3 points. If you combo this with a focus from the previous round, you'll score 6 points, which is huge. Even in the full game, 6 points out of 13 is about halfway to winning. When you know there is this powerful combo, you will be watching out for opponents trying to do it. This gives you a bit more basis for guessing what they will do. So the game is certainly not simple rock paper scissors. 

Well, maybe I'm completely overthinking this. I talk so much tactics and strategy, but then I'm not exactly winning much. 

The Thoughts

This is a silly and funny party game for 2 to 8 players. I've only played with four. I wonder whether it will be rather difficult with 6 or more players. When you choose to breathe, wouldn't you need to be very lucky to have no one else farting? Similarly, when you try to exit, chances are someone else will be trying to exit too. But then maybe at high player counts, clashes are expected. You need to try to gain an advantage over your opponents by farting when the most number of opponents will be smelling. When farting, you score points based on how many opponents smell it. I should try the player counts at the extremes to see how the gameplay experience differs. 

I've been playing boardgames as a hobbyist for more than 20 years. This is my first ever farting game. It's certainly something you will have fun with casual players. You won't be able to explain the rules with a straight face. 

The World Game

This is an educational game, and it'll teach you about all the countries of the world. It is a card game. Every card is one country. On it you will find information like the capital, the population, the area and the number of neighbouring countries. 

This is a game for 2 to 3 players. You start the game by having everyone draw 20 cards from the deck. You hold all 20 cards in your hand as your own personal deck. At any point you only look at information on the first card facing you. That is your current country. During play, you try to win cards from your opponents. The game is played until someone loses all cards. At that point whoever has the most cards wins. 

On your turn you have two options. You compare stats, or you declare a challenge. If you want to compare stats, you announce one of the features on your card, e.g. the population. Everyone then shows their cards, and whoever has the highest number in that feature takes all the cards. The cards are added to the back of the winner's deck. This is how you win cards from your opponents. 

If your current country is a small one, you'd be at an advantage when comparing stats. You can decide to declare a challenge instead. When you do so, you pick a person to issue a challenge. It doesn't have to be yourself. The person who issues the challenge tests the knowledge of everyone else. If the question can be answered correctly, the first person to do so wins cards. If no one gets it right, the person who asked the question wins the cards. You can ask things like the capital, or which continent the country is in. You can show the flag and ask which country it belongs to. You can also ask where exactly the country is. The game comes with a world map, and you can point at the country on the map. The map itself is only labelled with numbers, not country names. 

My sister Mei bought this game for her 11-year-old son Oswald as a Christmas present. This is very much what you would imagine a parent buying for their child. It's something educational. My sister is not that keen about playing boardgames. When they visited Kuala Lumpur recently, they brought along the game so that Uncle (me) can teach Oswald how to play. The rules are pretty straight-forward. However, five minutes into playing, I was already itching to change the rules (sigh... game designers...). Based on the rules that come with the game, if the players are roughly equal in their knowledge about countries around the world, the game may drag for a long time. They will win cards from one another at about the same rate. It's not easy for one player to completely bankrupt another. Well, I might be wrong, since we didn't finish a game using the prescribed rules. I suggested that when we won cards, we could set them aside as a score pile, instead of adding them to the back of our deck. That way the game has a finite end. You'll play 20 turns, because everyone has 20 cards to start with. 

This game reminds me of Top Trumps which I used to play when I was little. I remember I have a deck with tanks, and one with battleships. The carriers were the biggest and often won. The submarines were the weakest. 

boardgaming in photos: playtesting

28 Dec 2024. Jon organised one last TTGDMY playtesting session before the end of 2024. (TTGDMY = Tabletop Game Designers of Malaysia) This time it was done at FnD Mindspot in Wangsa Maju. We had the highest attendance numbers in the whole of 2024. That was a splendid end to 2024. There was a teacher who came all the way from Seremban bringing a group of primary school students. They are from a boardgame club so they are experienced players. One of them, a 12-year-old girl, designed a game, drew and handcrafted it herself, and brought it for playtesting. 

This is one game design I'm currently working on - Malaysian Holidays. I want to design a game that is suitable for non-gamers and casual gamers, and one which is attractive to them. Thus this topic. Malaysia in a multi-racial and multi-cultural country, with many different religious beliefs and traditions. So we have many public holidays, more than many other countries around the world. The typical working Malaysian adult loves having public holidays fall on Mondays or Fridays, because that means we get a long weekend. If a public holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, that's good too, because by applying for one day of annual leave, we get a 4-day break. Now the absolute worst is for a public holiday to fall on a Saturday. Many companies don't work on Saturdays anyway. At some companies we only work half day on Saturdays. Public holidays on Saturdays are a waste. This game I am working on aims to convey this Malaysian salaryman mindset. In the game you have an HR Manager who will cancel holidays. For example the company is running a roadshow, so you have to work even though it's a public holiday. Is this too realistic? 

This is another game I'm working on - I Will Survive. I plan to submit this to the ButtonShy contest. The special rule for this particular contest is interesting. As usual, you can only use 18 cards when designing the game, but what's different this time is for any particular game you play, you will only use half the cards, i.e. 9 cards. The other 9 cards will not be used at all. This can create much variability, because the game will be different depending on which 9 cards are in use. This rule plus another training activity I have learned before gave me the idea for I Will Survive. You are shipwrecked and stranded on an island. You need to salvage equipment from the slowly sinking ship, but you don't know the situation on the island so you don't know exactly what you need to survive. The cards in the game are mostly equipment you need for survival. Only half the cards are in play, and which ones being in play determines your survival condition. One of the players is a lunatic. He's not trying to survive. He's trying to get everyone killed. 

This is one of Cedric's latest projects, Tea Ceremoney (not a typo). It is based on the Chinese tradition, the tea ceremony which is done on wedding days. He has spent a lot of effort on the components, sourcing from Shopee and getting the right ones to create the right gameplay experience. 

The player board is an angpow (red packet). 

This is a prototype from Nick. It is a multiplayer melee dice game. You sit in a circle. You attack the guy on your right, and defend against the guy on your left. Whoever gets killed drops out of the circle. You play until you are the last man standing. 

I bought this paper cutter recently, and it's one of the best investments I've ever made. I used to cut paper for making prototypes using a normal blade cutter and a ruler. It's slow, tedious and tiring. I felt I needed to get something better, and I asked around for suggestions from fellow game designers. I received many suggestions. Eventually I decided to try this Fiskars cutter. It's pricey compared to other options, but since I do a lot of cutting, I thought it would be worth getting one. I'm glad I bought it. It works great. I can cut much faster now. It has saved me much time and pain. Highly recommended. 

I had a family holiday in Japan in December 2024. I am a big fan of many Japanese game designs, so when I have the opportunity to check out Japanese games, I try not to miss it. We visited the smaller cities this trip, so it wasn't easy to find game stores. I found toy and boardgame sections at some department stores. One surprise find was a small shop at Nawate Street (nicknamed Frog Street) in Matsumoto city. Nawate Street is a touristy area. The shop sold various souvenirs, but it also had a very nice boardgame section. Totally unexpected. The shopkeeper was an old uncle who enthusiastically recommended games to me in Japanese, and I had no idea what he was saying. I had to use Google Lens to translate the box covers and box backs. Eventually I did buy a few games I thought would be interesting. This trip I bought five souvenirs related to boardgames. They are on the right and bottom right in this photo above. 

The one at the top right corner is a woodcraft puzzle. I have seen a similar Chinese puzzle called Hua Rong Dao (华容道). I think they are of the same concept. On the right there is a red box - Nine Tiles. It has a Hello Kitty (Sanrio) theme. I later realised this was not designed by a Japanese. It was not originally a Hello Kitty game. Oink Games published it in Japan and attached the Hello Kitty theme. This is a real time game and it's pretty simple. I consider it a children's game. I bought a cheap shogi set. I've read a comic book series about it. It's like chess but you can capture opponent pieces and then put them back into play as your own. 

This is a thing called netsuke. A netsuke is an ornament used during the Edo period. You wear it on you. This netsuke is actually tiny. It is intricately crafted. This is not a souvenir you can buy. I took this photo in an art museum. This is a piece of art on display.