Nasi Lemak

The Game

Nasi Lemak (a Malaysian dish) is a Malaysian designed and published game first released in 2023. It has become one of the top selling Malaysian games. It is a simple card game that has wide appeal. You play nasi lemak hawkers and you compete to be first to make five nasi lemak packs. 

To make nasi lemak you need five ingredients - rice, peanuts, sambal, cucumbers and eggs. Most cards in the game are ingredient cards. When you collect all five ingredients, you discard them to draw a nasi lemak card. A nasi lemak card is worth 1 or 2 points. To win the game, you need 5 points. 

A nasi lemak card might be 1 or 2 points. When you draw one, you look at it and keep it face-down before you. So your opponents do not know how close you are to winning. 

A turn is simple. Draw two cards and take up to three actions. If you have the necessary ingredients, making a nasi lemak is an action. Playing an action card from your hand is also an action. Action cards are mostly attack cards, e.g. stealing cards from others. There is one particular action card which lets you make nasi lemak with just three ingredients. Another type of action is to trade. Trading is not limited to one-for-one. You can make a two-for-one offer, or even the other way round. As soon as a trade is done with another player, that's one action performed. You don't necessarily have to perform three actions. If there is nothing else you want to do you can just pass and let the next player take his turn. 

The Play

Nasi Lemak has straight-forward gameplay which is easy for anyone to pick up. There is plenty of player interaction. There will be lots of attacking. Most of the time you have to choose who to attack, and this naturally creates grudges and encourages revenge. So the game can get rowdy quickly. There is also trading you can do. That's part of player interaction too. 

One action card is this fly card. You play this on an opponent's nasi lemak card. That nasi lemak card is temporarily disabled and doesn't score points. Your opponent must remove the fly before the nasi lemak card counts again. 

There are two ways you can get rid of the fly. The fan lets you move the fly to a nasi lemak card of another player. The fly swatter simply kills the fly. 

Getting all five different ingredients can sometimes be difficult. Here I had many ingredients but I was still short of peanuts. 

The Thoughts

Nasi Lemak works splendidly for non-gamers and casual gamers. It is easy to learn. The theme is something all Malaysians can relate to. Nasi Lemak is a success story that all Malaysian designers and publishers can learn from. The Malaysian boardgame market is still in its infancy. Yes, there are gamers, but most Malaysians are not aware of modern boardgames. Faculty of Fun, the team behind Nasi Lemak, has done many things right - an attractive theme, good art, a game mechanism that is intuitive, the right pricing and the right packaging.