The Asian Board Games Festival (Malaysia) was 7 - 9 Aug 2026. This was the third time it was held, and I have been exhibiting there every year so far. It was at the same venue - 1st Avenue Mall in Penang. Here's my experience at ABGF this year.
Three of us - Jon, Buddhima and I - travelled together in the same car from Kuala Lumpur to Penang on Thursday, a day before the event started. We started off early, stopping in Ipoh mid morning for brunch. We ate at a touristy cafe place which had a short walking path and cliffs just behind. We were tourists for 15 minutes.
Ipoh
This was our Day 0 photo taken by Jia Xian. The venue was available to us 6pm - 10pm to start setting up. Exhibitors could also meet up and play, and do business networking.
Some of us playtested Jon's latest prototype of Foundations of Rome. It has been further streamlined, but it still retains that interesting challenge of planning whether and when to construct over a building to trigger its one-time power and lose its scoring ability.
Kimkun from Korea (Underdog Games), Casey from China (Reayoung - game manufacturer), Freddie from the Philippines (Larong Atin), Judy (also from Reayoung) and I. I asked them to help me playtest a variant of my Dreams of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) game. This trip I have playtested two variants for the first time. The iron man variant allows every meld type to be played only once. If you are late and someone else has already played a certain meld type, you are out of luck. This didn't work. It was too punishing and restrictive. You can easily get stuck with too many cards in hand at the end of a round and lose many points because of it. I will have to either discard this or do a major rework.
The story-writing variant worked better. Throughout a game, whenever a meld is played for the first time, you check it off the list of chapters. Melds in this game are specific chapters in the Red Chamber book. From the 4th meld type onwards, the player may score bonus points. There are bonus points for 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th and 11th meld type. How players play changes a little when they want to aim for these bonuses. Instead of playing three rounds, you play until the end of the round in which the book is completed, i.e. all chapters checked.
Pocket Empires is an 18-card game from Indonesia. I have not yet played it, but I watched it taught and played.
This is a two-player game. You have a hand of 6 cards, and there are 6 cards to be drafted. You will play cards into a 3x3 grid. Every round you play a territory card face-down, and once both have played, you reveal the cards. The higher card wins turn order, for example in drafting leader cards from the common pool. One interesting twist is you will swap territory cards with your opponent. That card you have just played goes to your opponent's tableau where he has just played his territory card. Territory cards themselves don't score points. The leaders score points based on icons on territory cards in the same row or column, and sometimes based on other criteria too. This is quite a clever little game. Feels a lot like a ButtonShy game.
This is an advanced leader. It gives you 10 points, but you lose 2 points for each grain icon immediately next to it.
During the trip we stayed at an apartment, and the lift buttons look like this. There is no level 4, 13, 14, 24 or 34, because 4 is bad luck in Chinese, and 13 is bad luck in Western culture. This is a very Malaysian thing. I wonder whether this happens in other countries.
I played the physical version of Soothsayers for the first time. Yay!
The tarot cards are much larger than the normal cards.
My booth assistant was Nathanael on Friday morning. I just realised I have forgotten to take a photo with my Friday afternoon assistant Shi Wen. For both Saturday and Sunday my assistant was Dash.
This is now my uniform at events - chilli head band and red apron. Got to attract people snapping photos. It's marketing.
This is War of Beauty (美人大战) from Taiwan. I find it hilarious, because of the theme. This is a palace drama setting, which is used in many Chinese TV dramas. You start as an entry-level concubine at the palace, and you work your way to become queen. That's how you win. This is fun because it has many elements seen in Chinese dramas.
Origin Goal is designed by a father for his son who is in the school football (soccer) team. Well, and his son's friends too. This is a game from Singapore. The designer is originally from China and now lives in Singapore.
On your turn, you choose between one of two dice to roll to move one of your pawns. The dice are different. One of them is 1 to 3 only, and the other 4 to 6. To score a goal, you need to move a pawn into the opponent goal.
One important mechanism in the game is landing directly on an opponent pawn. When you do that, you force that pawn to return to his side of the board. So your strikers want to stay away from opponent pawns.
When your pawn lands on a red, yellow or blue space, you draw a card and apply the effect.
Red cards are the best. In football, imagine your opponent getting a red card. 70% of red cards are good cards. For yellow and blue, the percentages are 65% and 50% respectively. After you draw a card and resolve it, you need to return it and reshuffle the deck. This keeps the percentage constant.
From a game design perspective, this seems a tedious thing to do. I am guessing the designer is not a hobby gamer. Some design decisions seem unusual to me, being a game designer myself and also a hobby gamer for many years. I always find this interesting. Often game designers who are not hobby gamers come up with new and unexpected ideas. Not all new ideas will be good ideas, but new ideas are important for the profession to keep improving.
Two custom dice
One interesting rule is a pawn can move through another. Your striker can just move through the opponent goal keeper and enter the goal zone. However, you can't do that if there is an opponent pawn right next to you at the start of your turn. Thus it is important for defenders to guard any approaching strikers by standing right next to them, even if you can't directly hit them and send them back to their half of the board.
One thing that feels awkward to me is there is no concept of a single ball being kicked around the field. You can have one team scoring a goal at one end of the field, and immediately on the next turn the other team scores at the opposite end. If this happens, it is a representation of both teams playing offensively, focusing on scoring goals and not on defending. We have to remember games are abstractions.
These are games from Mousou Games, Japan, brought by Hiro. Fantastic artwork! This one is Save the Princess.
The Screaming Prime Marmot is a trick-taking game with just numbers and no suits. Prime numbers are trumps. One interesting twist is you keep cards for the next round, and your opponents know what you have taken.
This is a game about baby talk. Unfortunately I forgot to note down the name of the game. All the cards are things babies say in their baby language. This is a real-time trading game. You want to collect the full set of cards of a specific type.
Pilgrim Poker in play at my booth
I received a gift from Mia of Reayoung, who wasn't at the fair, but she asked her colleagues to bring me this game. This is a recent Chinese edition of an older Reiner Knizia title Gravediggers published by Yaofish.
Friday evening there was a talk by Daryl Chow and Eric Lang. It was a fireside chat type, talking about Asian games and the game industry in Asia. There were also questions from the audience.
A children's game from Indonesia
This game teaches some sign language
Now I have six games to display on my little shelf. I have two versions of Dancing Queen, both the Malaysian edition and the Matagot international (English and French) edition.
I always bring my red tablecloth, to make the booth stand out a little.
This customer bought three of my games. I'm glad he enjoys them so much.
Games from Singapore.
Early morning before the doors opened. My default demo game this time is naturally my latest game Pilgrim Poker. My assistant Dash likes Ali Baba a lot and recommend it to many visitors. He demoed it a lot too. I had several people telling me they've played Ali Baba and like it. Some tell me they've bought several of my games and they always look forward to the next one. It is a touching moment for me to see that there are people who like the games I make.
Tom from Gameness, Taiwan. He was here last year too. We did a game exchange. His game Plantful Life is a roll-and-write (but cards are used instead of dice), or paper-and-pencil (but you use erasable whiteboard markers). I played the game and I like it. I was going to buy it before the fair ended.
This finger deco is an optional game component for the game War of Beauty.
Counting Cats is the next game from Malaysian publisher Meja Belakang. This is a game for children and casual players about counting cats. Haireey designed this for his young son. He had wanted to do this since several years ago. Finally it's done, still in time before his son outgrows it.
Durian Smuggler is a game from Indonesia, designed by a German, Simon. I have been interested to try this. I have seen it several times at other events around Asia, but only this time I managed to watch it being taught. I found it clever and bought a copy without playing it myself.
Cards (pieces of luggage) come in 6 different colours. There are illegal goods in some bags, and you want to confiscate those in order to score points. For the different bag types, the probability of finding illegal goods differ. The point values also differ. You start a game with some cards in hand. However you don't immediately score those which have contraband. You can only claim and score cards from the grid. There is a procedure to push cards out of the grid to claim them, and you will also be playing cards into the grid. I'm looking forward to play this.
I later discovered this is just one of two ways you can play the game. The other one works differently but uses the same components.
Portion Masters is a game about healthy eating. It was developed in collaboration with UKM, a Malaysian university.
Everyone has a player board like this. Before you start a game, agree on the goal - which is the amount of calories you want in your diet. Depending on what the goal is, you need to eat enough food in each type to meet the requirement marked on your player board.
The square cards are the various foods you can buy.
Food!
On your turn, you draw 2 cards and then perform 3 actions. Cards can be money or action cards. One of the possible actions is spending as much money as you want to buy as much food as you want. Another action is eating one food and advancing the corresponding marker on your player board. The third action type is simply playing an action card for its effect. This can help you or hurt your opponents.
If you are a hobby gamer, you'll recognise this is not a game designed by a hobby gamer, and it is not a hobby game. It is a teaching tool.
There was a booth showcasing role playing games, some international titles and also many local ones too.
RPG designed by a Malaysian and also illustrated by a Malaysian.
Malaysian RPG's
More Malaysian RPG's
We have several Malaysian RPG designers who are doing well internationally, I think more so than boardgame designers.
I love this magazine cover, especially that secondary school girl in the standard Malaysian school uniform.
Always a Bridesmaid is a game from Taiwan. I didn't get to play it but I watched others play for a while. The general idea is you want your card value total to be second highest, because second position scores the most points. Every round everyone plays a card simultaneously. There is one card when played signals you will play no more. If you are first to play it, you get to play one extra card face down, while others continue to play.
Simon is the designer of Durian Smuggler
Holy & Hex has great art! Their booth was right next to mine. They are a Malaysian team based in Penang.
Artwork from Holy & Hex
My assistant Dash playing a 6-player game of Pilgrim Poker
Dash is a gamer and he was a great help over the weekend
Vito is from Indonesia. He works with universities and educators. His company Homp provides game design services. We did a game exchange.
Our customary group photo on the last day
One game I wanted to try but missed doing so is Abyssal Abundance. It is not released yet and it is looking for a publisher. This is a game about deep sea mining and it has a message about protecting the environment. Many local designers who played the game spoke highly of it. The designer Stefan is from the Netherlands, and this game was designed for an organisation in Hong Kong.
I sold a copy of Snow White to a tourist from Italy. They were a couple visiting Penang, and they found out about the fair only when they saw posters at the mall. They are gamers, so it was a happy discovery for them. Snow White is going to Italy!
There were many familiar faces at the event, friends I got to know through other events around Asia, from Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, Korea. We also met several new friends, exhibitors boothing at ABGF MY for the first time. We had new Malaysian exhibitors too.
I don't know what I did on Waze. It told me that Ipoh has moved. On our way back from Penang to KL, we stopped by Ipoh for lunch. We went to an old restaurant on Concubine Alley (二奶巷). Concubine Alley is a tourist spot, but that restaurant (黄高记) is just its own authentic self, never commercialised or modernised to capture more tourists. And the food was good.
There was a boardgame shop at Concubine Alley. This is something we should be happy about, but unfortunately it made us sad instead. Almost all the games sold were counterfeit.
It seems apt to end my post with my haul photo. See you next year!
No comments:
Post a Comment