When I was in Kota Kinabalu I asked my mum to playtest my Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) game with me. I wanted to get it played by different kinds of players, and senior citizens is not a demographic I often have access to. This was also the first time younger daughter Chen Rui played. I have told her about the game before during video calls when she was overseas, but she could only play the physical game when she was back in Malaysia for summer holidays.
I told my mum this was just like gin rummy. She plays both gin rummy and mahjong rummy. Still, it wasn't easy for her to grasp the game. I did have a meld concept, but it was very different from conventional rummy. A meld in the Red Chamber game requires a very specific combination of cards. In conventional rummy, it is 3 or more cards which are a straight flush or cards of the same value. Even the simple rule of always drawing a card at the start of your turn did not always stick. Sometimes my mum discarded a card before she drew one. Well, maybe I need to learn to teach the game better.
I saw this wonderful arrangement of my game Malaysian Holidays done by Bukutani. I knew I had to save this photo and share it here.
This happened in one particular game of mahjong rummy I played in KK. It reminded me of a funny video. This is how that video goes. A lady and a man meeting for the first time are attracted to each other. They are both shy and they are hesitant to approach each other. The lady smiled, and she is missing two front teeth. The man is surprised. Seeing his reaction of shock, the lady becomes self conscious and embarrassed. She feels hurt and starts to turn away. The man quickly stops her. He gently smiles at her. He is missing all his teeth, except for his two front teeth. They perfectly complement each other.
This is an amazingly lucky hand in mahjong rummy. In this game (well, at least the version played in Sabah), you win and lose money based on how many aces and jokers you have. As a gamer, I frown upon this, because this is purely luck. There is no skill involved. In fact, having more jokers already gives you an advantage. You should not be further rewarded. From a game design perspective, you should lose money for each joker, to make the game more balanced. Aces are a different matter. They are worth 15 points each if you are unable to play them. That is bad. The winner is the player who is able to go out, or the player with the fewest points. So it's a bit more logical that you gain some money if you have aces. However when you have 3 or more of them, you can already play them as a meld. You don't need to worry about them being stuck in your hand.
Aces and jokers are just a secondary way you gain and lose money. The bigger amounts still come from winning the game. This is a traditional gambling game, and not a hobby game. It serves a different purpose. So I should not be applying my expectations on it. The experience you want from mahjong rummy is not the kind you want from playing a hobby game.
I invited Chung and Moh Yen to come play some of the game I brought back from Japan. One of their favourites that day was Rikka. In many ways this is simplified mahjong.
When Pinocchio was release last year, I had this problem. Some boxes were damaged during transit. I designed the box to be larger than needed for the cards inside, because I wanted to let players sleeve their cards and still be able to fit everything inside the box. Since this was a tuckbox, it was easily dented, even with just mildly rough handling. Thankfully my manufacturer Magicraft quickly came up with a solution. They made replacement boxes for me and shipped them to me. I appreciated the support and quick action. I would have to do some repacking, but I wouldn't waste those damaged copies.
Freshly printed boxes
Elder daughter Shee Yun helped me with repacking
It is a little sad to see this collection of damaged boxes. Off to the recycle bin.
Sat 1 Aug 2026 was the Jom Gerak event, a fun run related to elderly care. This year the event also included the disabled. Several of us local game designers and publishers were invited to showcase our games. Boardgames is related to mental health. This was a good opportunity for us to do outreach, showing modern boardgames to people who don't know about them. Introducing boardgames to the general public is something we as an industry in Malaysia need to keep doing.
Coincidentally, all six judges of this year's Design & Play game design competitions were present - me (1st from left), Logan (2nd), Jon (5th), Buddhima (7th), Haireey (8th) and Chee Kong (9th). The submission deadline has passed. We have 65 submissions. For the first stage, participants need to submit a rulebook and a short video.
Arboretum on BGA. I had played this before, and it was nice to revisit this game. I find the game very strategic. I am probably spending more effort trying to avoid releasing cards my opponents need than trying to take cards I need. You want to create paths in your personal play area starting and ending with the same tree specie going from low to high. Every path scores points depending on whether it has other tree types mixed in and how long it is, provided at the end of the game you hold cards of that tree specie and your total value is the highest. It's a huge dilemma trying to play as many cards as you can but also needing to keep some so that you can score the specie in the first place.
This was one huge scoring set. Needless to say, the owner has the 8.
I attempted to play Twilight Imperium 4th Edition on BGA. It wasn't a good idea. This game is too complex to play on BGA given my situation. It is entirely my problem and not the game's. I don't have enough patience to learn complex games properly when playing on BGA. We played in async mode. We were not sitting around a table together, so we were not able to help one another with the rules. We couldn't discuss effectively. I mostly wasn't sure what I was doing. Eventually we agreed to abandon the game. If I'm going to play TI4, I should do it with the physical game.
This was our board setup. I was at the southern tip.
This is a space conquest game. You start on single planet at the edge of the galaxy and expand towards the centre. You colonise new planets. You fight other factions. You can try to capture the planet at the centre of the galaxy, which is lucrative. Your goal is to score 10 points.
This was my faction sheet
I own Red7 but had not played it for quite some time. This is a delicious design from Carl Chudyk. It was great to play it again on BGA. It was like missing an old friend. You meet again and you are so happy you wonder why you have not arranged to meet up again earlier.
We played with the advanced rules. Some cards have special powers that must be applied. The lower cards have good powers which help you or hurt your opponents. The higher cards have bad powers which handicap you.
Syzygy is pronounced SIZ-uh-jee. It means several things being in alignment, for example when sun, moon and earth are in syzygy, you have a solar eclipse. This is a new word to me. Apparently this is a popular word in Scrabble. It can score a ton of points.
This is a game from Japan which Jon taught a few of us to play. He has played it before. We didn't have a copy, and just played with poker cards and coloured cubes. This is a cooperative game. Your goal is to arrange nine cards numbered 1 to 9 in the correct order. The cards are shuffled and laid out face down in a line. You don't discuss beforehand which end should be 1 and which should be 9. You have four tokens per player (in a four player game). On your turn, you place one of your tokens on a card, then look at it, and then you must move it to another position. You cannot look at or move a card you have already moved before. Most importantly, you cannot speak to your fellow players. The only thing you can say is "Oh my god". You can use intonation and volume to convey meaning, and nothing else.
This is a very interesting group problem solving exercise. I have only played this once, and we did not manage to solve the problem. We were close though. One thing I do wonder about is how replayable this is. Now I have not read the rules. I was taught by Jon who was in turn taught by Ji Li. I might be missing some details. Part of the challenge is not knowing which end should be the 1. The players need to figure that out by looking at a card someone else has moved. If you see a 9 at one end, you know the player who has moved it there wants to make that end the higher end. Now you are aligned. It takes some turns to have everyone in the game aligned. It will be a problem if before you are aligned, you have been arranging cards in different ways. You somehow need to agree on the direction mid way through the game and also do some damage control, without explicitly communicating. I thought, what if you are playing a second game in a row? Wouldn't you be automatically aligned to use the same direction as your previous game? If that's the case, would the game be much easier to beat?
Another thing I have been thinking about is how you use the phrase "oh my god". If you play several games, you will probably establish some convention. For example saying it in a low pitch means the card you have seen is a low card. Once such a convention is established, I think the game becomes easier.
Give this a try, and don't tell your friends about any of these tactics. See how things turn out. This was certainly fun for me to work out, even though we failed.
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