Jakarta Traffic

The Game

Jakarta Traffic, being about Jakarta, is, of course, a game from Indonesia. However the designer Simon Schmieder is actually from Germany. He now lives in Indonesia. This game was crowdfunded successfully on Kickstarter. Simon came for the Asian Board Games Festival in Malaysia last year. At the time I wasn't able to try his game. He was here again this year, so I took the opportunity to try Jakarta Traffic. He sold out all the copies he brought by the second day of the fair. This is a popular game! 

In this game you play gojek drivers. Gojek drivers are delivery guys on motorcycles. They deliver items and also carry passengers. Since they are on motorcycles, they can weave through traffic. You use a phone app to hail riders. This is a pick-up-and-deliver game. The main way you earn points is by picking up items and delivering them to specific destinations. The road network is intimidating at first, but once you get familiar with identifying paths, it is not as scary as it looks. On your turn you move from one terminal of a road network on your tile to any other terminal of that same road network. This can be quite a distance if that road network is large. Some road networks have multiple terminals, which means you have options. Before you move, you have the option of rotating a tile or replacing a tile with the one in your hand. These will modify the road networks on the board and change your possible destinations. There are many ways you can change the networks. One important restriction is you can't change any tile that has tokens on it.

Think of this little board as the constantly updated list of orders in the gojek riders app. This board specifies the current contracts you can fulfil to score points, i.e. deliveries you need to make. Information here includes what to deliver (pink disk), where to deliver them to (green building), and how many points you score for making the delivery (star). What's interesting about this board here is whenever anyone makes a delivery, this board changes. The goods being delivered drops to the bottom position and all other goods move up a rank. The building that has just received a delivery shifts to the inactive section on the right. Other buildings shift down, and an inactive building moves to the top spot. As you can see, this is a huge change and can really mess up your plans. The game becomes a race to fulfil contracts, because if you are slow, your goods may devalue and you may need to reroute. You can plan for the changes on the contract board. This is an open information game. If you think someone will make a certain delivery soon, you can predict how the board will change, and you can figure out what you should do next to maximise your points. 

One possible tactic is delivering two items at the same time to the same building. That's an efficient way to score points. 

This is the player board. There are four spaces for stars at the bottom right which means the game ends when someone makes the 4th delivery. The battery charge token at the top right is an important part of the game. Every turn your phone consumes battery charge, and when your battery is flat you cannot pick up goods or complete deliveries. You need to find a charging station to charge your phone.

Notice there are three chat tokens. When you meet another player, you hear gossips and claim one chat token. Chat tokens are worth points at the end of the game. When you meet another player, both of you gain one level of battery charge, because while chatting you also charge your phone using your power banks.  

In case you cannot work out any useful path, one last resort is rolling the dice. You go where the dice tell you to. This is equivalent to taking unknown alleys and seeing where they lead you eventually.

The Play

This is a pick-up-and-deliver game. Every turn you are solving a puzzle. You try to figure out how to get to a specific tile. If you can't work that out, you have to go for the second best option. I find that often you can work something out, by either rotating a tile or by playing the tile in hand. For new players this can feel overwhelming, but once you learn to read the map, it is actually not as daunting as it initially seems. 

The policeman token is placed whenever anyone rotates a tile or replaces a tile. It temporarily protects that tile from being further manipulated. The policeman only gets moved if someone changes some other tile. 

There is urgency in making deliveries, because if you don't do it quickly, the supply and demand will change and your plans can be ruined. Even if you can still do something with the goods in hand, you probably won't be scoring as many points, or you may need to take a longer route to get it delivered. 

You can also think of this as an efficiency game. You not only have to do the deliveries quick, you also want to maximise the earnings from each delivery. This is a perfect information game. You can calculate what may happen in the next few turns, so there can be analysis paralysis if you play with people who want to calculate many steps ahead. Make a honking sound and tell them to just move dammit. 

The tile you have in hand is important. One useful tactic is swapping it with another tile on the board even when you don't need to do it to build a path for movement. You do it for the sake of giving yourself more options on a future turn. 

The Thoughts

This is a game with a very local feel. Local as in Indonesia local, not Malaysia local. All the elements come together to create a unique experience - the art, the setting, the mechanisms. This is a mid-weight game which non-gamers will be able to pick up. I like how it delivers an immersive experience. 

At the recent Asian Board Games Festival I had the opportunity to meet and exchange stories with industry players from other Asian countries. They all find that in South East Asia, and perhaps even in Asia as a whole, it is card games which sell. When some publishers decide to make a boardgame, it is an experimental project for them, to see how well a game with a board sells. Thus far, they find that card games still do much better than boardgames. For better or worse, that is our current reality. Jakarta Traffic, being a boardgame, being able to achieve such success, is no simple feat!

session report: Indonesia

Indonesia from Splotter is one of my favourite games. I had not played it for many years. Recently in a chat with fellow game designer friends Jon, Cedric and Chee Kong, we mentioned this game, and I said I have a copy and we should arrange a time to play. So we did. I checked my records and realised that the last time I played this was more than 10 years ago. So much for "one of my favourite games". Now I don't sound sincere at all. We set a Sunday afternoon, and we did a 4-player game - the best player count for Indonesia. 

Indonesia is a heavy eurogame and an economic game. You start businesses in Indonesia producing goods or delivering them to cities to make money. You can be a producer or a shipping company. Producers need to pay shipping fees to have the shipping companies move their goods to cities. How much you have to pay depends on shipping distance. The most important mechanism in the game is the mergers between companies. You can do hostile takeovers. You can also force others to buy your companies at a steep price. Our game lasted about 4 hours, but we were fully engaged throughout and time just flew by.

This is the tech chart. You use markers in your player colour to mark which level you are at in each of the technologies. To be able to own and operate multiple companies, you need to have the necessary technology. Otherwise you will always be stuck with just one company. Every round, turn order is determined through a single-round bidding. One technology in the game allows your bid amount to be multiplied. At the highest tech level, every rupiah you spend can be treated as 400 times the value. This is a hint at how important turn order can be.

The large square tiles are the companies you can start. At this point we had just entered the second era out of three eras. The game is played over just three eras. In the first era you can only start rice companies, spice companies and transport companies. In the second era, rubber companies come into play. Rubber is a more profitable product. 

When you force two companies to merge, they must be of the same type. For example a rice company can only merge with another rice company. A shipping company can only merge with another shipping company. There is one exception. A rice company can merge with a spice company to become a microwave meal company. In the photo above, yellow is rice, green is spice, and red is microwave meal. They are different goods and they do not compete with one another. Cities accept all types of goods, but in limited quantities for each type. Once enough of one good is delivered, that good is no longer accepted. Later in the game, that rice company on the left merged with a spice company to become a microwave meal company. This resulted in competition with the older microwave meal company on the right. Turn order became important for them because whoever delivered first would get the deal done. The other might not have any more buyers, or the buyers might be far and incur a high shipping cost. In Indonesia, you must deliver goods to buyers if you can, even if it means losing money on the transaction due to shipping costs. Your shipping partner is not necessarily your friend. 

Chee Kong was orange. His tech in managing companies was at Level 4 now, which meant he could own and operate four companies. I was green. My merger technology never developed, which meant I never proposed any company merger. I could only join in the bidding if someone else proposed a merger. I could not initiate any attack.

This was the third era. Now we had oil companies. Old is the most profitable product in the game. However in our particular game our third era was quite short. The oil companies did not have time to grow big. Instead it was the rubber companies from the second era which managed to grow big and become highly profitable. One decisive play in our game was when Jon initiated a merger and bought my large rubber company. At the time I did not have as much cash as he did. I bid the maximum I could afford, but it was not enough. I was forced to sell my rubber company to him. He went on to win the game. His winning score was slightly above 1500 rupiah. I was about 50 rupiah behind him. Oh my condom company! 

We had several important mergers in our game, which is expected of Indonesia. There were big shifts on the board. Cedric became the king of shipping. He had two large shipping companies spanning the archipelago. I had both production companies and one shipping company. The shipping company was somewhat profitable, but more importantly it helped me save on shipping costs because my production companies could make use of my shipping company. Left pocket right pocket. 

This was the situation at the end of our game. I must say Indonesia is tedious to manage. If it weren't such a great game I wouldn't be able to forgive this level of fiddliness. So many small pieces to lay down, to flip over, and then to flip back again. One sign of a good game is you are still thinking about it and discussing it afterwards. You can trace back to the decision which caused you to lose the game, or to win the game. You find that you can only blame yourself and no one else. You can't blame luck. It feels great to be able to play Indonesia again. I can truly say this - after 10 years, you are still as beautiful as I remember. The game does not feel aged. When I play it, I understand better why I like some of the games from that era, and why I dislike some of the newer popular games. Oh no... I am becoming that grumpy old guy.  

From left: me, Cedric, Jon, Chee Kong. 

JinxO

The Game

JinxO is a party game from Indonesia. It is for 4 to 7 players. The key to victory is to be able to understand and guess how your friends think. Every card in the game specifies a category, for example scary noises in the night. Based on the category, and without any discussion, players must write three items down on their respective player boards. Your goal is to write items which others will also write. 

There are 9 boxes on your player board. The game is played over 3 rounds, and within each round you will use 3 cards from the deck. For each card you must write 3 items. You decide which boxes you want to write in. Once written, you can't change it for the rest of the round. Using the photo above as an example, the items written were based on (1) things you eat with instant noodles, and (2) body parts you wish to enhance. For the latter, my friends wrote things which are... ahem... inappropriate, aaaaand I shall leave it up to your imagination. 

You do scoring once everyone's board is filled. You take turns reading an item from your board. If no one has the same item as you, you cross it out. As long as at least one other person has the same item, both you and them circle the item. You will score points for this. If exactly one other person has the same item, congratulations, you both shout "JinxO!", and you get to fill the star next to the item. A filled star is worth 2 points. 

Once any player has all 9 items crossed out or circled, the round ends. You add up your points for the round. Circles are 1 point each. Stars are 2 points each. If you have complete rows or columns circled, you score points too. The scores are written along the edges of the grid. The box at the top right helps score both the 3 point column and the 3 point row, so if there is an item you are confident about, you should fill it here. Similarly, the bottom left box only helps you score the 1 point column and row, so if there is an item you are unsure about, you probably want to put it here. 

The game is played over 3 rounds. Highest scorer wins. 

The Play

This is a game about getting to know your friends. Over a game you will use 9 cards, which means 9 different categories to talk about. You don't talk when filling your player board. You talk when doing scoring. When you read an item which others have, you feel happy you share the same way of thinking. When you read an item which no one has heard of or thought of, you may trigger some interesting discussion. They may make fun of you for being weird. Well, you can also call them uncouth. 

There are some tactical considerations. This is not the kind of party game where you are trying to make things up and be creative. You have to think about how your friends think and what they know. If you want to score well, you shouldn't be filling your player board simply based on your opinion and experience. You should be thinking about what your friends will be writing. The best case is only one other person writes the same item, but this is hard to deliberately achieve. It normally takes some luck. 

The categories in this photo above: (1) food you eat with your hands, (2) cult classic movies and (3) gods from mythologies. The movies I wrote were not really cult classics. They were all blockbusters. Had I written movies which I perceived as cult classics, I probably wouldn't match with any of my friends because they might not know those movies that I know. And Lord of the Rings matched with exactly one other friend! Woohoo!

The Thoughts

  

There is one type of party game where players play the role of judges. One example is Cards Against Humanity. Who scores and eventually wins is not based on objective rules but on preferences and decisions of other players. To me these don't feel like proper games. They are more about persuading your judge friends and talking convincingly, as opposed to using skills and strategy. I like that JinxO requires skills and strategy. If I read my friends well, I will do well. I don't need to be a great salesman. I'm not specifically a fan of party games, but I quite enjoyed JinxO. It works very well with non gamers. I brought it to a friend gathering of non gamers, and they all loved the game. I made the right pick! 

Short takes: Counter Spy, Co Ca Ngua, That's You

These are three games I tried and watched at the recent Thailand Board Game Show. All are from South East Asian designers. 

Counter Spy is from Vietnam. It is a 2-player deduction game. During setup, reveal one card to be the murder victim, and place one card face-down at the centre to be the murderer. The rest of the cards are dealt out to the two players, becoming their starting hands. Your objective is to find out who the murderer is. There are only 15 cards in the game. They come in four colours, and the numbers range from 1 to 7. The distribution is as follows. 

This is a notepad for taking notes when you play. 

You can already eliminate many cards from suspicion once you get your starting hand. The rest will take a bit more work. On your turn, you have two options. You either attempt to guess the murderer, or you give a card to your opponent. The round ends when you take a guess. If you are right, you score 2 points. Otherwise, your opponent scores 1 point. You win when you score 3 points. So the game will go at least 2 rounds. 

The more common thing you do during the game is to give a card to your opponent. When you do this, you must also share information in a specific format. E.g. you can say that you have 3 yellow cards, including the card being given, and that card must also be yellow. Information can be based on colour, or number, or number of cards in sequence. E.g. I have a sequence of four consecutive numbers. You use the information you get to work out who the murderer is. You have to mindful of what information you give to your opponent. You want to minimise helping them. 

Cards given to you are placed face-up before you. 

Victim, murderer and point card. 

I had two black cards and that is lucky. The black cards are numbered 5, 6 and 7, and this distribution is different from other colours which come in 1 to 4. I did my best not to reveal any information about my black cards. This way, it was very difficult for my opponent to determine the murderer. If he had the black 6, and he felt the murderer was a black card, he would have only a 50% chance when taking a guess. If he didn't have the black 6, his chance would be just one third. If I could eliminate the possibilities of all other colours, I would know the murderer was the black 6. 

This is a microgame. It's short. It's clever. I like how it doesn't need to rely on special abilities on the cards to make the game interesting. It's only numbers and colours. 

Coca Ngua is not exactly the correct way to type the name of the game. I don't know how to type Vietnamese. This is a light roll-and-move race game. Before you dismiss the game, let's take a closer look. 

The characters are cute. 

The race track is assembled randomly using cards. You only need to make one lap to win. There are four sections, each with four number cards. They must always be in ascending order. On your turn you roll two dice to attempt to move. If there is a card of the number you roll in front in the same section, you get to advance to that card. When you reach the last card in a section, you will get a free move onto the corner card on your next turn. After that you enter the next section. 

This is certainly not only a roll-and-move game. There are several other mechanisms which add some tactical elements to the game. You have hand cards. Whenever you fail to move, you get to draw a card. Cards can be used in several ways. If you play a pair, you get to advance to that specific number. If you play thee cards, you take an extra move. You may also play a card to modify the race track. Remove a vacant card and insert your card instead. The section must still be sorted in ascending order, which means you may be helping yourself towards the next corner (by removing a card before you) or you may be slowing down an opponent (by inserting a card before them). 

From the second section onwards, you can attack other players. When you land on the same space as another player, you knock them over. They lose a turn. There is a catch-up mechanism in the game. If you trail the lead player by at least one section, you get to roll three dice instead of two, and you get to choose which two dice to use. This makes it easier for you to make a useful combination. 

It is still a simple game, but the options you have give you a bit more control and allows you to do some strategic planning. 

That's You is a party game from Indonesia. It is a cooperative game. You don't exactly win or lose. You just try to work together to score as many points as you can, like in Hanabi. 

Every player gets one chance to be clue giver. Once everyone has had the chance to do so, the game ends, and you check to see how many points you have scored. When you set up a round, you draw six cards from the deck. The cards describe a person. For example mommy's boy, or someone who is always friend zoned, or someone can't even hurt a fly. Each card will be assigned a token facedown. One of these tokens mark the correct answer, and only the clue giver knows which one it is. The clue giver has three discs to give out. This is the only way you can give clues. There's a disc labelled "Most Likely", which you should give to the person best matching the description on the correct answer. There's a disc labelled "Least Likely" which of course you would give to a person who does not fit the description at all. Then there's a third disc which is double sided. You have to choose which side. One side says "More Likely", and the other "Less Likely". 

If you play with old friends, you will be giving clues based on how well you know them. If you are playing with new friends, it will be based on your first impression of them. Both cases are interesting and fun, and trigger discussion. 

Once all three discs are given out, all players except for the clue giver must work together to eliminate the wrong answers one by one. If you do poorly, you will lose points. If you manage to find all five wrong answers, you score 3 points. 

The fun in this game is the table talk about how we perceive one another. You may be surprised by how your friends perceive you. The cards in the game come in two types, a normal type and a whacky type. The whacky type has some silly descriptions and also some fantasy-based descriptions, like necromancer. You can play with one or the other type, or mix them up.