Malaysia Design & Play Game Design Competition Finalists

The 2025 Malaysia Design & Play Game Design Competition is organised under the Malaysian Boardgame Design banner, and MBD is a loose and informal group of local game designers, game publishers and game enthusiasts. I have participated in several game design competitions as a participant, and this is my first time being on the organising team of one. The main organiser is Jon from nPips Games (Furmation of Rome, King & Peasant). We have 6 judges and 110 contestants signing up, and that means quite a bit of work for us judges. The submission date was end of July. In the first stage of the competition, contestants must submit a 2-minute video giving an overview of the game, and the rulebook. Judging was based on just these two elements. 

The original plan was to have 8 finalists entering the second stage. However we had a tie. Several games around the 8th position had the same score. We discussed how to decide which to stay in the Top 8 and which to eliminate. Eventually we decided to go with the Top 9 instead of the Top 8. 

Our objective in organising this competition is to encourage more Malaysians to try their hands at game design, and to elevate game design in Malaysia. With more people doing it, we will push one another to get better. We will learn and grow together. We hope Malaysia will produce more and more good game designs, and achieve international recognition for our games. In the past few months we have been encouraging our contestants to share, learn from one another, and support one another. We organised playtesting sessions at different states across the country. In our WhatsApp group we encouraged everyone to share their rulebooks for feedback and suggestions. When we have a healthy community, one which is willing to share and help one another, we will grow faster and learn faster. 

Every contest entry is scored by at least three judges. After we completed the first round of judging, we ranked all the games, and we arranged for those near the top to be scored by more of us. Some of the entries were scored by all six of us. When we scored the games, we also gave our feedback and suggestions. Whether they made it or not to the final round, we wanted to give quality feedback to help all contestants learn and grow, and become better designers. 

This was my first time being a judge in a game design competition. At the moment we have only completed stage 1. Next we are going to play all the finalists. The two main criteria for this competition are (1) Malaysian theme, and (2) at most 52 cards. When I did the scoring, I found that I can easily tell whether a contestant has done much game designing or game playing. Those who are less experienced tend to use a handful of common game mechanisms. Their designs tend to fall into just a few familiar types. The more experienced game designers, or even just game players, will have some interesting twist or at least some original idea in their games. 

I came across some entries which are mostly based on other published games. This is a game design competition, so there is an expectation of originality in the game design. If a contestant takes an existing game and attaches a Malaysian theme, that's not game design. That's localisation. The general principle is clear, but in actual execution this is not always simple or easy. Let's take trick-taking games as an example. How original does one need to be for it to be considered original enough? If a game uses mostly the mechanism of another game, but one new aspect is added, is this considered original enough? As we get into the nitty gritty, we realise this is not so simple. Also we as judges have not played every game in the world. There was one game I quite admired, but I later found out that it was mostly based on a digital game. We the judges had to alert one another of theme. It helps to have the six of us, because we have different experiences in playing games. Collectively we have a much wider exposure. 

In Stage 1 the scores we gave was from 1 to 7. 4 means okay, nothing special. 5 means worth giving a try. 6 means yes I'd like to play this. 7 means I want to sign this game. We did have some games getting 7's. Let's see whether one of them eventually becomes the champion. Of our Top 9, their scores were all 5.5 or higher. They are all games which most of us judges are keen to play. 

One thing I am quite impressed by is how much work many contestants put into designing their games. Many of the videos, rulebooks, game components and game art were done very well. AI was used by many, and it was used appropriately. Art and video don't get you any points, but they do help in explaining how the game works. For many contestants the output was a labour of love. I believe going through this whole process of designing, playtesting, producing, rule-writing and iterating has helped the contestants learn and grow. 

Now the finalist games will be delivered to us judges, and end August / early September we will be gathering to play them, and doing the final judging. The final results will be out mid September. Below are our Top 9 games, in no particular order. Congratulations to all who made it to the Top 9!  

Links to the video introductions and rulebooks below: 

• Awake En - Botanical Grabber （video）（rulebook）
• Lim Feng Keat - Gotong-Royong （video）（rulebook）
• Tang Hoe Ching - Malashion （video）（rulebook）
• Rasis - Rentak Wau!（video）（rulebook）
• Ray Tan - Teh Tarik Game（video）（rulebook）
• Jeixel Heng - Twin Towers（video）（rulebook）
• Jason Sondoh - Kandar Klash!（video）（rulebook）
• Anas Maghfur - Batik（video）（rulebook）
• Kenny Goh - JAM!（video）（rulebook）

DNP Game Design Competition

In 2025 I am doing one thing I have never done before - organising a boardgame design competition. I am also one of the judges for this competition. Since getting into game design, I have participated in many game design competitions. However this is the first time I am on the organising team. This competition was initiated by local game designer Jon (King & Peasant, Furmation of Rome). In the past several years, there has been another game design competition held in Malaysia - MYBOGADECO (Malaysia Board Game Design Competition). I have participated before. This competition has been held three times. It won't be run this year, and Jon felt that was a shame. He said why not we do it ourselves. I said if he's going to do it, I'll support him. And that's how DNP (Design and Play) game design competition came about. Jon is driving this and doing most of the work. We had in-depth discussions and did planning together. I was mostly the sounding board. We have six judges. In addition to Jon and I, we have Chee Kong (Zodiac Go), Buddhima (My Rain Forest, Chinese Flower Card), Logan (Nasi Lemak), Haireey (Drama Pukul 7, Nak Makan Apa). I can't say that we the local game designers and publishers have big achievements we can boast about. What I can say of all of us is we have been through that journey of designing, playtesting, producing and marketing games. We don't have a lot, but we are willing to share what we have learned with fellow Malaysians who have interest to explore game design. 

Before we decided to do this, I asked Jon what our objective was. We spent some time discussing and agreeing on this. We should not be starting any project when the objective has not been clearly defined. Our objective is to encourage more people to get into game design. I want to discover game design talent. We want Malaysia to produce more games and better games. Game design and publishing in Malaysia is in its infancy. We don't have anything we can be particularly proud of that captures global attention. There is much space for growth. We are organising the competition under the MBD label.

MBD is  Malaysia Boardgame Design. This is a group started only earlier this year. The idea behind it is based to TBD - Taiwan Boardgame Design. It is about game designers working together, helping one another grow and learn, sharing knowledge and resources, and organising activities together. It is a way we coordinate and help one another. At the moment we are only a small informal group. We have not done any official registration. One thing we hope to do is to apply for a government grant to promote Malaysian game designs at the Essen game fair in 2026. 

As Jon and I planned, the two biggest challenges we expected were money and participants. Organising a game design competition in Malaysia is not profitable. There is little publicity to be gained. Any sponsor will just be doing charity work to support local game design. You don't really need a huge sum of money, but when you are giving money away, even with a small sum you'd wonder why you are parting with your money. Is it really worthwhile? Thankfully both the potential sponsors Jon approached were willing to support the competition. So money was settled. Jon and I had mentally prepared ourselves that we might have to fork out some money. The other big challenge is the number of participants. If we only have a handful of participants, we would not be achieving our goal. During the registration period (the month of May), Jon spent some money on Facebook to get the word out. We want people to know about this competition. We the judges also reached out to our respective circles to promote this competition. When registration closed at the end of May, we had 110 participants. This was amazing! It far exceeded my expectations. Earlier on when Jon and I discussed this, I asked if we had fewer than 20, would we still go ahead with it? I said we must set a go-no-go condition. This was the project manager in me talking. 

It is wonderful that we managed to get 110 participants. This also means the judges are going to have a lot of work. In the first stage of the competition participants must submit a rulebook and a short video giving an overview of the game. Every entry will be scored by at least three judges. That means every judge must score at least 55 entries. Eight participants will advance to the second stage (also the final stage). They are required to submit their physical game prototypes, and the judges will sit down to play these games. The deadline for Stage 1 is end of July. In the first half of August we the judges need to complete our scoring, so that the eight finalists will be able to ship their games to us before the end of August. The first half of September will be playtesting and judging of the finalist games. We plan to announce the results on 16 September, Malaysia Day. This is fitting, because the theme for the competition is Malaysia. 

There is a reason we chose Malaysia to be the theme for the competition. The prize for the competition is getting your game published. In case you don't want it, you can convert that to a cash prize of MYR 1000. We wanted to make sure the prize is attractive enough to make people want to spend the effort designing a game. It is motivating to have your game getting published for real. We chose Malaysia as the theme and as a requirement because if we were going to publish the winner, we wanted the game to be something Malaysians are familiar with and would accept easily. Being a publisher means making marketable products that many people want, not art pieces that only a handful of people appreciate. One other criteria for the game design is it must have at most 52 cards. This is to control production cost and manageability, and also a card game is generally simpler and easier to learn than a boardgame. 

After the registration deadline, we set up a WhatsApp group, inviting all participants. We encouraged them to share their ideas, their rulebooks, and to exchange ideas. Several have already shared their rulebooks and also obtained feedback. Writing rulebooks is difficult, more so than most people realise. People often complain when they read rulebooks, because they are impatient. They don't realise how much effort has gone into making the rulebook as easy to read as possible, and complete, and unambiguous. When learning to become a good game designer, engaging with fellow designers and learning from one another are immensely helpful. I hope this little community of game designers will continue to be active after the competition, and we can develop more and more game designers, and better game designs from Malaysia. 

2025 is the first time we are doing the DNP competition. I hope it creates a significant impact that continues to be felt after the competition. I hope this will continue year after year, and help Malaysia find its mark in game design. 

boardgaming in photos: Through the Ages, Sabah Honeymoon

This was my submission for the Sabah game design competition organised by STTOS - Sabah Honeymoon. The box is just a regular plastic document case that can be found in most stationery shops. I did not spend much time creating a nice box cover. My game components are functional but not exactly pretty. I hope the competition stays true to being a game design competition and does not turn out to be an art or graphic design or crafting competition. 

These are my game components. I have a sell sheet which summarises what the game is on one page. 

The map is roughly the size of four A4 sheets. This is double the size of the first version. There is much more space for the player pieces and this is much more comfortable. I added a reference chart at the bottom left to remind players of the card combinations that can be used as a joker. 

By the time of this blog post, I would have done the presentation of my game to the judges, and I would be waiting for the final results. The city of Tawau in the photo above is the city I was born in. My family moved to Kota Kinabalu when I was three. Although I grew up in Kota Kinabalu, I visited Tawau every year when I was little, because we had many relatives there. 

My game in development Taking Sides has now been renamed to Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. I have an updated prototype, and one of the elements added is the names of the characters. This is much more immersive. Also now I have two prototypes, in English and Chinese. I am thinking about a two-player variant for the game. I need to start playtesting it. 

Younger daughter Chen Rui played Through the Ages with me. This was her first game and she did well, scoring over 300 points. We played a full game and not the shortened version recommended for first time players. 

There was a period when my wife Michelle and I played a lot of Through the Ages. At the time we had an earlier version of the game. However it is not too different from the current latest version. 

My early leaders were Moses and da Vinci. 

2-player game

Father and daughter

This end turn process reference chart on the player board is a great idea. 

My civilisation at game end. I had many colonies. 

Chen Rui's civilisation at game end. She had more wonders than me. 

Young Buddhist Association of Malaysia Boardgame Design Competition 2024

YBAM organised a game design competition this year, and several local designer friends and I participated. The prize-giving ceremony was 24 Nov 2024. The results were only announced that day. There was a public play event in the morning, and the ceremony itself was in the afternoon. 

The event was at Pearl Point shopping mall. There were tables where the public could play any of the 12 finalists. My submission Tradition and Innovation made it to the finals, so I was able to take part in the event. This photo was taken before the event started. The organising team got everything ready early. 

The Secret of Shanhaijing won third place. The art is fantastic. Unfortunately the designer couldn't attend the event, and I didn't manage to try the game. 

The cards and the game board

The game board art is beautiful

Every player has a little booklet, and you use it to collect cards (creatures) 

The creatures in the game

JOM Kluang is one of the consolation prize winners.

Learnux Board Game is a game about the Linux programming language. 

Cherry Cake is a consolation prize winner and the prettiest game at the show. 

Delicious with the cherries added

Consolation prize winner Upland

My game Tradition and Innovation won a consolation prize. 

I taught some of the volunteers to play my game. 

Cedric (right) submitted two games, and they both won prizes. I meet him and chat regularly because we are both in TTGDMY (Table Top Game Designers of Malaysia). This game is Sea of Samsara, and it won a consolation prize. 

Sea of Samsara is a dice game. 

This is Cedric's champion game, Giant Prayer Wheel. It comes with a unique mechanism and game component, the rotating board. 

Evan came all the way from Penang. His submission is Zero Impact: The Sustainability Challenge.  It is a simple card game with a memory element. 

Toast Jump Jump and Fight is a two-player dexterity game. You use your finger to flip your toast. If it lands on top of an opponent toast, that toast is eliminated. So this is a battle arena game, with toasts! If your toast trips and falls out of the arena, you lose it. 

One side uses plain toasts and the other garlic toasts (with spots)

Poon Jon's Work Dice Balance won second place. Too bad he couldn't be present to receive the award himself. He sent a representative. This is a roll and write game, and a pretty clever one. Jon was at the Asian Board Game Festival in Singapore. He was an exhibitor. 

Malaysia Rainforest Animal Rescue Program is a simple game which uses some mathematics. It matches the competition requirement well - games must be playable by primary school students. 

The square blocks are player pawns. In this game, you use cards with numbers and also the plus and/or minus signs to create specific numbers. What you create will be the number of steps your pawn must move. You move about the board to rescue animals. 

Open play area

The judges were Wu Ta-Te, Cheng Ning and Rachel Chen, all of whom are highly experienced in the boardgame industry. Cheng Ning and Rachel Chen flew to Malaysia all the way from Taiwan. Wu Ta-Te couldn't make the trip and did judging with them online. I had many good takeaways from the sharing from the judges. I learned more about the Taiwan and the China boardgame markets, about game design and also the game industry in general. I brought my published games Snow White and Ali Baba, and since the open play event was very free-form, some players asked and I showed them these games. I received good feedback and suggestions.