Malaysia Design & Play game design competition 2026 finalists

This is the second year the Design & Play game design competition is held. I am one of the judges, together with five other local game designers and publishers. Our goal in doing this is to encourage others to try their hands at game design, to develop Malaysian game design, and to bring more good Malaysian games to the world. This year we had 113 registrations. By the time of submission (2-minute video and rulebook required), 65 contestants managed to have their games ready. We have now completed the judging for the first round, and shortlisted our top 9 - our finalists. We are supposed to have just the top 8, but because scores were close, we agreed to make it nine. This exact same thing happened last year. It might become a tradition. Now the finalists are sending to us their physical prototypes, and we will have a judging day for all of us to play the games. Final results are to be announced on Malaysia Day, 16 September 2026. 

These are our Top 9 (in random order): 

Our judging process requires that every game be rated by at least three judges. Around position 8 we had several games tied in points. All these games were then rated by the other judges who had not rated them yet. Even after this scoring, the points for some games were very close. So we agreed to again make an exception and have nine finalists this year instead of the originally planned eight. 

Here are some of my thoughts after having completed the judging for our first round. 

1. The overall quality of the games has gone up. There are more games that make me feel I want to try them. There are some games I am keen to try which did not make it to the top 9, because they didn't do as well with other judges. 

2. AI has been helpful in making prototype art and rulebook layout. Many games look great. Art is not scored, but it does make our lives as judges a bit happier. It helps us get into the mood of the games. We are better able to imagine what it feels like. I am guessing some participants asked AI to help proofread and tidy up their rulebooks. This certainly made our lives easier too. I suspect some asked AI to write the rules or design the game for them. These did not work out well at all. They were incomplete and did not make sense. 

3. I reflect on the fact that we as judges are so very imperfect. As I do the judging, I question myself - who am I to judge this game? How good a game is is subjective. As judges, we all have our biases. Although there are six of us, I think even as a group we still have some common biases. We may think a game is too simple and lacks meaningful decisions, but if that game gets fantastic art and is marketed well, it might become a viral hit none of us would have expected. Fun is subjective. Despite my imperfection, I still need to do my job as a judge, and I rate the games to the best of my ability. I need to be able to articulate at least to myself why a game is good or bad. 

4. I am a little surprised that some good designers did not make it to the top 9. Some of them participated last year. Some of them have participated in other competitions, or we have seen their designs elsewhere. I interpret this as: even when you are a good designer, not every one of your games will be great. Some are better than others, but you keep at it and you keep improving your average quality. I also interpret it as: sometimes your idea just doesn't click with the judges, due to their personal preferences and biases. 

5. We have new faces in the top 9. That's a good thing. 

I think we have already achieved the most important goal of the competition. It is to get many people to be doing game design, discussing it, giving feedback to one another, learning from doing, gaining experience. I don't want to sound like I'm trying to console those who didn't make it to the finals. I truly believe one very important thing you get from competitions is what you learn and how you become better at designing a game. That is why all of us judges take the time to write feedback for every game we judge. 

This is the Youtube playlist of the 2-minute video introductions for the Top 9 games: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO9jzqUhmrEI

 

This is for all contestants: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLciPyvfyKznI 

designer diary: Pilgrim Poker

 

Pilgrim Poker is named so because the setting is Journey to the West, the Chinese classic novel. The characters are transported to a modern setting. They are on the first leg of their pilgrimage, taking the train to Dunhuang. Guess what they are bringing on this trip? Pilgrim Poker of course! Five years ago when I started working on this game, it was very different. It certainly was an unexpected journey for me. 

The core idea in Pilgrim Poker is that everyone gets one card and holds it up facing forward. You can see everyone else's card, but not your own. Based on this, you need to bet on whether you are going to win. Only the highest card will win. The game was inspired by Hanabi and Kobayakawa. In Hanabi, you can't see your own cards. There are other games using this concept, like Pikoko and Luz. In Kobayakawa, you do just one round of betting, to decide whether you're in or out. Very minimalistic, but the decision-making can be tricky. Pilgrim Poker was initially called Saikoyu, which is "psycho you" modified to sound Japanese, a nod to both the games which inspired it. 

The first prototype had Malaysian fruits and four suits

In the first version of the game, after cards are drawn and held up, you take turns naming a bet amount. This is done for only one round. After everyone has named an amount, the bet which everyone must place into the pool is the second highest named amount. The reason for this is if most people think one particular player will win, they can all name a low amount, so that even if that single player names a high amount, he won't be able to win much. This is done in turn order as opposed to simultaneously because whenever a player names an amount, it is a clue to the other players. A player who names a low amount is likely seeing a high card. If you don't see any high card, then you might be holding that high card. 

There are some special cards which modify the core rules. Anyone holding the 10 wins or loses double. 10 is strong, but it is not the strongest. The numbers go from 1 to 13. Getting 10 is good, but it will be painful if you lose to an even higher number. If the 4 is in play, it is the smallest card which wins instead. When you hold the 4 and you see that everyone has high cards, you might think there is no hope of winning, but you would be wrong. If anyone holds the 8, it turns all odd numbers to zero. That means the 8 beats 9, 11 and 13. It only loses to 10 and 12. These cards add a twist to the game. You have to think carefully as you observe the actions and expressions of your opponents. 

Playtesting session

The Control Problem: Players feel there is little control

One big problem I had was players feeling helpless. When two players feel confident (or desperate) enough to want to name a high bet amount, you will be forced to put in a large bet, even when you are pretty sure you will lose it. This feels bad. I didn't want to add more rules to handle such a feel-bad situation. I thought maybe that should just be what the game was. But still, I had a nagging feeling this wouldn't work. I was stuck for a long time, and I had to set the game aside. It took more than two years for me to revisit the game. I am glad I did, because I had an idea that helped to move this design forward. Well, it wasn't exactly my idea. It was just poker. I applied the poker mechanism to the game. 

Everyone must commit to an ante. During a round, it is possible to raise, and when anyone raises, you can decide to fold, sacrificing your ante. This is simple, and most people understand this, because most people know a little about poker. By using a tried-and-true mechanism, I not only solved my problem about the feeling of control, I also made the game more intuitive to learn. 

Prototype in play

The Information Problem: How much information is enough?

When a round starts, you have no idea what your card is. I want to make sure there are ways for you to get clues. Your opponents can't and won't tell you, but I want to make sure their actions will give you hints. Or there are things you can do to try to get information. One mechanism I introduced for the purpose of helping players gain information was the Side Bet. Making a Side Bet means challenging another player to a duel. You state a bet amount. If your target agrees, you resolve this at the end of the round. If your target declines, he must pay you half the bet amount immediately. As you can see, this is a chance for you to bluff and intimidate an opponent into giving you money. Of course, if you happen to be holding the 1, this will backfire, and everyone will laugh at you. The Side Bet action gives information. Normally the player with the lowest card will be targeted. If you are being targeted, you probably have a low card. The bet amount named is also a clue. If you are being targeted but the bet amount is low, then maybe your card isn't too low. 

Here is one hilarious situation that I came across when playtesting. One player was the target of a Side Bet, but he saw that another player had a lowly 2. Since the active player did not target the 2 and targeted him instead, he knew he probably had an even smaller card, the 1. Throughout my playtesting, it was moments of realisation like this which truly tickled the players. 

Another funny situation was the player holding the 4 confidently issuing a Side Bet to the lowly 1. When 4 is in play, the lowly 1 becomes the strongest card. The active player didn't know he had a 4, well, at least until the other players started giggling. 

Game prototype

The Existential Problem: Isn't this just Indian Poker?

I found out rather late in my development journey that there is already a public domain game very similar to Pilgrim Poker. It's called Indian Poker. Indian Poker is not widely known in Malaysia where I live, so I had no idea there is such a thing. It was depressing to find out what I had been working on was something someone else had already made. Eventually I decided to still proceed with the project. Pilgrim Poker is not exactly Indian Poker, due to the special characters and also the action cards. So I felt I still had something new to offer. 

The Theme Problem: Why Journey to the West?

I must admit, Pilgrim Poker has a pasted on theme. This is a mechanism-first game. I did not start with any theme. Most of the other games I have published under the Cili Padi Games brand have fairy tale themes - Snow White, Ali Baba and Pinocchio. This time I thought why not pick a Chinese fairy tale. I chose Journey to the West because it is a story every Chinese knows, and many non-Chinese too. A familiar theme will attract attention, make the play experience more enjoyable, and also make learning the game a little easier. I do feel a little guilty because Journey to the West is supposed to be about Buddhism, and here I am with a gambling game... 

The final pilgrimage team in the game

There are many characters in Journey to the West, so I had more than enough source material to use. The pilgrimage team consists of four main characters, Master Tang Sanzang, eldest disciple Sun Wukong the Monkey King, second disciple Zhu Bajie (Pigsy), and junior disciple Sha Wujing (Sandy). Among the number cards, only three of them - 4, 8 and 10 - have special powers. That means I had to exclude Sha Wujing and move him to one of the action cards. Strictly speaking the pilgrimage team has five members, the fifth one being the horse. That horse is not just any horse. He is a dragon prince. I did not include him at all, since most people think of the team as just those four. 

10 became Sun Wukong, because he is the strongest fighter. 4 became Zhu Bajie. Zhu Bajie is often depicted as the greedy and lustful one. His flaws remind us that we are just human.  

Other characters in the game

For regular number cards (i.e. other than 4, 8 and 10) my original idea was to put some generic minor demon character. Some minions. My artist Edwin Chong suggested the Bull Demon King. Now the Bull Demon King is certainly no minor character. He is a big shot demon. I loved how Edwin turned him into a tired modern day salaryman, carrying a laptop bag and standing in the train. In Pilgrim Poker when you initiate a Side Bet, that's an act of aggression. I thought Red Boy would be most fitting. He is the fiery character in the story. In many chapters, it was the Goddess of Mercy (Guan Yin) who came to save the day, when the pilgrimage team got really stuck. So I put her on the Change Card action card. This is a card that can completely turn things around. Halfway through a round, you can discard your card and draw a new one.  

Pilgrim Poker was released in Malaysia in August 2026. It started as "Saikoyu", and now it has a theme of Journey to the West, which in Japanese is "Saiyuki". If this game ever gets a Japanese edition, it might be called Saiyuki Poker. 

Finally, the end product

Game components

Action cards

Number cards

Start player card (night side)

94 coins

Game page at Cili Padi Games website: https://www.cilipadigames.com/pilgrimpoker 

boardgaming in photos: repacking Pinocchio and playing Syzygy

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. 

Asian Board Games Festival - Malaysia 2026 - what I saw

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!