Asian Board Games Festival - Malaysia 2026 (Penang)

Asian Board Games Festival - Malaysia 2026 is happening Fri 7 Aug 2026 to Sun 9 Aug 2026 in Penang. Cili Padi Games will be there. This time I will have two new games, Pilgrim Poker and Malaysian Holidays. Pilgrim Poker will be available at the Cili Padi Games booth, and Malaysian Holidays at the Specky Studio booth. Come play with me if you are in town!  

boardgaming in photos: Rumble Nation, dnup

I played the physical version of Rumble Nation. This is a minimalistic area majority game. I normally dislike area majority games, but this one is just so clever. It's a game from Japan, and the setting is Japan too. 

You roll three dice to determine what options you have on your turn. You must use two of the dice to choose the region you will place your cubes, and the third dice determines how many cubes you will place. You are somewhat restricted in what you can do, but you do have meaningful choices throughout the game. I played this in KK with Buddhima and Jon. This was Buddhima's copy. 

Now that I have added Malaysian Holidays to my list of published games, I need to update this group photo. My next game Pilgrim Poker is coming out soon too, so this group photo will need to be updated again soon. 

I played the physical version of dnup. I must say it is much better playing this in person compared to playing in online async mode. This doesn't work so well in async because you don't remember well what has been played before. You break your session down to many small turns over several days. dnup is much more fun with table talk and discussions. You are able to better gang up on the leader. 

Reference card showing the four options on your turn

Notice the cards are rounded only at two corners

That day we playtested Buddhima's upcoming game called Change. I have played this before and this was a game I already wanted to buy after the first try. Buddhima has been a little worried about the timing of publication for his game, because it shares a similarity with SCOUT, dnup and Panda Spin. It too has cards which have different numbers at the two ends. You will also rotate your cards and change their values. After dnup, we played Change, and I am confident it delivers a different play experience compared to other games which shares this rotate concept. It requires a different strategy. 

This is Jon's worker placement game, about Grab Food and Lalamove delivery services. You prepare and deliver food, or you deliver items. In game design Jon is heading towards slightly more complex games. Not yet heavy games, but around light-medium to medium weight. 

One challenge Jon presents in this game is storage for goods. You can exceed storage temporarily within a round, but you need enough storage space to be able to carry over goods to the next round. To increase storage you must recruit, and once you recruit, your salary cost increases permanently. 

This is the worst starting hand in Mahjong Rummy. I don't have a passport - a straight flush meld of at least 3 tiles. Without a passport I can't play. I have already lost in the first round of play. Now that's player elimination. I can heap on tons of complaints as a modern gamer, but this is just a traditional gambling game and people have fun with it. There is some skill involved but it is mostly luck. You play this to spend time with family and friends, not for good game design. 

Now that younger daughter Chen Rui is back in Malaysia for her summer break, we have started playing our Regicide Legacy campaign. We are on Mission 9 out of 12 now. It has been an interesting ride so far. I am amazed by the amount of work they have put into creating this campaign. There is so much art created, and much of it is only used in one mission. If you beat the mission on your first try, you will use this art only once. Playing the campaign is playing many variants of Regicide. There is a story which unfolds as you progress. Your deck changes. You get to play with different powers. You fight different bosses. Some of the missions took us many attempts to beat, we also managed some with just one attempt. 

I have played a second game of Quartermaster General: East Front. This time I played the Soviet Union and Han the Axis. Han managed to get to Moscow, and even Vologda. At one point (above) I managed to encircle his forces, cutting off his supply lines. I gradually pushed back, but by game end I did not manage to reach Berlin. We were tied in points, and I lost on tiebreaker. What a close game! 

We played Soothsayers again. It's July now, and I'm still pretty confident this will be my favourite new-to-me game in 2026. 

I only recently discovered that the art is from a real tarot card deck, and not art created specifically for the game using the style of tarot cards. 

We played Madeira. I did horribly because I have forgotten many of the rules and I didn't relearn it properly. I want to blame BGA for making playing blindly too easy, but I know it is my own fault. 

I had a session with Jon, Ji Li and Buddhima. It's great to meet up in person to play. Nowadays I play more games online than in person. I should do physical sessions more. 

For probably less than 24 hours, the designer diary of Malaysian Holidays was on the front page of BGG. Of course I took a screenshot. 

Pilgrim Poker - almost here!

I am expecting my next game from Cili Padi Games, Pilgrim Poker, to be released at the Asian Board Games Festival in Penang, 7 - 9 Aug 2026. I am very excited about this project. This is the first time I am using a Chinese story as my theme. 

This is the box cover. Certainly a bold concept from my artist Edwin. I did have some concerns when he first showed me the concept art. I was worried that if we were to make the box look like a traditional string-bound book, the front would need to be rather plain, and there would be a lot of information which I'd normally want to put on the front that I couldn't include. Eventually we proceeded with the concept, and I'm keen to see how this is received. 

This is the first time we are putting some art on the sides. We want to showcase the artwork inside the game. 

The start player card is double sided, with a day side and a night side. I put Buddha on the start player card. I think this is most appropriate. 

The start player card is double-sided to help you keep track of how many rounds you have played. Whenever it makes a full circuit around the table, you flip it to the other side. This means everyone has been start player once now. 

Of the three action cards in the game - Raise, Side Bet and Change Card - Change Card is the one which potentially upends everything. So I put the Goddess of Mercy (Guan Yin) on it. Modern day Guan Yin enjoys Chinese TV series on her smartphone (probably a Huawei). She treats herself to a good headset. 

In Pilgrim Poker making a Side Bet is an act of aggression. Who else more fitting but Red Boy (Hong Haier). He plays with fire, so his graffiti can sprays fire. 

This is the card back for the number cards

Card back for the action cards

The prototype looks very different

Pilgrim Poker has come a long way. This was originally called Saikoyu, and I started working on this in August 2021. Saikoyu is "psycho you" made to sound like a Japanese game. My idea was inspired by Hanabi, in which players can't see their own cards but they can see everyone else's. I worked on it for a while, but I couldn't quite get it to a stage where I felt it was publishable. So I set it aside and moved on to work on other projects. It was in 2025 that I picked it up again. The most important thing that helped me resume working on this game was introducing the tried and true poker mechanism. Poker has stood the test of time, and there is good reason for that. Also it is something many people are familiar with. This makes the game easier to learn and to understand. I then added the action cards, and that completed the game. 

This will be my final teaser post for Pilgrim Poker. The next time I post about it, I should be showing you the final product. Stay tuned! 

Pilgrim Poker - master and disciples

Here's another teaser for my upcoming game Pilgrim Poker. These are the four main characters in the story of Journey to the West. 

Modern day Master Tang Sanzang sits on a gaming chair and plays a handheld gaming device. I like his intensity. I find it funny. 

Modern day eldest disciple Sun Wukong is a delivery boy. His Somersault Cloud is transformed into a motorbike. I think it's an electric bike. 

Zhu Bajie (Piggy) was the first character Edwin drew. 

Sha Wujing is not a numbered card. I put him on one of the action cards. Among my number cards (from 1 to 13), only three numbers have special powers, 4, 8 and 10. So unfortunately I did not have another number card I could put him on. 

This was the first version of Sha Wujing. I felt this wasn't quite right and asked for a change. He is indeed a chill guy, but not in the sense that he is relaxed and carefree. He is chill in the sense that he is usually calm and he plays the moderator role in conflicts. He is the pacifist. Also he is always the hardworking and reliable guy. 

The master and the disciples are on the back of the box. I had originally written two paragraphs for the back of the box. Edwin decided to convert the first paragraph into a comic drawing. I think that's a great idea. 

This is the master and the disciples in my prototype. I found these drawings as a set on the internet. 

Who is your favourite among these four? 

boardgaming in photos: playtesting

Choon Ean and I were at Kinokuniya bookstore (Pavilion Damansara Heights) demoing our games over the weekend of 30-31 May 2026. This time our tables were occupied more, compared to two weeks earlier when I was there by myself. There were people who stayed to play for quite long. It feels great to see people enjoy my games and want to play again and again. That weekend I think I sold out all the copies of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves at this Kinokuniya branch. At least I didn't see any more left. Not sure if they still had some in storage. 

My friend TS Tan visited, bringing his family. This was the first event I used my new apron. The colour is not the same red as my Cili Padi Games logo, but I quite like it. 

This was my setup. 

Jon had an ad hoc game session at Lolla Paluza cafe on a Tuesday which was a public holiday (replacement for Agong's birthday, which was offset by the replacement for Wesak Day). This was one of the games we played, Martin Wallace's Hit Z Road. It's a zombie game, and it's an auction game. Yeah, this sounds weird, but the game works pretty well. 

The currency in the game is bottle caps. There are three types - ammunition, fuel and adrenalin. 

Every round there are as many pairs of encounters as there are players, and the players bid for turn order to pick a pair of encounters. Encounters are a mix of good and bad. As the game progresses, they get worse - more zombies, fewer resources, more types of dangers. I think we bid too much. We spent a lot of resources to try to avoid bad encounters. When bids go high, it's bad for everyone. We have fewer resources to help us survive and fight the zombies. 

I was the first to lose all my people and thus lose the game. It happened in the second last round. Jon and Ji Li lost in the final round. Darryl was the only player who managed to survive and get to California. 

One of the encounters. 

The Collectors Court event was held at the Summit USJ mall over the weekend of 6-7 Jun 2026. This was mostly focused on trading card games (TCG's). Jon and Haireey had booths there. There were tables made available for playtesting. The Design & Play game design competition is ongoing now. Jon, Haireey and I are part of the judging team, together with Chee Kong, Logan and Buddhima. Contestants were encouraged to come to the event to playtest one another's games. We the judges also brought our games to be playtested, even though they were not contest entries. News at 8 is Haireey's prototype. I have seen it being playtested several times, but this was my first time trying it. By now it is already different from the earlier versions. 

Every round, one player needs to perform. He reads a news item, and depending on the intensity card he draws (which the other players cannot see), he needs to fill in some blanks to convey the intensity level (or newsworthiness). 

Intensity goes from 1 to 10, so 8 is high.

The guessing players need to fight for these number tokens. There is only one for each number. You need to grab the one you think is the correct answer. 

This is Vinod's prototype, a game about matchmaking. It will be released by I-van under Roll Rebellion. It is a simple game for casual players. 

To win the game, you need to find bride and groom of matching colours, a date which matches their colour, and also you need a priest. 

On your turn you draw two cards, one after the other. You can take a card for yourself, or you can give it to someone else (they must accept). This is a game where you can mess with your friends a lot. The fate cards have all sorts of powers, some good and some bad. 

Playing this game and observing it being played gave me much food for thought. This is a very simple game with plenty of luck. It is not my type of game. However in the same game I played, I noticed how much others enjoyed it. People liked the setting. I-van's HR Game has been hugely successful in Malaysia. Also a simple game, and also not my type, but it has been very well received. I think I-van has made a good pick with Vinod's matchmaking game and I think it will do well. When I choose which games of my own to publish, I have been moving towards simpler games, which I hope will get more acceptance by the Malaysian general public. My first published game Dancing Queen is the most complex, and my fourth, Pinocchio, is the simplest. The next one, Pilgrim Poker, is not as simple as Pinocchio. It is roughly at the Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves level of complexity, i.e. not very complex. I have a weakness in making simple games. I do try to make my games as simple as they can be, while still offering something unique, or a least some twist. However I can never quite make a truly simple game that the casual crowd will immediately like. I hope Malaysian Holidays can be something like that, but even then I think I have some rules that will require some effort for non-gamers to digest. 

Many contest entries for the Design & Play competition were playtested at the Collectors Court event, but I did not get to try many of them, because I couldn't stay long. It is encouraging to see many people actively participating in the playtesting session. 

Jeixel brought his contest entry, a game about lousang, a Chinese custom during Chinese New Year, practised by Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese. Lousing is about tossing various food ingredients to bring good luck. In the game, you mix the cards and make a messy pile at the centre of the table. You then drop dice to claim ingredient cards. When Jeixel explained the rules to us, my first thought was "What? That's it?!"  However once we started playing, this turned out to be more challenging and more fun than I had expected. Those dice that you drop, most of the time they roll away, forcing you to take a different card from what you originally intended. Sometimes they roll off the card pile and you get nothing. You can try to knock your opponents' dice away, and this happened a lot in our game. If two players have dice on the same card, it is the higher valued die which wins. Very simple concept, which didn't sound like much at first, but once I started playing, I was pleasantly surprised. 

Each card is 1 point. 

When you have three of a kind, you get +2 points.

I asked others to help me playtest my Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) game. I have a nagging feeling that it is too simple. Maybe I should not think that way. Simple is good. Now I am experimenting with adding a bit more to the game. This might be my next game for 2027. 

The green cubes are a new element. When you play a meld, if the exact same meld has been played before, whether by yourself or by other players, your latest meld scores a bonus 1 point for each previously played meld. At the moment this little new rule seems to work okay. People don't find this difficult to remember, and it adds a little bit of strategic consideration. Players may hold back on playing a meld, hoping someone else will play theirs first. Is this absolutely necessary? Maybe not. This might end up being a variant. 

Another rule change I have playtested is giving Jia Baoyu (the 0 card) a special power. If you don't play a meld on your turn, you may discard JBY to take any card from the discard pile. This can be a very powerful move if you are short of just one card for a big meld. However, JBY is often a very important card you need for big melds too. So using it for its power is not something you take lightly. I've only playtested this once. The players did use it. I'm not sure yet whether this is a good addition. 

There are other more complicated additions I am toying with. In the game there are 11 types of melds. I have a little board listing them all. When you play a meld, if this is the first time in the game this meld is played, you mark the board with a cube. Every meld in the game refers to a chapter in the book. The characters required for a meld are the main characters in the corresponding chapter. Instead of playing 3 rounds, the game ends after all melds have been marked. This is thematic. The story is complete after all chapters are covered. But this might be tedious. I'm not sure whether the experience is worth the tedium.

The next addition is also related to marking melds off. The player gets a bonus 1 point whenever the 2nd, 4th, 6th etc meld type is marked. Whoever marks the 11th meld type gets 2 points. This mechanism introduces a new layer for planning. I have not tried this, and I am already worried it is tiresome. 

Another one related to marking off melds - the ironman rule. Every meld can only be played once within the same round. If someone else has played a meld, you can't play it any more. You don't need a central board to track this. You just need to check the melds in front of other players before you play any meld. This might be an interesting variant. If someone has already made the strongest meld (11 points), if you have been working towards that, you are forced to switch tact. There will be some anxiety because the melds are first come first served. 

I have just started playtesting my Water Margin (水浒传) game. I am trying to make this a negotiation game. One key concept in the story of Water Margin is how those 108 main characters are stars fallen from heaven. They are the chosen ones. Now if I imagine myself in that world, in a bandits' lair with lots of outlaws, how would I know who are the fated 108 and who are not? Everyone wants to be the chosen one. So the game is going to be about being the chosen ones. 

My initial idea is that all players must play a card simultaneously, and they want to plan such that all their cards added up will make 108. If they can achieve this, everyone who has contributed cards scores points. If they go beyond (i.e. go bust), then some cards are discarded, and those who are forced to discard cards lose points. Some cards have special powers, e.g. being able to remove another card, being able to double the points of another card, and being protected against attacks. This is not a cooperative game, even though every round you generally try to work together to achieve the 108. Ultimately it is everyone for himself. You will want to discard your sworn brother's card if it's going to score him many points. 

I have playtested two versions of my game, and the big big problem is this - too much math. I made the card values 0, 4, 8, 20, 40, and 80, hoping to make the math manageable. However it is still too much. Too tiresome. For my next iteration I will completely remove this math part. The negotiations, the discussions, and the coordination before committing a card, all seem to work reasonably well. You have to rely on others, but you know no one is your friend. 

In the next version, instead of every card being numbered, I'm just going to have some cards which have a "1", some with a "0", and some with an "8". To "achieve 108", you need to have exactly one each of these numbered cards in play. If any number appears twice, there will be penalties and cards will be discarded. Doing it this way will be much simpler. No more math.