Charge & Spark

Charge & Spark is a 2 player microgame from Jelly Jelly Games, Japan. I have just played another game that sounds just like this, Bahamut Dispute. Both are about reducing your opponent’s health from 4 to 0, but here the execution is a little different. Humankind is extinct. You are robots competing for supremacy. You win by destroying your opponent or by reaching the centre of the game board.

The players have the same set of cards when the game starts. Every round, you simultaneously choose and play a card. Cards let you shoot, block, charge your batteries, collect data and so on. The most recently played card is left face up in front of you. You cannot use the same card twice in a row. When you shoot, if your opponent also shoots, only net damage is inflicted, i.e. when one attack is of higher strength than the other. Attacking consumes energy. Different actions consume different amounts of energy. Some are free. If you fully charge your battery, it goes to 4 bars. Data works the same way as batteries. Some actions consume data, for example of being able to bounce the attack back at the attacker. You need to collect and store data in order to perform these powerful actions.

Whenever you advance on the board, you get to draw a new card. These are better cards which give you more action options. You can get at most two additional cards, because by the time you advance for a third time, you would win the game.

This game is very much about guessing the psychology of your opponent. If you shoot when he makes a move, he gets damaged and he will not be able to advance. If you move when he charges his battery, you will be able to safely advance and also earn an action card. The best thing is when you are able to choose to deflect his attack exactly when he chooses to attack. You do have some basis for making guesses. You know there is one specific action he cannot take because he has just done it in the previous round. Also, if he is low on battery or data, you know there are some actions he cannot perform. You want to have your battery and data sufficiently charged because it gives you more flexibility. In a way, this is advanced rock paper scissors. I am hesitant when saying this, because there is much more here than just simple rock paper scissors. Sometimes you choose an action for the sake of your flexibility in the following round. You know if you deplete your battery, next round it is easier for your opponent to guess what you are going to do. 

I played this with Chee Kong. I like that it is satisfying when you successfully guess your opponent's mindset and choose the right action card to foil his plans. It reminds me a little of Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. 

Bahamut Dispute

Bahamut Dispute is a microgame from Japan. It is a 2 player game about two kings trying to defeat the other by setting a dragon on their opponent. The structure is simple. On your turn you draw one card, and you may play up to two cards. You need to discard only if you exceed the hand limit. You start with 4 health, and your goal is to reduce your opponent’s health to zero. So far, nothing unusual. What makes this game interesting is the card powers and the deny mechanism. 

In the deck of 16 cards, there are only three creatures, i.e. cards you summon and keep in front of you. The dragon (Baleful Bahamut) does 4 damage, which means if you can summon it and it stays in play until the start of your next turn, you will one-shot-kill your opponent. The tricky thing is you can’t just play the dragon card. It can only be summoned by certain spells. Spells are another type of card. There is a baby dragon which deals 1 damage per turn. Not so glamorous but it is slow and steady. And then you have the goblin which protects you from attacks, except for attacks from the dragon. The rest of the cards have various abilities, for example dealing damage, letting you draw more cards, forcing your opponent to discard a specific card, and so on. 

You start the game with two deny tokens. Whenever your opponent plays a card, you can spend a token to cancel the power of the card. This can be a life saver. However when you do so, your opponent may spend two tokens to cancel your cancel, and you can't cancel this cancel of your cancel. It’s not always easy to decide whether to use a deny token. If it is life-and-death, then of course you'd spend it, but often the decision is not so straight-forward. Is the current situation dire enough to warrant spending a token? Should you save your token for a double-token spend on a later turn to force an attack through? You might be thinking of spending a token to lure your opponent into spending both of theirs, but what if that backfires and they decide not to cancel your cancel? You'd have one fewer token. And if you have the opportunity to spend double-token, should you do it? How critical is this card play to winning the game? If your opponent is desperate enough to spend a token, maybe it's worth your while to spend both of yours. Or might that be a trap to trick you into spending both your tokens? This is such a simple mechanism, but it creates much angst. This is the kind of game which appears simple, but there are moments when you realise there is something more and you go "waaaiiiit a minute..."

Still, this is a short game. You will probably run through the deck and need to reshuffle. The game becomes more strategic when you get to know the cards better. You know what to look out for and you anticipate your opponent's moves. 

Bahamut Dispute is quick and clever. It is one of the top-selling titles from Jelly Jelly Games. It is portable. We played it on a small Starbucks table at the Manila airport. 

Bombastic

 

Bombastic was first explained to me as advanced tic-tac-toe. It is a two-player-only abstract game played using 9 tiles laid out face-down in a 3x3 grid. Four of the tiles show a circle, another four a cross, and the last one a bomb. Each player is assigned an icon, circle or cross. Your goal is to reveal exactly three of your icon in a row on your turn. Beware. If you ever reveal the bomb, you lose. 

On your turn you have two options. You either attempt to win, as described above, or you perform a card action. The game comes with a deck of cards, and you always have two face up. On your turn you can pick one card to use. The cards have all sorts of powers, allowing you to peek at tiles and to move them around. It is by using these cards you figure out which tiles are yours, and which are your opponent's and the bomb. You and your opponent will gain different information. You can mess with your opponent when you get to shuffle some of the tiles. It is a race to be first to reveal a set of three icons. Sometimes you have to gamble a little, if you sense that your opponent is close to knowing where three of his tiles are. 

Bombastic is a light filler. There is a memory aspect. The game is quite tactical. You try to utilise the card powers as much as possible. It is a scramble to find three of your tiles, and sometimes you have to risk the bomb. 

Dionysia

Dionysia is a microgame from Buttonshy Games. So you know what to expect. A game with exactly 18 cards which comes in a wallet that fits comfortably in your shirt pocket. 

Dionysia is a two player game in which you draft cards to make a play. Cards represent scenes. Your play has three acts, and each act must have three scenes. You take turns drafting a card from a market of three face up cards. The moment you take a card, you must decide which act to add it to. When you take the second card for an act, you must stack it above or below the first card, slightly offset so that the icons of every card are visible. This below is what your work-in-progress looks like. For the first two acts where I still had only one card, I didn't need to decide where to position them yet. I placed them this way because I wanted to remind myself this was one potential configuration I wanted to use.  

The top section of a card shows an ability and a scoring criteria. The bottom section shows two icons. When you complete your play, the icons will form a 6x3 grid. The scoring criteria of a card indicates a sequence of icons you need to have in your grid in order to score points. This sequence can go from left to right, or top to bottom. If the sequence occurs multiple times, you score every occurrence. 

The abilities of the cards let you do various things, like rearranging your cards. Often they also help you score points. Of the three cards you have in one act (i.e. one column), only the ability and the scoring criteria of the top card will take effect, because those of the other cards are covered up. When you add cards to your play, you have to decide which card to use as your top card, and which abilities and scoring criteria you have to forgo. Where you position your card affects how the icons appear on your grid eventually, which you must also consider because of the scoring criteria. 

This is what a completed play looks like. If you look at the three scoring criteria, you can see that sword-skull-skull appears twice, cup-skull-skull appears once, and skull-cup-skull appears twice. 

Dionysia is a game of drafting and tableau building. There are difficult choices to make when you build your own play. You need to choose the scoring criteria to use and the card abilities to use, while at the same time you need to build your grid of icons to match the criteria you have selected. You need to consider multiple requirements at the same time. And then there's also your opponent to worry about. Sometimes you may want to take a card for the sake of denying him. 

Revolver Noir

Revolver Noir is a two-player 18-card game from ButtonShy Games. It’s an action thriller movie of a game, about two gunmen in a dark house trying to kill each other. To win the game, you must injure your opponent twice. 

Each player holds a stack of 9 cards in his hand. One of the cards is a map of the house. The rest are individual rooms. You don’t show your stack to your opponent. The top card in your stack is your location in the house. When the game starts you get to choose which room you want to be in. Once the game starts, you have two action points per turn. The house is dark so you don't know where your opponent is. The most important action in the game is to listen. When you perform the listen action, your opponent must tell you one room he is connected to. This helps you narrow down the possibilities of where he might be. You will be doing a lot of listening. 

You can move to a connected room. Every room card specifies the connected rooms. The map gives you a summary. You can shoot, which costs 2 actions points. Every room card also specifies where you can shoot at. You can always shoot at the same room you are in. You can shoot at other rooms which you have line of sight to. When you shoot, you must announce the room you are in and the room you are shooting at. If your opponent is located in the target room, he must announce that he is shot. 

Notice that by shooting, you are also exposing your location. So this is something risky. When I played this with Jon, I was first to get shot. My first thought was since I knew where he was, I could just shoot back at him. However, that wouldn’t be the right move, because he would just shoot me for a second time on his turn, and win the game. This meant I had to run away and the only way for me to win was to try to hurt him with a trap first. 

Setting traps is another thing you can do in this game. You can activate your trap on a future turn, and if your opponent is in the same room as the trap, you injure him. 

Some rooms have special abilities. You can use them if you are there. One room lets you flood the basement, and if your opponent is there, he gets hurt. The foyer lets you know the exact location of your opponent if he is on the second floor. If you start your turn in the kitchen, you get an extra action point. 

There is a lot of mind games in this portable little game. You are always on the move, trying to avoid letting your opponent know where you are, while at the same time trying to figure out where he is. Sometimes you take a gamble and hope you guess right. I played this at the airport while waiting for my flight. It's a clever little game. It's amazing how creative some of these ButtonShy games are! 

Leaping Lions

Leaping Lions was the winner of the 2023 Button Shy Games game design competition, designed by Darryl Tan, a fellow Malaysian. It is encouraging to see my fellow countryman attain such achievements on the international stage. Leaping Lions, like most games from Button Shy, is an 18-card microgame. It uses their standard packaging too. It is a wallet game (photo above). This is a game about the traditional Chinese lion dance. So the packaging is red with golden lettering, just like the angpows (red packets) given out during Chinese New Year. 

Rulebook cover

This is what it looks like when you open the wallet

Leaping Lions is a 2-player game. You set up a high pole lion dance performance. Whoever can set up and execute the most impressive performance wins. 

Each player gets one lion

This is how the game is set up - three columns of cards and the draw deck on the right. The cards in the game are double sided, with a basic side and an upgraded side. These above are all on the basic side. Some card powers let you upgrade your cards to the other side. You take turns claiming cards from the centre of the table until all cards are taken. When a card is taken, other cards in the row are shifted left as necessary, and the space on the right is filled with the top card from the deck. 

Using the cards you claim, you form a row of cards before you. A new card is always added to the right of existing cards. You can choose to discard a card instead of adding it to your row. When you do this, you can upgrade a card or advance your lion. Your lion starts on the ground to the left of your row. When it starts advancing, it first jumps onto the first card. After that it advances towards the right. By game end, the further your lion manages to move, the more points you will score. 

Some cards have special powers. Some of these are activated when you play the card. Some can be activated every turn. There are four ways you score points. I've just talked about the lion advancement. The second way is cards in sequence. Every card is numbered, and you want your cards to be in ascending order as much as possible. Every stretch of ascending numbers with at least three poles will score points. The more poles you have in the stretch, the more points you will score. 

There are five different icons on the cards. Three of them are musical instruments - drums, gongs and cymbals. The other two are fire crackers and fans. Every completed set of musical instruments scores points. At game end, you also multiply your number of fire crackers and fans to score points. When you choose a card and decide whether to upgrade a card, you must consider all these scoring opportunities. You also need to consider the special powers offered by the cards. 

The first row shows the basic side, and the second the upgraded side. When you upgrade a card, you may get additional icons and sometimes an extra pole. 

The stars in the top right corner are used in two ways. At the end of the game, you score all the stars below and to the left of your lion. This is how the lion advancement works. Stars on your rightmost card also limit your options when you claim a card from the centre of the table. If your rightmost card has only one star, you may only pick from the first column. If it has two cards, you may pick from the first two columns, and so on. You need to consider your flexibility for your next turn when you claim a card. 

This is a game with a very simple procedure. You are just taking turns claiming cards until they run out. Yet, behind such a simple action, there is much you must consider. You must consider all four scoring opportunities. You must consider your flexibility for the next turn. You also consider what your opponent might want. The card powers must be considered too. 

I played Leaping Lions well before it was released, so I am pretty excited now to have the final product in my hand. Darryl certainly made Malaysia proud, as this is an excellent game. He continues to be active in submitting games, and there are other international publishers who are looking into his designs. This is wonderful news. As more and more Malaysian designs get released internationally, this will encourage other local creators, and this will help grow the industry in Malaysia. I am very much looking forward to that. 

Leaping Lions comes with two expansions. The first one adds scrolls, which is a new way of scoring points. Some of the new cards can only be upgraded when you fulfil certain conditions. 

The second expansion is a solo game. You play against a bot, and there are five bots to choose from. Each bot has an advanced version, so in a way you have 10 different opponents to pick from. 

Prowl: Clans & Cunning

Prowl: Clans & Cunning is a game from Singapore, designed by Russell Wee and published by Playlogue. It is a card game set in a fantastical Japanese Warring States period. There are four factions in the game and you secretly support one of them. During the game you influence the strengths of the factions. At the end of the game, if the faction you support is the strongest, you win. 

During game setup the relative strengths of the four factions are randomly determined. Everyone draws six cards. The cards come in four suits matching the four factions. Each card is a fighter with its own power. During the game you do not draw cards. These six cards are all you have. 

Of these six cards, you start off picking one of them to become the faction you support. You place that card face-down before you, keeping it secret. Now you only have five cards left. Each turn you must play a card to perform an action. You will only have 5 actions in the whole game. There are three types of action. The basic one is playing a card and using its power. There are two parts to the card power, and you can use them in any order. You get to strengthen the faction of the card, i.e. increasing its rank. You also use the power described by the card text. These powers vary greatly, and there is a theme to each of the four factions. 

The second action type is swapping your faction card. Play your card face-down to become your new faction card, and reveal then discard the old faction card. The third action type is accusing an opponent of supporting a specific faction. When you do this, you discard a card face-up without strengthening the faction or using the card power. The opponent being accused must answer truthfully. If you guess right, you may choose to steal the king token (a tiebreaker token), or you may force your opponent to change his faction card next round. 

Throughout the game you will try to manipulate the relative strengths of the factions, hopefully making your faction the strongest. If you are able to guess your opponents' factions, it can help tremendously. It is possible that multiple players support the same faction. If you see that someone seems to be helping your faction win, chances are he's on the same side. However, there can only be one winner. This is when the competition for the king token (the tiebreaker) becomes important. One twist is, in this situation, if your shared faction is the strongest but neither of you have the king token, both of you will lose, and victory goes to the next strongest faction. If you feel confident about that opponent supporting the same faction as you, you can accuse him and force him to change his faction card. But then if he is smart, maybe he will have a card of that same faction on standby for exactly this play. 

To be honest I didn't have high expectations when I listened to the game overview. Even after reading the rules, I wasn't convinced this would be interesting. Nothing in the rules pops out to say "interesting mechanism". It all seems to be something I've seen somewhere else before. Only by sitting down to play the game I discovered how delicious it is. This is a short game, short enough to feel like a microgame. You only have 5 actions, so every action feels important. This is a compact game, as in you have few decisions to make, but there are many considerations behind each decision. There are multiple possibilities to contemplate. Even that first decision during setup is not easy - which faction to support. When you choose a card to be your faction, you are already sacrificing its strength. That's one card fewer you can use for strengthening the faction. The faction being secret is clever. You do have to be careful not to be too blatantly supporting a specific faction, because there are consequences. Or maybe you are bluffing? Or you pretend to be bluffing?

This is a card with a quirky power. You give it to a target player, and he must then discard a card. If you think deeper about this, this can be a powerful play in the second last round, potentially disrupting someone else's perfect plan. Often players will keep a strong card as the last card, so that they can make a solid final push. If you play this Untrained Acolyte on them, you not only spoil their plans, you now also know exactly what card they have in hand for the final turn. 

The cards are large, showcasing the art

I had thought Prowl would be a simple light game, but it turned out to be a compact, clever and thinky microgame. Few actions, but there are mind games and plenty of tactics to explore. 

Olenon

The Game

Over the three days at the Asian Board Games Festival in Penang, I tried many games, but I only bought two. Coco Boom from Taiwan was one, and the other was Olenon from Japan. I found Olenon simply amazing. This is a game strictly for four players, and it is a partnership game. Your partner sits across the table from you. It is a climbing / shedding card game, which means you try to rid of your hand of cards. You just need one person on the team to do that. Your team then wins the round. You need to win two rounds to win the game. The game has only 32 cards, and it plays quite quick, almost a microgame. 

At the start of a round, everyone is dealt seven cards. The leftover four stay unseen and are not used this round. Players take turns playing cards. You can play singles, pairs, triplets or four of a kind. There are no straights or full houses. The lead player can play any combo type, the rest must follow the type. You can only play if you can beat the current combo. Now an interesting twist in the game is you can steal a combo by adding cards to it. If the current combo is a pair of 5's, instead of beating it with a pair of 6's, you can add a single 5 to it, making it a triplet of 5's. Another twist is that 6's can be beaten by 0's. The mouse beats the elephant. 

When you can't or won't play, you have to pass and exit the current hand. You must take a card from the current combo and place it before you, indicating that you have passed for this hand. When the hand ends, you take this card into your hand. One important impact of someone passing is that the current combo is weakened, which makes it easier for the next player to beat. 

A hand is played until both players on a team have passed. The hand is won by the other team, and the winning team leads the next hand. Another way a hand ends is when a four of a kind is played. This is like the bomb in other climbing games, but in Olenon the hand ends immediately. You can't play a bigger bomb to beat a bomb. 

Anyone who plays his last card ends the round and scores a point for his team. Your team needs two points to win the game. 

The Play

The game takes some effort to get used to at first, because it does a few things in unconventional ways. Since you can steal combos, those odd single cards can turn out to be quite powerful. If your opponent plays three 6's and you have only one, you can add it to his combo to win the hand. On the other hand, if you have a pair or a triplet, you have to worry about whether your opponents have cards of the same value and will steal your combo. 

It helps to card count. Communicating with your partner helps too, but you have to be careful not to reveal too much information to your opponents. Deciding to pass is not as simple as it seems. You don't necessarily pass only when you are forced to. Sometimes a pass can be a tactical move. Maybe you do want to take one card. Maybe you want to weaken the current combo. 

The Thoughts

I greatly admire the game design. I don't often have exactly four players, but this is simply amazing and I cannot not get a copy for myself. I had the opportunity to buy the game straight from the designer Hiro himself and I asked for his autograph. Olenon is very much a game in the style of the modern Japanese game design. Simple but clever. Short but requires some thinking. The art looks like there is no art, but don't let that deter you from trying the game. If you like Japanese style games, this is a must try. 

Point of View: Circus Island

This is a microgame. This was given away for free at the 2024 Essen game fair. I should call this a brochure game, because it was given away by a guy walking the halls just like how brochures are given away. It's an advertisement. It's a free sample. Maybe this should be called a sample game. The idea is if you like the sample game, you'll visit the publisher's booth to try other games or buy the main game. 

These are all the game components - that small deck of cards above. Even the "game box" is just a folded card. This is a cooperative game. The key idea is four players are looking at the same scene but from different angles - north, south, east and west. Due to the different perspectives, what they can and cannot see are different, and they have different understandings about the situation they are looking at. The players are given several questions which they must answer together. They each get one card which they have to study and cannot share with others. They can only discuss what they see on their card. The more answers you get right, the higher you score. 

Point of View: Circus Island is just a demo game. The story is about a circus troupe stranded on an island. This photo above shows the perspective of the player to the north of the island. The three other players get different pictures. A question posed to the players may ask them to count a certain item. Some are only seen by only one player and blocked from view from the others. The player who can see it must alert their teammates. Some items might be visible to two or more players. When counting these, you have to be careful not to count them twice. Some questions may ask you about what you think has happened. You will need to look at clues in the pictures to piece together what might have occurred. 

This is a puzzle game and everyone works together to solve it. Everyone must contribute, because you are the only one who can see your picture. The copy I have is in German, so I needed to use my phone to translate while I played. If this sounds interesting to you, go look up their main game. 

King and Peasant is out

King & Peasant is a game from local Malaysian designer Poon Jon. We got into game designing and publishing around the same time, about 4 years ago. We are among the current batch of active game designers and publishers in Malaysia. We have been attending many of the same events and activities. We often did playtesting together. King & Peasant is a game I have seen since its much earlier form still being playtested. A limited local print run was done in 2023. Now this is the official full production run. I have a copy of the limited edition, and when the 2025 edition was released I quickly grabbed a copy too. 

King & Peasant is a 2-player card game and a microgame. The main components are just 18 cards. One player is the king, the other the peasant. The peasant wins by assassinating the king, and the king wins by either surviving or catching the assassin. The king must draw a card every turn. If the card drawn is the assassin, he loses. The peasant wants to manipulate the deck so that the king would draw the assassin, or he can directly murder the king when all the guards have been disposed of. 

I love the art. This is new art. 

Most cards have two powers, one for the king and the other for the peasant

It is nervous being king. When your opponent fiddles with the deck, you can't be sure whether the next card will be the assassin. You might try to get rid of that card, but if it turns out to be a decoy, then you have just wasted a valuable action. 

Being peasant is challenging. Unlike being the king, who draws a card every turn, if you want to draw a card, you need to spend your valuable action. 

The king and the peasant's actions are different

Full colour rulebook

For more details, check out the official webpage.