Game showcase at Lolla Paluza cafe - 26 Oct 2025

I have been invited to showcase my games at Lolla Paluza Cafe in Taman Paramount, Petaling Jaya this coming Sunday. 

Path of Civilization

This is a civilisation themed game which uses an interesting card mechanism. Cards represent your technology and capability. You always have a hand of five cards, and every round you use four of them to make progress. Every round you will lose a card, and you have the opportunity to buy a new one, hopefully a better one. 

Game cards have two parts. They either generate resources (left) or science points (right). Every round you must arrange four of your cards on your player board so that two of them generate resources and the other two generate science. The card not used will be the one discarded forever. 

When you gain science, they come in five different types, and science is like a currency you can accumulate. Every round you spend science to buy a new card in one of the five tech types. Cards have different grades, with the higher grade cards costing more science. Your nation will get stronger and stronger as you acquire better and better cards. 

With the resources you gain, you can do all sorts of things. Each resource type is for one specific purpose, and it’s a matter of generating enough to do what you plan to do. There are specific resources for recruiting leaders, building wonders, developing military strength and advancing in philosophy. All of these give you benefits in different ways. 

The game is played over 10 rounds. From the third round onwards, events occur every round. You know what events they are, because they are set up and revealed at the start of the game. Some events give you benefits if you fulfil certain criteria. Many events are wars. When wars happen, you must have achieved a certain strength threshold, else you will be penalised. Your strength is also compared with others, and rewards are given based on ranking. You have an ongoing arms race. 

Wonders and leaders

What makes the game interesting for me is the core card mechanism. You must prioritise between resources and science you want to generate, and you are constantly thinking about which card you will abandon, and which card you will buy. This is a relentless march of time. The rest of the game is just okay for me. They are there to flesh out this central mechanism. They work, but they are nothing to write home about. Competition between players is indirect. You do compare military strength, and you compete for the same pool of leaders and wonders. However you are mostly managing your own nation. You don’t compete to buy cards. There are enough to go around. This is a decent package if you like civilisation themed games. 

Happy Deepavali

 

Happy Deepavali everyone! Although this is an Indian festival, it is celebrated by Malaysian of all races and religions. That's Malaysia!

This is art from my upcoming game Malaysian Holidays, by Lim Chi Qing of Sunny Day. The game will be published by Specky Studio before the end of 2025. Watch out for updates here! 

Botanicus

In Botanicus you are gardeners growing flowers in your own gardens. You have your own player board and you do your best to create the most beautiful garden. 

This is the player board. You have a gardener pawn which moves about the garden. You can only plant flowers or water them at the four plots next to the gardener, so expect the gardener will need to move about a lot. Every movement costs $1, and money is tight in this game. On the right side of every row there are two missions. If you have the specific combination of flower types in that row, you fulfil the mission and score points. Flowers can be divided into four stages. Yellow is seedling, and as the flower grows, it progresses to pink, green and eventually blue. When you get to plant a new flower, it is usually a seedling (yellow). Sometimes you get to plant pink or green. When you water a flower, it grows to the next stage. 

This is the main board. Every player has a flower shaped token. The bottom half of the board consists of worker placement spots. You place your token here to perform actions. In the first round, you place your token in the first column, and thereafter for each subsequent round you always move to the next column. If a spot has been claimed by another player you can still put your token on top of theirs and perform the same action. However, this costs you $3 per token you top. This is an expensive thing to do. How you place your token in the current column determines the turn order for the next round. Generally the lower spots are stronger than the higher ones, but if you take the stronger spots, next round you go later in turn order. 

In the top half of the main board there are three tracks. Everyone has a progress marker at each track. One track is mainly for making money, another is for watering flowers, and the last is for planting flowers. When you choose a worker placement spot, you often get to advance your progress marker on one of these tracks. You perform the actions specified at the place you stop. You can choose to advance a shorter distance than allowed. By doing this you earn some money. You can also choose to advance further than permitted. To do this you must pay extra. For all three tracks when your marker reaches the end, you score a bonus before resetting your marker. The earlier you reach the end, the bigger the bonus. The bonus devalues as more and more people reach the end. 

Money bag, wheelbarrow and shovel are the icons for the three tracks. 

Another thing you can do is to collect animals. I played the basic game, and when you collect animals, you just score points. In the advanced game, animals have various functions and help you in different ways. On the player board, the rows are for completing missions. The columns matter as well. Every completed column will score points based on the most valuable flower in the column. 

This is a pleasant game to play. Every turn you do one small thing, but step by step you are making progress on several projects. It is generally a peaceful game. You don't mess with others' gardens. At most you can scoff, but please don't do that. That's not nice. There is some competition on the main board. You somewhat race on the three tracks, because whoever gets to the end earlier does receive a bigger bonus. You compete for the worker placement spots. Technically you can use the same spot taken by someone else, but the $3 payment is steep. Also at some spots there is a benefit available only to the first player to place a token. Botanicus is a soothing family strategy game. 

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. 

Ahoy

The moment I started playing Ahoy, my first thought was this was Root at sea! However Ahoy is by a different designer. It is from the same publisher Leder Games though, and development was done by the same team which developed Root. What these two games have in common is how different the factions are. However the gameplay is very different. Ahoy is for 2 to 4 players. 

The play area is formed using square tiles, each having four spaces. The play area starts with just two tiles, but you can explore off the edges and expand the map. Every tile has a blue die, which shows its point value. This is how the Bluefin Squadron and the Mollusk Union score points. They compete for dominance at every tile and whoever is stronger scores points at the end of the round. The game is played until someone reaches 30 points. You compare points to see who wins. Tiles start with a point value of 1, but this point value can increase during the game, making some tiles more valuable than others. 

Every tile has exactly one island. Islands are where you get to recruit crew. They are also where Smugglers, the other faction type, pick up and deliver goods. With 2 players, you only play the Bluefin Squadron and the Mollusk Union. With more players the 3rd and 4th players will be independent Smugglers. In addition to scoring points for completed smuggling tasks, Smugglers also secretly bid on which of the two major powers will eventually control each island type. The Smugglers will score points for correct predictions. 

Every player has his own flagship. Your player board represents your flagship. The Bluefin Squadron  is blue, and the Mollusk Union yellow. Every round you roll four dice, and on your turn you place two dice on spaces on your player board to execute actions. The type and number of actions are limited by the spaces available on your player board. Some of the spaces only allow dice of specific values, some have no such restriction. During battle you may take damage, and it comes in the form of some of these spaces being temporarily disabled. You need to do repairs to reinstate them. It is possible to modify your die rolls, but you'll need to pay, and money is not easy to come by. 

These are crew members you can recruit. You need to be at islands with the corresponding icons to recruit them. Usually you need to pay an onboarding bonus (money). Sometimes you pay by using up one die. Crew members give you all sorts of powers. Some help you fight more effectively, some help you sail better, some help you make money. These crew cards can be treated as goods by the Smugglers. The cards specify where they can be picked up (top) and where they need to be delivered (bottom). 

One advantage the Bluefin Squadron has over others is they have 5 dice instead of 4. That means they get to perform one more action every round. Every time they sail, they may deploy a patrol (those dorsal fins in the screenshot above). Patrols have a strength of 1 which contribute to controlling a tile. They can be used to explore new tiles and immediately take control of these new tiles because they are the only units there. The Mollusk Union doesn't have patrols, but they can deploy comrades on islands. Comrades cannot fight or move, but they help to control tiles. Unlike the Bluefin Squadron, the Mollusk Union has cards. This means they always have something up their sleeve which the Squadron doesn't know. 

There are many different features on the tiles. Currents force ships to move an extra step. Fogs prevent battle. Wrecks cause damage, but you can usually get money from them. Ports offer free repairs. Some spaces show a die with a specific value. One action type is to sail by tailwind. If you use a die for this, you get to sail (well, teleport) directly to a space with that specific die value. 

The Smuggler's player board is different from the others, and they have a second, smaller player board. Whenever they make a delivery, they move the white cube to an adjacent space and claim the benefit on that space. The Smuggler has one unique action - Full Sail. When placing a die on the Full Sail space, they can move as many steps as the pips on the die. This can be very powerful. The normal Sail action only allows moving up to two steps. 

I have done both a two-player game and a three-player game. The two-player game is pretty good, because there are already significant differences between the Bluefin Squadron and the Mollusk Union. The game shines when you have at least a third player, because this is when even more layers come into play. With three players, tiles which receive deliveries from the Smuggler increase in value. While the two major powers clash, they must pay attention to what the Smuggler is doing. The Smuggler doesn't compete for dominance, but I think both the major powers sometimes need to make life harder for the Smuggler, even though they don't appear threatening. In the three-player game I played, I was the Bluefin Squadron, Han the Mollusk Union and Jon the Smuggler. Jon's points lagged behind Han and I, so I didn't pay him much attention and focused on fighting Han. I didn't do well and lost many battles. I didn't have money to recruit crew. What I had underestimated was the points Jon would get by predicting eventual island control correctly. When we did final scoring, he overtook both of us and won. Lesson learnt - never underestimate the underdog! Or I should say he wasn't the underdog and I never realised so. 

There is some luck in the battles. The basic mechanism is both parties rolling one die each to compare strength. To improve your odds, you can load cannons. This needs to be done before you engage in battle. It does cost you one action to load cannons, so it can be tough decision if you don't intend to attack but you are just worried whether others will attack you. If you have a loaded cannon, when battle is joined you can spend some of your cannonballs to increase your strength. It just may turn the battle in your favour. In case of ties in battle, the attacker wins. Aggression is rewarded. 

The fun in Ahoy is how different the factions are. You must know your own strengths and utilise them well. You must also understand your opponents' abilities and how to counter them. So far I have only played the Bluefin Squadron. I really enjoy spamming the seas with my patrols, sending them out to explore new tiles and then score points with them. Due to the uniqueness of the factions, learning the game does take a bit more effort, but it is very much worth it. I consider this a heavy game. It is not as heavy as Root, and the various mechanisms when considered separately are quite simple. When put together they make a complex and interesting game. 

The Mollusk Union has cards which allow them to deploy two smaller ships. 

Cartographers

Cartographers is a popular roll-and-write game. Every round a card is drawn, and everyone must fill their own player board following the instructions on the card. You will draw a certain shape of a certain terrain type. The game is played over four seasons, and you do scoring at the end of each season. You don't know exactly how many cards will be drawn per season. It depends on the cards being drawn. The cards trigger the countdown at different rates. 

There will be four different scoring criteria every game. They are randomly set up before the game starts. You will have variability because of this. At the end of spring season, you score points based on criteria A and B. Summer is B + C, autumn is C + D, and finally winter is D + A. Let's look at these in the screenshot above. Criteria A means every row and column that has at least one forest scores 1 point. B means every isolated single blank space scores 1 point. C means every farm and lake not touching the border or one another scores 3 points. D means the second largest town scores 2 points per square. 

You have some mountain squares on your player board. Whenever you manage to surround a mountain, you will earn one gold coin. Gold coins are good. Each gold coin scores you 1 point at the end of every season. If you earn one before the end of spring, you'll eventually get 4 points out of it. Sometimes when you flip over a card, you get to choose between two shapes, and the smaller one comes with a coin or two. This is another way you earn coins. 

The ruins icons on your board doesn't stop you from using those spaces. However you probably want to save some of them. Some cards will require that the shape to be drawn on a ruins space. If you don't have any more unused ruins, you can't draw the full shape and can only draw a single square. That may not always be bad, but I think more often it is. 

Many cards dictate the exact shape you must draw, but you get to choose the terrain type between two options. 

One unusual and interesting terrain type is the monsters (purple). You don't fill these on your own board. You fill these on an opponent's board. This is unusual for roll-and-write games. You get to attack your opponents. Monsters make you lose points. Every empty space next to a monster space forces you to lose 1 point when the time comes for scoring. You want to surround the monsters as soon as possible, before the season ends. 

The play experience of Cartographers is about doing your best to fulfil the scoring criteria. You normally prioritise the criteria which will be scored soon. If a criterion has been scored twice, you will ignore it. Deciding how to fill your board, in addition to trying to fulfil the scoring criteria, is usually based on wanting to keep your options open as much as possible. You want to ensure it will continue to be easy to fill your board and to be able to score more points no matter what card is drawn next. There is no guarantee, of course, but you do your best. Usually when you decide on a particular way of drawing in a shape, you are forgoing certain opportunities and at the same time hoping for something that fits your board to turn up next. 

I did a 2-player game with Han. Although eventually our player boards turned out to look rather different, I have a feeling we were doing generally the same thing. Every season our scores were about the same. I wonder whether this is normal. Maybe it is because in this game we share the same scoring criteria, and also it is feasible to try to fulfil most if not all of them. Thus our strategies are similar. In The Guild of Merchant Explorers, there are also multiple scoring criteria, but it is impossible to try to do everything, and you must choose. Players thus tend to diverge more. 

My player board

Han's player board

This is a relaxing game. Although you do send monsters to your opponent's domain, generally this is a peaceful, solitaire-like game. You do your own thing and there is little direct competition. If you are looking for something friendly and comforting, this is a good choice. 

Wandering Towers

Wandering Towers is a family game from the magnificent duo Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling. This is a light strategy game. I would call it a race game, and it is quite an unconventional one. I played this game online, and I think it is important that I show what the physical version looks like, so I'm going to borrow a photo from BoardGameGeek. 

Photo courtesy of www.boardgamegeek.com

Every player has a team of wizards, and also a set of bottles. To win the game, you need to have filled all your bottles with magic potion, and you need to get all your wizards to the castle keep. You have a hand of three cards, and you must play a card on your turn. Some cards let you move a wizard, some let you move a tower, and some let you choose either one. Normally the cards specify exactly how many steps the wizard or tower must move. You always move clockwise. Some cards make you roll a die to determine how many steps you'll move. If you choose to play such a card, you roll the die before deciding which piece you want to move. 

This card lets you move a tower 4 steps or one of your wizards 2 steps. 

When you move a tower, it may stop on top of another, combining to become a taller tower. Whenever you move a tower with multiple levels, you can move the whole stack, or only some of the highest pieces. If you only move some of the pieces, you will break that tower into two smaller towers. When a tower moves, all wizards on it (and in it) move with it. This is an efficient way to move multiple wizards. If your opponents have wizards on or in that tower, naturally they will move together. Towers are mass transportation, but when a wizard needs to get to the keep, he must walk the final leg himself. You can't use a tower to carry a wizard to the keep. No parking on top of the keep. 

Let's talk about the other objective - filling bottles with magic potion. To do this, you have to trap wizards. When you stack a tower on another which has wizards on top, you will trap those wizards. By doing so, you fill one bottle. You can even trap your own wizards, but that's usually not a good idea. Filling bottles is not only a winning condition. Filled bottles have another use. You can spend them to cast spells. Spells available in each game is randomly determined at the start of the game. Some spells let you move a wizard or a tower. On your turn you can cast one spell at any time, as long as you have the required number of filled bottles. 

One important twist in the game is that you have moving goal posts! Your destination, i.e. the keep, moves! Whenever a wizard reaches the keep, the keep moves to the next designated location. This changes the playing field significantly. The keep may have moved further away from many wizards, but it may also overtake some, and these lagging wizards will find themselves suddenly close to the finish line. The keep has designated stops, and this is information you can use when you plan your strategy. 

When moving, the keep may stop on top of a tower. If anyone moves that tower, the keep moves along with it. How's that for moving goal post?!

From how I describe the game, it may sound complex and chaotic, but in play, it runs smoothly and you don't have much down time. You only have three cards in hand, so it doesn't take long to decide what you want to do. Even considering the spells you might use, this game won't give you analysis paralysis. There is some luck. Your possible actions are subject to those three cards you have. There may be things you want to do, but without the right movement cards, you won't be able to do them. I was pretty lucky in the game I played. I often had a card which would let me trap Han's wizards. I filled my bottles quickly. He was not as lucky and wasn't able to trap my wizards as often. When wizards are trapped, you are not allowed to check the towers to see where they are. You have to remember where they are. This game has a memory element. 

One aspect which has some dependency on luck is landing precisely at the keep. When moving, you must follow the number of steps specified by the card you play, no more and no less. You don't want to overshoot, and you don't want to fall short. This is where spells can come in handy. Sometimes by combining a spell and your movement, you can get your wizard to land precisely on the keep. If you have multiple wizards near the keep, you should try to spread them out, so that there is a higher chance you will draw a card that will get one of them to the keep. Good tactics help to mitigate luck. 

One clever thing about the game is in the early game when you have more wizards, you have more options and it is easier to find something productive to do. If you do well and have more wizards reach the keep, you will have fewer remaining in play, and your options shrink. The trailing players will have more options. This is a natural balancing mechanism. 

This feels like a family or casual type game. I used to be mostly a heavy gamer, so my instinct still tells me this is not my type of game. However, I find this much more creative and refreshing than many heavy Eurogames which are mostly about resource conversion and point scoring. Now that I have learned more about game design and game publishing, I am able to better appreciate the genius in Wandering Towers. This is a gateway game which will attract new boardgamers. It showcases how innovative modern boardgames can be. 

boardgaming in photos: Axis & Allies & Zombies, Pinocchio, Money Laundering

In recent months my blog has been so full of screenshots of digital implementations of boardgames that it is looking more like a computer games blog than a boardgame blog. So I need to post some photos of physical boardgames to balance that and make me feel more like a boardgamer. 

Han was in town, and we met up to play. This time it was only the two of us. We wanted to ask Allen to join us, but he wasn't back in town that weekend. I suggested Axis & Allies & Zombies. I quite like the Axis and Allies series. It's one of my nostalgia games, and I haven't played the series for quite a while. I have only played this zombie version once, and I didn't even manage to complete the game then. This time, the first place where zombies (white) appeared was Sweden. 

This is World War 2 with zombies, so don't expect history accuracy. This is fantasy, not history. Germany (black) attacked Egypt. Although the battle went well for them, they decided to retreat because there were too many zombies. In this game, whenever an infantry unit dies, it turns into a zombie. This is quite a scary thing. Germany basically left the zombies for the Brits to manage. Later the zombies killed the remaining British troops, and Egypt fell to the zombies. 

This was Asia before action started. This is a low unit count version of Axis & Allies, which means it is simpler, but also the swing of luck is bigger. Things can go in many different ways after the first round. 

UK sent troops from Australia and India to capture Malaya and Indochina. Japan did not attack Pearl Harbour and instead concentrated it's fleet to destroy the UK Pacific fleet. It also did an amphibious landing to attack and eventually capture Yunnan. 

Surprisingly our game ended in Round 2. Germany blitzed into Moscow and captured it. There was one territory before Moscow, but it was occupied only by zombies and not Soviet troops. This allowed Germany to blitz through it with all the tanks it had. There was some risk, since Germany infantry could not keep up and support by being cannon fodder. It would be an expensive offensive. If this failed, Germany would lose most of its tanks and the next offensive would take many rounds to be ready. Thankfully I managed to capture Moscow. 

In this version of Axis & Allies, victory is checked at the end of each round. If you capture an opponent capital while keeping all of your own, you win. USSR had an army just next door which could have easily recaptured Moscow, but USSR had taken its turn and the recapturing would need to be next round. Its other allies were too far away to help. So this game which I had expected to take the whole evening ended much earlier than anticipated. 

The funny thing about playing this game was sometimes we felt like cooperating to push back the zombies. This is a game in which both players can lose. If zombies capture territories worth $25 in total, they win. It is quite a horrifying experience watching infantries turn into zombies. 

We played Lost Cities. This two-player card game is a classic from Reiner Knizia. It was one of the game I bought when I just got into the hobby. I hadn't played it for quite some time, and playing it again reminded me of how wonderful this design is. 

We also did another Reiner Knizia classic Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. I played the Light side, and the game was a slaughter. I lost horribly. We were not true to original story at all. 

28 Sep 2025. There was a boardgame event at Lolla Paluza cafe. Several local designers attended, and some local gamers too. I introduced my games Pinocchio and Dancing Queen. I also played some of Jon's (King & Peasant, Furmation of Rome) prototypes. I played a newer iteration of Foundations of Rome. This has similarities to Castle Combo, and I think it is a better game. The need to plan for buildings getting built over is challenging and interesting. The other prototype I tried was Money Laundering in this photo above. 

I find the theme hilarious. This is a bad boy game. Think Breaking Bad. The core game mechanism is interesting. You run illegal business like smuggled cigarettes, drugs and weapons, and you need to launder your dirty money before they are worth points. You can tip off the police and get everyone raided. Anyone who doesn't have enough hiding places for illegal goods and dirty money will lose them. That's very painful, even when it's crime money. It's not easy being a crime lord. 

This is a mid-weight strategy game and I hope to see it published. 

30 Sep 2025. My business community the BNI Lighthouse chapter had its annual teambuilding 2D1N trip. I brought Pinocchio to teach my friends, and they had great fun with it. I am glad I had the foresight to bring two copies, because I needed both. Of the four games I have published, this was the only one suitable for this occasion. This was a casual crowd and not the boardgame special interest group subset of friends who would be mentally prepared to learn a few more rules. It made me very happy to see my friends have so much fun with the game.