I can sense the future. I sense that Soothsayers is going to be one of my favourite new-to-me games in 2026. I had not heard of the game prior to playing it. The theme and the art are a little quirky. The backstory is mumbo jumbo to me. However the gameplay completely took me by surprise. I would say there is nothing particularly ground breaking, yet the whole package just works amazingly

Watergate is a two player game about the Watergate scandal involving President Nixon. One player is the newspaper editor trying to gather evidence, link them to Nixon and expose the scandal. The other player is the Nixon administration, trying to prevent this and attempting to win by lasting till the end of the presidential term.  The game board is a network of links with

The Malaysia Boardgame Show is happening 18-19 April 2026 in Kuala Lumpur! Cili Padi Games and I will be there. There will be pre-loved games for sale, several game competitions, and there are also game hosts bringing games for visitors to try. There is even a seminar on game design. There will be a lot of the Malaysia boardgame community and events all at one place. Don't miss it!  

When I say spoiler-free, I mean up to the point when you start your first game. That means by then you will have opened the first mission box and you will see what's inside. If that's fine by you, come join me to take a look at what's in Regicide Legacy, the legacy game version of the amazing cooperative card game Regicide from Badgers from Mars, New Zealand. I'm a big fan of Regicide 

 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

Skara Brae brings us to the Orkney Islands in prehistoric Scotland. You manage a growing settlement. As more and more people flock to your settlement, you need to make sure you gather enough resources, build shelter, and cook enough food to feed everyone. At the same time you need to manage the waste generated by the settlement. There is a message about sustainability here

Wizards of the Grimoire is a two-player head-to-head battle game. You are wizards and you deal damage to each other by casting spells. To win the game, you need to reduce your opponent's health points to zero. This structure is pretty common. However the way you pick spells to use and manage mana needed to cast them is interesting. The game certainly offers something new.  There is

Toy Battle is a two player abstract game. My first impression is this is a game when you play with not only those tiny green toy soldiers but also with unicorns, dinosaurs and robots, and you make proper rules for a battle game in your living room, which you can imagine to be any world - space station, beach front or graveyard. The game comes with many different boards,

HWC Coffee is a Malaysian specialty coffee chain. They made a card game which was given away for free if you bought coffee (and other stuff) worth more than a certain amount within a single transaction. It is encouraging to see this. I would love to have my game designs used in such projects. Zus Coffee had something like this just last year, a Sembang Raya card game. Something that promotes

Bebop is a tile placement game about a jazz music fair. You are ticket sellers trying to book the right seats for customers who enjoy specific performances - piano, brass (trumpets) or percussion (drums). I find the link between theme and mechanism a little weak, but still, it’s nice to see a music fair setting, which is not something you see often. This being a tile

 Selamat Hari Raya! (art from my upcoming game Malaysian Holidays)

The past weekend was the Dice N Dine event at Lalaport, Kuala Lumpur, organised by The Magic Rain. It was not entirely a boardgame event. There were art booths and some cosplaying too. Surprisingly not many local game designers set up booths this time. Normally we have more. The venue is the Level 4 food court. The Dice N Dine concept is to run smallish events at food courts, because there

Over the Chinese New Year holidays I managed to get some friends and family to help me playtest Pilgrim Poker. The rules were more or less final, but I wanted to get more different people to try it, to see whether there were any issues I hadn't detected. This is stress testing the game. When you get people who have never played a game to try it, you can discover situations you have never seen

  It's happening this weekend! Come try my games at Lalaport shopping mall, Kuala Lumpur. I will be there both Saturday and Sunday. My booth will be at Level 4. 

The Malaysia Boardgame Show is happening 18-19 April 2026 in Kuala Lumpur! Cili Padi Games and I will be there. Come play with me! More information on Instagram and Linktree. There is an open-to-public area and a ticketed area for activities. Tickets for the latter here. Early bird prices ending this week. Buy now! 

This is a card from my upcoming game Malaysian Holidays, which celebrates all our Malaysian national holidays and state holidays. This year Nuzul Al-Quran falls on a Saturday. Don't mind the THU on the card. In the game it is a Thursday card. And that 2 in the corner means there are two such cards in the game. Malaysian Holidays is coming soon this year from Specky Studio. Watch this space! 

Libertalia is a game from 2012. I have heard of it before several times, but never had the chance to give it a go until recently. I had high hopes for the game, because I had heard only good stuff. Unfortunately for me, I am meeting a good game at a bad time. I would have enjoyed the game more had I played it earlier. This is a simultaneous action selection game. You and your opponents have

Who else has watched the Disney cartoon 101 Dalmatians as a kid? Spots is a light dice game about dalmatians! Well, maybe not specifically dalmatians. Just dogs with spots. Many of the dogs in this game don't actually look like dalmatians. This is a game with a bit of push-your-luck, in which you race to fill six dog cards with dice of the right number of pips.  You start