I came across several games during my trip to the Philippines for the Asian Board Games Festival in Manila. I played some, and I listened to an overview for others. Here are some of these games.
This is the Combatron game, based on the Filipino superhero which was created in the 1990's. I forgot to ask the actual game name. It is in the final stages of development. I played a near final
Sunday 17 May 2026 12:00 - 18:00 I will be at Kinokuniya Bookstore at Damansara Heights Pavilion demoing Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. If you have not tried them, come visit me!
It's 1951. The Indian government has just decided to build a new capital city for the Punjab region. You are one of the urban planners working on this project. This city will be called Chandigarh. As you build the city, there are opportunities to score points. When the city is completed, the highest scorer wins.
The play area is a 4x4 grid of tiles. On each tile there are empty
I was interviewed by Dan of Monkey Plays at the Asian Board Games Festival in Manila. The full video (mostly English, some Tagalog) was her experience at the fair, and other designers were interviewed too. The video also shows Pinocchio being played. Link: https://youtu.be/WJ1WzEpplpw?si=VShCuwwhvFwZk8VH&t=667
Talon is a game of tactical spaceship battles. It is a game for two players. One plays Earth and the other plays an invading alien civilisation. You each control a fleet of spaceships. Your goal is to destroy all of your opponent’s spaceships.
The battlefield is abstracted to a 2D hexagonal map. You fly your spaceships around and shoot at your opponent’s spaceships. There
Lightning Train was described as Ticket To Ride with deck-building, but I think that will paint an inaccurate picture. It is indeed played on a map of USA, and you do compete to build tracks between cities. The core mechanism is indeed bag-building (a form of deck-building). However I find this a much more complex game. It's a mid- to heavy-weight game.
This is the game map. In
The Asian Board Games Festival in the Philippines was held 2 - 3 May 2026 in
Manila. This was the first time I exhibited in the Philippines. I have been to
Manila before at my previous job, and that was 18 years ago.
There were four Malaysian publishers at ABGF PH - Jon (nPips Games), Choon Ean
(LUMA), Chee Kong (Haribol Way) and I (Cili Padi Games). We were
Limit covers a serious topic. It is a simulation of modern human civilisation. It is based on the Meadows Report "The Limits to Growth", which says that because our planet and its resources are finite, constant growth is impossible. We will sooner or later hit a saturation point. Yet humans behave as if there is not such limit. Every corporate CEO is expected to achieve ever higher results.
The Design & Play (DNP) game design competition is back! This is a competition open to all Malaysians. It is organised by Malaysia Boardgame Design (MBD). This was first held in 2025, so this is the second year we are doing this. We have the same team of six judges - all local designers and indie publishers. This year, the criteria is a little different. Instead of being limited to
Pantheon is an expansion for 7 Wonders Duel. Allen came across this at Cash Converters in Singapore, and it was a fantastic deal, SGD3.00! That's less than MYR10.00. As a game buyer I’m thrilled about these great deals. At the same time as an indie publisher it’s a little sad to see slightly older games get the stock clearance treatment. I guess to view it positively it is a good
I will be at the Asian Board Games Festival (ABGF) in the Philippines this coming weekend 2 - 3 May 2026. If you are in Manila, come and say hi!
The game I am publishing this year under Cili Padi Games is
Pilgrim Poker, and it uses the theme of Journey to the West (西游记). I
also have another game which will be published by Specky Studio -
Rebels of the Three Kingdoms, which, of course, is based on Romance of
the Three Kingdoms (三国演义). The advantage of using a topic or theme which
many people are already familiar with is the
The second edition of Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs has been out for a while, last year in fact, but I have not yet mentioned it. This is a game I struggled with a bit, on whether to do a second printing. The first edition did not sell particularly fast. Partly it is because this is a game with a minimum player count of 7. I was running out of stock, and I still had enquiries, so I
The Malaysia Boardgame Show was covered on national television. See the clip here (the video is in Malay): https://www.facebook.com/reel/4243861829210835 The organiser Jon. My friend is on TV! Effendy's game Melaka won 3rd place in the Zenobia AwardsMany Malaysian themed games were showcased at the event
18-19 Apr 2026 was the Malaysia Boardgame Show. It was held at Jaya One shopping mall in PJ. In the past few years there has been several different boardgame-specific events in Malaysia, like Asian Board Game Festival (in Penang), Boxcon, All Aboard, Dice & Dine, Anigames. Not all are recurring. MBS is organised by Jon, who is currently the most active game designer in Malaysia. He has
Playing Bottle Imp with Alex and Ivan at ZUS Coffee. They were both highly intrigued and took learning the strategy seriously. This is a game with much depth. There are serious skills involved. This is an unusual and clever trick-taking game. I showed Pinocchio to Yip, Captain Fuaad and Kelvin. Right from the start Captain teased Yip that he was going to get four donkeys (and lose
The 2026 game title from Cili Padi Games will be Pilgrim Poker. This will be my fifth game published under the Cili Padi Games label. I have been making one game a year since Dancing Queen in 2022. Edwin Chong has been my artist since my first game, and continues to be my artist for this year's project. This above is the concept art for Pilgrim Poker. Since the game uses the theme of the
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
Anmelden
