This is the second year the Design & Play game design competition is held. I am one of the judges, together with five other local game designers and publishers. Our goal in doing this is to encourage others to try their hands at game design, to develop Malaysian game design, and to bring more good Malaysian games to the world. This year we had 113 registrations. By the time

This is a game I feel I shouldn't like, but I end up quite enjoying it. It's almost a heavy game, with lots of stuff to do. An island with many never-seen-before creatures has been discovered. Many scientists flock to it to discover new species and to collect them. During the game you will collect resources, discover creatures, and spend those resources to collect the creatures. You gain points

Shady Lady is yet another game by Kaya Miyano I have played this year. This is a very Japanese style game - minimalistic but clever. It has a juicy element of trying to read your opponents and sometimes cunningly misleading them. You have a hand of three cards. There are only two types of sets in this game, three cards of the same value, or three cards in sequence. Cards are numbered 1 to 4,

I asked my artist Edwin to design a roll-up bunting for Pilgrim Poker. I plan to bring this to exhibitions. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.  I was at Eslite Bookstore (诚品书局) on Sun 16 Aug 2026 to demo Malaysian Holidays. Eslite ran a small event showcasing Malaysian themed and locally designed tabletop games. I was one of several designers at the

New Old is a game from Japan. What stands out the most about it is the box design. It is deliberately designed to look like two boxes side-by-side, one brand new and the other one pretty old and worn. The cards inside and the rules are like this too. Some cards are normal, but others look like old cards at different levels of wear and tear. The rules come in two sheets, and one of them is

LOOP is designed by Takashi Saito, who is from Nagasaki, Japan. I bought this game when I was traveling in Nagasaki. Because of this the game will have a special place in my collection. This is a climbing card game, like Tichu and Big 2. You play different combinations of cards and your goal is to play all your cards. The most important twist in this game is

  Bangkok International Game Festival (BIGF) is happening in Bangkok 28 - 30 August 2026. Cili Padi Games will be there. The new game I am bringing is Pilgrim Poker. I have exhibited in Thailand before, twice, at a different event - the Thailand Boardgame Show. This year I want to try going for a different event. It is my first time at BIGF. Let's see what it's like. I hope to be

This is a game I am very excited to talk about. Restoration is a game from Vietnam, designed by Plum Tran and Toan Nguyen, and published under Ngu Hanh Games. It is a strategy game about restoration of the Kien Trung Palace. You play the role of artists and craftsmen. This is a worker placement game. It uses a rondel mechanism, and it has area majority competition. 

  Pilgrim Poker is named so because the setting is Journey to the West, the Chinese classic novel. The characters are transported to a modern setting. They are on the first leg of their pilgrimage, taking the train to Dunhuang. Guess what they are bringing on this trip? Pilgrim Poker of course! Five years ago when I started working on this game, it was very different.

We have a new physical boardgame store in downtown Kuala Lumpur! Play Play Asia is located in GMBB Mall, which is a local hub for arts. The shop specialises in Asian games, with much focus on South East Asian titles. This is a collaboration between Origame from Singapore and LUMA from Malaysia. You will see many Singaporean and Malaysian game titles at the shop. Can you spot my games Malaysian

When I was in Kota Kinabalu I asked my mum to playtest my Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) game with me. I wanted to get it played by different kinds of players, and senior citizens is not a demographic I often have access to. This was also the first time younger daughter Chen Rui played. I have told her about the game before during video calls when she was overseas, but she could only play the

Having played Quartermaster General: East Front recently, Han and I moved on to play the South Front version. The South Front of World War 2 refers to the Mediterranean theatre. The game has a long map that stretches from Gibraltar in the south of Spain to Iraq in the Middle East. You have North Africa, Italy and the Balkans too. On the Axis side you have mainly the Pact (I think these are

Dog Poker is first in a series of animal poker games from Japan by Kaya Miyano. I bought both Dog Poker and Cat Poker when traveling, and only later realised I already own Cat Poker. Cat Poker is the original Japanese version of Panda Panda. Although named poker, neither game is similar to poker. Or maybe animals play poker differently.  In Dog Poker every card

Rikka is from the makers of Tiger & Dragon, which I greatly enjoyed. The use of mahjong-like tiles is nice. Although not absolutely necessary, it does make the game experience better. You can consider Rikka simplified mahjong. It does feel like mahjong, but there are some important differences. You start with a hand of 5 tiles. On your turn you take a tile then discard a tile. Tiles in

Ukiyo-e is the 2025 Japanese edition of an old game from Michael Schacht, called Crazy Chicken (2003). This is a simple, mostly abstract card game, so it is easy to retheme. I would never have imagined a game about crazy chicken getting transformed into a game about traditional Japanese woodblock prints.  In this Japanese edition of the game, you are collecting pieces of art by famous

The Asian Board Games Festival (Malaysia) was 7 - 9 Aug 2026. This was the third time it was held, and I have been exhibiting there every year so far. It was at the same venue - 1st Avenue Mall in Penang. Here's my experience at ABGF this year.  Three of us - Jon, Buddhima and I - travelled together in the same car from Kuala Lumpur to Penang on Thursday, a day before the event

Jon from nPips Games (King & Peasant, Furmation of Rome) and Chee Kong from Haribol Way (Zodiac Go) are two of my regular game exhibition buddies. We have been to many game exhibitions together, not just in Malaysia but also in Thailand and in the Philippines. In July, they went to Korea. I could not join them, so I asked them to share their experiences with me. We did

Similo is a cooperative card game that is doing well. There are many different decks with different themes and characters. So far I have played three of them. In this game one player is the clue giver and the rest are guessers. A grid of 4x3 is laid out. One of these cards is a secret goal which only the clue giver knows. The clue giver needs to provide information to the rest

Pioneer Days comes highly recommended by Buddhima. I have never heard of this game before. It never made any big splash when it was first released. Now this is a rare game. It is a solid design. It has an interesting balance of competition and collaboration, and combo development.  Every round, a number of dice equal to one more than the number of players are

Three Sisters is a traditional companion planting technique where corn, climbing beans and winter squash (e.g. pumpkins) are planted together, and each of them provides benefits to the other two. The game Three Sisters is a roll-and-write game about agriculture and farming. Everyone has his own player sheet. Dice are rolled every round to determine the possible actions. You