This game My Grand View Garden (我的大观园) is made by the Dream of the Red Chamber Society of University Malaya. I recently met a teacher Pey Ling who specialises in the four major Chinese literary works and runs courses analysing them. She is planning to great boardgames for them, to make her lessons more interesting to her students. She contacted me after reading about my blog post on my

Trishaw Frenzy is a Malaysian design. The designer is Ewe Boon How, and the publisher is LUMA. This is a game about trishaws in Penang. It is a simple game, and I'd even consider it a children's game.  One easy way to describe the game is modernised Snakes & Ladders. This is a roll-and-move game. The board is made up of nine tiles randomly placed and oriented. The squares

 This will be held on 20-21 Jun 2026 at the Sabah Art Gallery. I missed this event last year because I had other work to do. I can make it this year and I'm looking forward to this very much. This will be my first time exhibiting at my hometown of Kota Kinabalu. If you are in KK, come play with me! 

 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

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

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

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

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

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! 

7 Feb 2026. We had a playtesting session at Nasi Kandar Apollo on a Saturday afternoon. I didn't manage to take photos of every game played, not even every game that I played. I did a rough playtest of one idea I came up with just the day before. I wanted to make a simple card game that can be played on a road trip, needing no table. Everyone has a stack of 5 cards. They are ordered. The highest

 31 Jan 2026. Eric Lang (Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Ankh, Chaos in the Old World) was in town. He has been staying in Malaysia on and off for many years, and is now planning to spend more time living in Kuala Lumpur. He wants to get to know the local designer community and the local boardgame community. Aaron arranged two meet-up sessions for game designers and other industry players to get to