On February 7, 2026, we gathered for a board game testing session on a Saturday afternoon at a place called Nasi Kandar Apollo. I didn’t get pictures of every single game we played, or even all the ones I personally tried. I did test out a new idea I came up with the day before. My goal was to create a simple card game that folks could play on a car trip without needing a table. The idea is that everyone gets a stack of 5 cards. These cards are arranged in a specific order, where the highest number loops back to the smallest. Your set of cards represents a circle of rooms you’ll be moving through. The card on top shows the room you’re currently in. To move to a room next to it, you can either move your top card to the bottom of the stack, or move your bottom card to the top. This means you’ll be moving to the room with the next lower or higher number. I got this idea from a game called Revolver Noir. Each round, everyone moves their cards once. Then, the player whose turn it is calls out a number. Everyone then shows their top card, which is their current room. If your room number matches the one called out, the active player takes your card and gets a point for it. You then draw a new card and put it back into your stack in the right spot. It’s a pretty straightforward concept. However, it does require a good memory. I’m not sure yet if I’ll keep developing this idea. I tested it using a regular deck of playing cards.
This is a game about money laundering that Jon is working on. The basic idea is that we all run shady businesses and need to clean our dirty money to use it. The money you earn is like victory points. There are police raids, and if you don’t launder your money in time, you could lose what you’ve worked hard for. Even though it’s dirty money, it’s still earned money.
Qing Ye lost a lot of his illegal goods a few times because the police raids happened at just the wrong moment for him. In this game, you need to set up legitimate businesses to wash your money. It doesn’t have to be a laundry shop; restaurants work too.
Faris brought a game that looked really nice and complicated. I didn’t get a chance to play it myself. All of us designers from Malaysia are really hoping he makes a big name for himself in the international board game scene, especially with games that are popular in Europe. He’s the designer behind Philharmonix.
This is Chee Kong’s game, called Slow Life Academy. There are four different paths where players move their markers. Only the players with the highest and second-highest markers on each path get points. There’s also a value marker that needs to be moved up, and it decides how many points the leaders get. You have cards numbered 0 to 3, and you play them at the same time as everyone else. Only the highest card played gets to move its marker forward. If you play the powerful 3 and win the round, you only move one step. But if you win with the low card, the 1, you get to move four steps. Playing a 2 lets you move two steps. I think this is a really clever idea. When you play a 0, you won’t win the round, but you will move the value marker up. This can create a tough choice. If you decide not to use your strong cards on a certain path and play a 0, you might end up helping another player score more points.
Another interesting twist is that the paths loop around. If the value marker or any player’s marker goes past 8, it resets back to 1. So, if you do too well, you might accidentally end up losing. If the value marker gets pushed too far, it resets to a low number. I think this game has a lot of potential, and I’m excited to see it develop.
Jon has told me a few times that he struggles to design simple, straightforward games for a wider audience. I don’t mean games that serious gamers enjoy, but he told me he could do it, and he has. This is his haunted house game. It’s a simple game where you take risks. You flip over cards one by one, trying not to go over 10 hearts. If you do, you don’t get anything for that turn. You can choose to stop drawing cards at any time and take whatever you’ve collected so far. When the game is over, the player with the most cards wins. However, the player holding the fiery skull card cannot win. If you go over the limit, you get the fiery skull. Some cards, when drawn, make the player with the fiery skull lose a card. If this happens, and someone else now has the most cards, the fiery skull is passed to them. The game is very easy to learn, and I think it will be a hit with casual players. I have to admit, I enjoyed it too.
This is Qing Ye’s game called Georgetown. It’s about the different historical people and groups in Georgetown, Penang. You buy and sell goods, and you can change the prices to your advantage. You build up a collection of cards that helps you score points. It’s a light strategy game with fun combinations.
With Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) coming up soon, some of us got together for a ‘lousang’. Lousang is a tradition among Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese. It’s a ritual where we toss a salad while wishing for good luck in the year ahead.
I played Pilgrim Poker with some of my friends from BNI. They are trainers and coaches, just like me. I gave a talk about how I create and test games. They found it very interesting. It was a good chance for me to test my game with people who had never seen it before.
Jetta is a trainer friend from Hong Kong. I visited him there late last year, and I didn’t expect to see him again so soon, this time in Malaysia. He had a training job here.
Jetta enjoys games that are played in real-time. I showed him Escape: The Curse of the Temple. For our very first game, we only played the basic version, and we lost quite badly. I thought we would do okay since we were both experienced gamers, and I had played the game before. It was actually fun to lose. This picture above is from a later game after we added the curses and treasures. We managed to win that one.
Some of the curses I had
I also showed Jetta Take Time. It’s a bit easier to play with just two people. I actually enjoy it more with four players because it’s more challenging. Even so, we didn’t always win, even on the easiest level. I should probably play this game like a campaign. I need to find three other people who will join me for all 40 challenges, from Level 1 to Level 10, over several game sessions.
When we played Cat Between Us, we had a perfect tie. For three rounds in a row, both of us scored perfectly (or ‘purrfectly,’ as you might say), landing exactly where the cat was. It was a perfect tie. Maybe this game is also a bit easier to play with two people.
