The most noticeable shift on my board game blog in 2025 was the sheer volume of writing. Since I first started the blog back in 2007, I have never managed to write as many posts as I did this year. The total number of articles I published is actually more than double what it was during my previous best year. This big jump happened mainly because I got to play so many games I had never tried before on BoardGameArena.com. I started playing games regularly with my good friends Han and Allen, but we did it in an asynchronous way, which made it easier to fit into our schedules. This method of play opened up a whole new world of games for me.
During this year, I managed to play a total of 260 different games. Out of that huge number, 187 of them were brand new experiences for me. To give you an idea of how big that is, in 2024, I only played 72 different games. In 2025, I had 777 total plays. A big chunk of those plays, specifically 280 of them, were my three usual favorites: Star Realms, Race for the Galaxy (where I played against the computer), and Ascension. I also played my other favorites a lot, which I call my “dimes” because I played them ten or more times. These were Innovation, Daybreak, Regicide, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I played Innovation a total of 46 times, which is almost as many times as I played Ascension. I probably shouldn’t count Ali Baba in my stats, though, because my records for the games I design myself are not always accurate. I test them out many times, but I don’t always write them down. I also look at testing my own games as work, not as playing for fun. I get all these numbers from the geekgroup.app website. It is a very handy tool. It is much easier to use and has more features than what BoardGameGeek.com offers right now, and it pulls its data directly from BGG.
It was a bit of a shock to me when I made a list of my favorite new games for this year. The top two games on that list were heavy Eurogames. This is strange because I have said before that I don’t really like that type of game anymore. Stupor Mundi gives you very different ways to make your abilities stronger. You have to compete in several different areas at the same time. The game makes you make some really hard choices. The different parts of the game are connected in tricky ways, so you have to pay attention to all of them. There are many different ways to build your castle in the game.
Learning how to play Darwin’s Journey was a real challenge. Part of the reason I liked it so much was exactly because it was challenging. I did really badly in my first game, but that made me want to get better at it. It felt like a puzzle I needed to solve. There was so much I was supposed to do in the game, and I was actually shocked by how little I had accomplished by the time the game ended. It is a very rewarding game to learn, and it feels good to be able to play it at least somewhat well.
The game session that stands out the most in my memory this year was playing Blood on the Clocktower. This is a game about social deduction, which is funny because I usually don’t enjoy those types of games very much. Blood on the Clocktower is like a more advanced and complicated version of Werewolf. In the game I played, I was the demon, which means I was the main bad guy. That role made me feel pretty nervous. In this game, every single villager (they are called townsfolk here) has a special power, which makes playing as the demon very hard. Luckily, there are some things that help balance it out. Even though the townsfolk get some information, that information might not be correct. The person running the game might give them wrong clues if they have been poisoned, or if their powers have weaknesses in certain situations. I ended up winning as the demon, and I learned that I can be a very convincing liar.
I played a lot of good games this year. Some other new ones that I will remember include Santa Maria, Tiger & Dragon, Maracaibo, Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, Duel for Cardia, and Drones vs Seagulls.
On the side of my hobby where I design and publish games, this was the year I released my fourth game under the name Cili Padi Games, which is Pinocchio. This was also the year that the Matagot version of Dancing Queen came out. This was the first game I published with a well-known international publisher. This is a big step forward for me. I have now sent my games to be sold in the USA (with Portland Games Collective) and in Denmark (with Games Kobenhavn). I have a second game that has also found a home with a publisher. Malaysian Holidays has been licensed to Specky Studio, and it should come out in early 2026, which will be during the Visit Malaysia Year. I thought I wouldn’t go to many board game events in 2025 because they can be tiring and sales are not always good, but I still went to quite a few. I attended Sarong Music Run, Dice & Dine, Keretapi Sarong, the Asian Board Games Festival in Penang, and the Thailand Board Game Show. There was also a board game event in my hometown of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, but sadly, I couldn’t make it. My friends who went there told me they did very good sales. It looks like the people in Sabah really want board games! I hope there will be another event like that in 2026, and I will try my best to be there. After all, it is my hometown!
I have been taking part in fewer game design competitions lately. This year, I only entered one, which was organized by STTOS to design a game about Sabah tourism. However, this year I became one of the judges for the Design & Play (DNP) competition. This competition is run by Malaysian Boardgame Design (MBD). There were six judges, all of us are Malaysian game designers who have published games. It was an interesting experience to see a competition from the other side. We all hope that Malaysian board game design keeps growing and that we see more and more great games from local designers.
This year, I gave a talk at Connaught Chinese Primary School about board games and parenting. I am doing my small part to help more people know about board games. When I went to Hong Kong for a personal trip, I met up with and interviewed Charles Yan, who is a publisher from Hong Kong. It was fun to learn about the board game industry there, and a little bit about the industry in China and Taiwan as well.
I am running out of space at my house for all my board games. I did a small clean-out this year, giving some games to friends and selling others. Now that I have some empty space on my game shelves, I just hope I don’t fill it up too quickly again.
This year, I joined the yearly BoardGameCafe.net Boardgame Retreat for the first time. I have known Jeff and Wai Yan for many years, and they have been my main suppliers for games (like a drug dealer, as we joke) for a long time. Now, I am also selling my own games through them. I had an amazing time at the retreat. It was wonderful to have a few days away from everything else and just focus on enjoying my hobby.
