I would like to hear your opinion.
Since 2022, Cili Padi Games has been publishing one game per year. My idea is to do this once a year to gradually build up my product line and my brand. However I also remind myself that my goal is to focus on being a designer, not a publisher. If I am able to pitch a to a publisher successfully, I would happily play the role of designer only. So far I have published Dancing Queen, Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Pinocchio. I am partnering with Specky Studio (with them being the publisher) to release Malaysian Holidays and Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. Malaysian Holidays will be out early 2026, in conjunction with Visit Malaysia Year. Most of the work is done now. Publishing work has not started for Rebels, but we are hoping to release it in 2026 too. What I am working on now is what to release under my own Cili Padi Games in 2026.
Art from Malaysian Holidays
At the moment I have three candidates: Math Dice, Apa You Cakap and Bet West. I’ll briefly explain each of them and my considerations, but before I do that I want to talk about Rebels. This is because it is representative of the style of Cili Padi titles. Since I am trying to build a brand, I should have a consistent style. At least that’s what I think now. The Cili Padi style is small box card games. My games feature important hidden information, double guessing among players, and players trying to mislead others or outright lying to them. I think my 2026 game should be something like this too. I’m not 100% sure this is the best strategy or a necessary one. For now this seems to be the sensible thing to do.
In Rebels of the Three Kingdoms your character powers are secret, and without knowing for sure who has what power, you have to decide who to form a team with. The reason I came up with this design is I wanted to turn typical social deduction games upside down. In games like Werewolf and Secret Hitler, you don’t know who is on which team and you spend much effort figuring that out. In Rebels, you openly decide whose team you want to be on.
This is not a team game though. This is still very much every person for himself. New teams are formed every round. Your friend today might be your enemy tomorrow. Your team is but a tool for achieving your personal goal. I know this sounds rather negative, but hey this is just a game. Please don’t be like this in real life.
The gameplay of Rebels is very much in the vein of other Cili Padi games. Three Kingdoms is not a fairly tale, but it is a historical story, so that’s close enough. Specky Studio specialises in educational games. Rebels is a good fit for their product line because Three Kingdoms is history, and literature too. The game mechanism reflects that era of every lord for himself and shifting alliances.
Let’s talk about Math Dice. I started designing this with the intention to pitch to corporates which might want to have a boardgame as merchandise or as a premium gift. This is an educational game and a mass market game. Something parents would want to buy for their children, and schools would want to use as a learning tool.
There are three types of dice. The blue and yellow have numbers while the white has operators. What you need to do in the game is to use dice to make valid equations. There are some rules for the die faces. The 6 and 9 are interchangeable. So are the 1 and the minus sign. Multiplication and addition signs are not interchangeable. Multiplication is red and addition is black. Using this photo above, what are the equations you can think of? The more dice you want to include in an equation the harder it will be. Let’s look at some example solutions.
5 x 6 = 30
16 x 5 = 80
18 x 5 = 90
(36 x 5) / 1 = 180
In the first version of Math Dice, after the dice are rolled, players study the dice together and race to pick up cards. If you find a way to create an equation using six dice, you pick up the card showing 6 dice. Later on you will need to prove it by arranging the dice. In case you can’t do it or you have forgotten how to do it, you will be penalised. You take the NO card if you think it is impossible to make any equation with the dice rolled. If no one is able to make any equation, this will be the only card which scores. If you are able to make an equation with all the dice rolled, you take the SUPER card. This is the highest scoring card. That card showing three 9’s is just a reminder that whenever you manage an equation with a three digit number, you score 2 points.
I am going to change how this game works. During playtesting, I found that players often had difficulty remembering their equations. So they needed pen and paper to write them down. Now I want to make pen and paper part of the game. You need to write down as many equations as you can within a time limit. Every correct equation gives you 1 point. For a specific number of dice, if you are the only person who manages an equation, you will score bonus points.
Of my three candidates, I think this one has the lowest chance of being selected to be my next game. It is very different from the Cili Padi style. It has the educational game vibes, which I worry is rather out of place compared to the rest of my product line. I don’t know the educational games market well, and I don’t feel confident about marketing an educational game. On the other hand, doing something different might present new opportunities. This game might create inroads to new markets. This is not the kind of game that old gamers play, and because of that I have difficulty convincing myself to release it under Cili Padi Games. It’s my instinct and I know it’s wrong. Publishing games is not about making games you like, it is about making games your target audience wants.
The second candidate is Apa You Cakap, which is a phrase mixing Malay and English. It means “What are you saying?” This was inspired by multilingual Malaysia. The first language you speak with a friend will often become the default language you speak, even if you later find out that you both know another language and you are both more fluent in that. When I went to Penang for the Asian Board Games Festival, Jon, Jia Xian and I were in the same car, and while Jia Xian and I spoke Mandarin, and Jia Xian and Jon spoke Mandarin too, when Jon and I spoke to each other, we used English. All three of us spoke Mandarin, but since English was the first language Jon and I conversed in, it became our default. Imagine this three way conversation with a mix of Mandarin of English, and none of us finding it unusual or unnatural. That’s Malaysia.
There are six Malaysian languages in the game. To win the game you need to be able to chat with everyone using their preferred language, all within the same turn. Let’s translating that to game mechanism – your conversation partner shows a language card, and you must be able to show that same language from your hand too. During the game there are ways to find out what languages the other players speak. This game requires some memorisation.
In the game you have a secret crush. If he or she wins, you win too. This creates some collaboration among the players, but this isn’t a cooperative game nor is it a team game. If you happen to be the secret crush of your secret crush then yes, as luck would have it, you are effectively a two-person team.
I started working on this game because I wanted to create something which showcases an aspect of being Malaysian. I wanted a game which Malaysians can relate to, and at the same time if marketed overseas, a unique aspect about Malaysia can become the hook. I have never published a Malaysian themed game before. This is something outside of my comfort zone. Perhaps it also means this is a new opportunity.
Apa You Cakap still needs many rounds of playtesting. The core loop isn’t settled yet and I am still experimenting. Initially I was a little doubtful about this design. The premise is interesting, but I was worried I couldn’t come up with an interesting mechanism. Now that I have tested this several times, I am starting to see the fun elements surfacing. I am still making big changes. I am hopeful this can be developed into a game worth publishing, whether under Cili Padi Games or under other labels.
When I make game prototypes I now use cards from the One Piece card game. Younger daughter Chen Rui bought a ton of cards cheap. She doesn’t actually play the game but she is a fan of One Piece. She collects the cards because of that. There are many cards she didn’t want, so I asked her to give them to me. I can save some money buying poker cards.
The third game I am considering is Bet West. This is the revitalised Saikoyu. It is a gambling game with a Journey of the West theme pasted on. I submitted Saikoyu to a game design competition some time ago, and it didn’t even make it past the first round. The feedback I received was that there was too little basis for players to make meaningful decisions. The judges suggested I take a look at Coyote. I do think players don’t have enough control, which translates to a poor experience.
Bet West uses the same concept as Hanabi. You can see everyone’s cards but not your own. You have only one card. Every round the player with the highest card wins. The largest number is 13, and the smallest is 1. Cards numbered 4, 8, and 10 trigger special conditions when in play. For example when 4 is in play, the smallest card wins instead. If 8 is in play, all odd numbers become zero. With these quirks thrown in, it is not easy to guess your odds of winning.
In Saikoyu, everyone proposes a bet amount, and the bet used for the round will be the second highest amount. The basis for guessing your own number is how other players propose their bet amounts. What they propose is a reflection of what they see. You can use that to guess your own number. However players generally still feel they have too little control. So I have now made some changes.
I now make the game a bit more like poker. You will have to pay an ante every round, but you will not be forced to lose a huge sum when multiple other players want to go big. You can Fold and just lose the small ante. I have added a Raise mechanism. You can Raise to try to bluff, and to see your opponents’ reactions. Whether they Call or Fold gives you clues as to what your card might be. I’ve added a Side Bet mechanism. This is also a way to get hints about what your card is. When you propose a Side Bet against another player, you state the bet amount. If the other player accepts, this Side Bet will only be resolved at the end of the round. However if they decline, they must pay you half the bet amount immediately. So you see this can be a way for you to bluff too.
The Guanyin card (Goddess of Mercy) is a powerful and disruptive one. It allows you to discard you card and draw a new one. Obviously this can completely turn things upside down. There is only one such card in the game.
The theme is completely pasted on. In fact I feel a little guilty pasting this story related to Buddhism onto a gambling game. I do think using themes already familiar to people is useful. It is something that attracts people and gives people a sense of familiarity. It creates a better play experience. Now that I think about it, maybe the 8 should not be Tang Sanzang (Tripitaka) and should be Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) instead. After all the 8 (Ba) is literally in his name.
The style of Bet West is consistent with Cili Padi Games. There is critical information which is hidden, and there are ways you can try to figure it out. There is double guessing among players, and opportunities to bluff and lie.
Which do you think should be the next Cili Padi Games title? Math Dice, Apa You Cakap, or Bet West? Please comment below and share your reasoning.
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