The results of the Design & Play Game Design Competition 2026 have been announced on Malaysia Day, 16 Sep 2026. Congratulations to Muhammad Aiman Haqiemi Mohd Shaipul (Jalan Jem), Anas Maghfur (Unlawful) and Andrew Tan Kui An (Malaysia’s Last Tigers). I am one of the six judges for the competition. We had our judging day on 12 Sep 2026 at Lalaport. It was one full day of everyone playing every finalist game. I will briefly introduce our finalists before sharing my thoughts.
1st Place: Jalan Jem by Muhammad Aiman Haqiemi Mohd Shaipul
Everybody hates traffic jams. Everybody blames the stupid motorists switching lanes all the time worsening the traffic. But we are traffic! We are all part of the problem. Jalan Jem puts all of you on the same highway. The slow, middle and fast lanes have different capacities. If there is too much traffic in a particular lane, your travel time will increase. If traffic is smooth, it increases less, or you might even save some time. Your goal is to reach your destination in the shortest time possible, by avoiding traffic jams.
Everyone has a die representing their vehicle. You roll your die every round, and the value represents traffic. Everyone decides simultaneously whether to stay in the same lane or switch to an adjacent lane. Note that you can’t switch two lanes at one go, e.g. from slow lane straight to fast lane. That’s reckless driving. The lanes from slow to fast have different risks and rewards. The slow lane has a bigger capacity and thus less risk of getting jammed. However staying in the slow lane always adds some time to your road trip. In case it gets jammed, it only adds 10 more minutes to your trip. Not too bad.
The middle lane has a smaller capacity. If there is no jam (i.e. all the dice added up is less than or equal to the capacity), you add no time to your trip. But if it gets jammed, you are going to add 40 minutes to your trip, which is horrible. But not as horrible as when the fast lane gets jammed, like this photo below.
The fast lane is easiest to get jammed. If it doesn’t get jammed, you shorten your trip by 20 minutes. But if it does and you get stuck in that jam, you are adding 60 minutes to your trip. The fast lane is high risk, high reward.
This game is about guessing the intentions of the other motorists on the road. It is most fun with the highest player count.
2nd Place: Unlawful by Anas Maghfur
Play the role of a lawful trader or a pirate during the era of the Melaka Sultanate. Being a trader, you need to collect cargo of either the same type or of different types to score points. You can also support the sultanate in fighting pirates. If you decide to turn pirate, the actions that become available to you will be completely different. It takes time for you to build up your capabilities, but once you do so, you can earn many points.
The game is complex and competitive, and players often find they need to work together to prevent others from running away with the game. There are such uneasy alliances in several aspects of the game. If you are the raid leader, sometimes you are forced to agree to let someone join you to score points together, because otherwise he will disrupt your plans. Sometimes the traders must all agree to claim dice of a particular colour to prevent the pirate from capturing a die colour he wants.
You use the two cards on the right to track your points.
The back of your character card is your pirate identity, if you choose to turn pirate. You will capture dice to be placed here. Dice placed here determine the actions available to you. You can have at most one die per column. As you move the die up, you will have more options – all visible squares below the die.
3rd Place: Malaysia’s Last Tigers by Andrew Tan Kui An
This is an asymmetrical 2-player game. One player is the poacher, and the other the ranger. The poacher tries to capture the tiger, while the ranger must protect the tiger or capture the poacher.
Every round the ranger performs one action, and then the poacher, and then the tiger will move using a die roll. The actions of the ranger and the poacher are very different. The ranger has dice to manage, and the dice rolled determine the options available to him. The poacher has no dependency on dice.
The tiger moves along a jungle path of four face-down cards. If the card it lands on is a trap, the tiger is injured, and the poacher has the option of attempting to capture it. The ranger will try to heal the tiger so that it gets moving again. If the tiger is trapped a third time, the poacher wins the game. There are five trap cards in the game, and one thing the poacher gets to do is to insert a trap into the deck. The ranger can try to look for traps in the deck. He can reveal cards, and he can remove cards. Removing cards without having seen what they are is risky, because some cards are helpful to the ranger. Many cards are action cards that can be used by both the players. If the ranger is able to remove three traps, the ranger wins.
The ranger can attempt to directly capture the poacher. However the poacher has an escape card which protects him from capture. The ranger will first need to exhaust that card and then perform another capture to actually arrest the poacher. The poacher is able to refresh the escape card only by using specific game cards.
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The following are the other finalists in no particular order.
Rempit Gang! by Chua Cher Yen
This is a push-your-luck game about riding your motorbike up the hills. The further you can ride, the more points you will score. You must place dice in ascending order, and the dice placed must be less than or equal to the card values. The push-your-luck comes when you need to decide whether to attempt the next card.
Road Trip Sabah! by Jeyna Lim
Players build their own 3×3 grid of cards, trying to create pairs of matching icons, and rows and columns of the same colours. The active player rolls dice to determine actions available for the round, then claims one die to perform an action. This die is no longer available to the others. The other players may use any of the remaining dice to perform an action. Actions include taking cards from a market of available cards to add to your own grid, drawing a card from the deck, removing a neighbour’s card, and exchanging a card with a neighbour.
haUNTUNG by Alwyn Wong
The surveyor knows how much it takes to complete a construction project, and tries to convince everyone to contribute as much as they can. If the project is completed successfully, the surveyor pockets any surplus. If the project fails, the player who contributed the least is penalised.
Pawang Rangers by Khai Aswandi
This is a cooperative game and you play ghostbusters. You start with fighting minor ghouls to level up. As you level up, you will roll more dice when fighting. You also unlock special abilities. Eventually you have to fight the bosses. If you can defeat them all before the map runs out of cards, you win.
Viral Food Dishes by Jeremy Ooi
This is a two player game about making food dishes that get the most likes on social media. Every round, each player gets to play two cards, and at then you must compare who has the most likes. If one has more than the other, he scores 1 point. Get to 3 points and you win the game. Every food card has some ability, and some of them are handicaps. Two food cards of different types combine to make a dish. Three make a completed dish, and completed dishes are safe from attack. This is a game of fully utilising the card powers to stay competitive.
Niah Caves by Yong Qian Ee
This is a team game. The illegal explorers want to explore all corners of the Niah Caves, while the police needs to catch them. You unveil the map as you explore. If a police officer has line of sight of an explorer, they run faster by two steps.
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This was the second time I did judging for the Design & Play competition. In the first round of judging when we had to score the entries based on short video and rulebook, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall better quality of the entries. There were several games I was keen to try, and not all of them made it to the final round. In the final judging round of the nine finalist games, unfortunately I was disappointed with several of them. There were games which sounded promising based on the premise and or the game concept, but in execution did not work or were unbalanced. I felt some of the games were not playtested enough. Making a good game is not easy. A good idea is not enough. In fact even a great idea is not enough. The execution and the development are crucial in making a robust and enjoyable game.
Back: Chee Kong, Logan, Haireey, Jon. Front: Chok Sien, Buddhima.
Throughout this competition the six of us judges looked through 65 different games. Behind every game, a designer has spent time and effort bringing an idea to life. To me that is an amazing thing. This is what running a game competition is about. How we incubate innovation. How we encourage people to get their hands dirty in creating a game. How we ask people to go through that creative process – the ideation, the iterations, the playtesting, designing components to make the game as intuitive as possible, constructing a clearly written rulebook. We are game lovers who enjoy making games, we encourage others to join us. Let’s make great Malaysian games!
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