Asian Board Games Festival, Singapore
This post is about our visit to the 2025 Asian Board Games Festival in Singapore (their 3rd year).
This 3-day ABGF event was hosted by ORIGAME, a Singaporean board game publisher owned by prolific designer Daryl Chow, perhaps best known for his collabs with Saashi and Saashi.
It was FREE to attend, with vendors, designers, and play tables set up in a courtyard at the Singaporean National Library. The designers were from all over Asia: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan…even Bhutan! It was a lively scene, with teachers at every table to teach you their games, and people eager to join in. As most of the games were fairly small and fast, this meant that we had the opportunity to play everything we wanted without too much waiting time. It also felt good to be able to support and buy directly from these independent board game designers.
We spent all our time in the main area where the new games were demo-ed and sold, as our priorities were playing and shopping, but there was also a library room for open-play, scheduled tournaments and designer panels, a DJ, and an artisanal ice cream stand with Singaporean flavors.
We had each bought a PLAY PASSPORT which we used to collect stamps from publishers whenever we played or purchased a game. For every 5 stamps, you could enter a drawing to win a prize. (I won a free ice cream!) The passport also served as the event guide and map.
Kueh Salat is delicious in both solid dessert and ice cream forms!
GAMES WE PLAYED /BOUGHT
108 OUTLAWS (Origame) is a card game based on a famous classical Chinese novel. The 108 unique cards feature cute designs of these outlaws/heroes, and have resource symbols (cavalry, swords, rice, map, dragon, etc) which allow you to do bonus actions. 108 Outlaws seems overwhelming at first because there is a lot of iconography and planning required, but gets easier once you have a goal in mind. Playing your cards in the right order is essential so you get to combo your actions efficiently. The biggest points come from fulfilling “campaigns,” which you do by exhausting (turning sideways) your cards with the required symbols. Unfortunately, there are a limited number of campaigns, and other players can beat you to them! The game ends when a player has played 12 cards to their tableau.
GARDEN (Taiwan Board Game Design) is a two-player, very prettyTic Tac Toe type of game where the different shaped tiles set up different placement restrictions for the other player. We liked it but didn’t see ourselves wanting to play it often.
SHALL WE DANCE. (Saashi and Saashi) Nathan enjoyed this one more than I did and I don’t remember the game very well. I believe the goal was to collect male and female pairs of different colored cards, and you would score points for the pairs you collected. (Don't quote me on the rules!)
MAGIC NUMBER ELEVEN (Pluto Games) is a 2-player soccer themed game that was so hyped by Cardboard East that I was excited to check it out. Aesthetically, it is very cool. Most of the gameplay is about arranging player cards on your side of the field in such a way that you may pick up more/better “synergy cards” and gain more strength (stars) before you attempt to make a shot. However, there is an element of luck in the card reveal that determines whether or not you score a goal. If the opposing team’s defense is weaker than your attack or if you reveal exactly 11 stars, it’s a goooooooooooooooaaalll! Magic Number Eleven feels quite thematic in that scoring a goal is not easy! We have played it a couple of times now and we like it, though Nathan wonders if knowing the best card arrangement pattern could limit the game’s replayability.
FISHERMAN (Paix Guild) I have a thing for fish-themed games and these cute fish drawings caught my eye! Fisherman is a 3-5 player trick-taking game that is a little bit complicated. There are five fish suits (so cute!) and the goal is to collect point-scoring cards in the tricks you win. The thing is, before each round, players take turns to decide which specific fish suit and card number earns a point, which fish suit is “trash” and loses a point despite being the trump suit, and whether 1 or 10 is the highest number in a trick, which all got very confusing. As much as I dislike complicated trick-taking games, I love the card art! I love that the fish drawing sizes get bigger as the card numbers goes up.
OH! MY SOCKS (Paix Guild) is a ‘memory’ party game by the same designer and artist as Fisherman. It has delightfully silly drawings of socks with faces on them. The goal is to collect as many pairs of matching socks as you can.
STRAY BOSS (Yaofish) Not sure of the actual name as it was in Chinese, but this was an area control game with wooden cat meeples of various sizes and upgradeable powers. How could we resist cats! The goal of the game is to claim a certain number of “homes” by having the majority of your cats in those areas. This was a fun game but way too big to consider fitting into our suitcase. We hope it gets a US release.
DURIAN SMUGGLER. (Spiel the Game) The joke premise of the game is that it is at all possible to secretly smuggle pungent durians! We played the beginner “co-op” variant of this game. We are not sure what the competitive version is like. As airport security officers, we receive a bunch of luggage cards, and play them faced-down to a grid on the table. We know in advance how many durians are associated with each luggage color. Together we have to silently deduce which of the played luggage cards contain a durian, and to make sure that suitcases with durians would never be placed adjacent to each other. (We won!)
I was excited that Playte had a table!
DEPOT (Playte) This was a kind of card shedding game that was somewhat confusing, even to the person who was teaching. There are columns of number cards on the table, and on your turn, you are supposed to play cards either in sets or sequences totaling higher than the card total in a specific column, OR draw all cards of the same number from the table to your hand… We didn’t really enjoy this one.
BATAM (Playte) is a pick up and deliver game with ships and cubes on a map of islands. There is an interesting auction phase in the beginning: players take turns placing coins on other players’ ships and rolling dice to determine the amount of movement each ship can take. The game ends when a player has delivered 5 (or 6?) cubes to different islands, and then the player with the most money wins. We really enjoyed this game (with 4 players) even though we got a rule wrong for most of the game.
OVERPARKED (Origame) As we had already played a copy at Dice Tower West earlier in the year, we knew we wanted to buy this one. A thinky polyomino “parking” game in which you don’t always get the combo of vehicles you need! You get points for the number of connected vehicles of the same color, and for completing public objectives. Harder than it looks!
PURUPURU PARADICE (Origame) Daryl Chow recommended this one when we were looking for another Origame title to buy. According to the rulebook, "Purupuru" is the sound that jelly makes when it jiggles. The characters are all different kinds of "jelly" and the dice are translucent purple with faces on them. This should tell you all you need to know. A kawaii, light, fast, dice-rolling game that can be a little mean, and perfect for when you'd like to give your brain a rest. :)
We had a fun time and hope that more people from the USA and Europe will explore modern Asian board games. As far as we know, the ABGF is still growing and will be expanding to more countries in SE Asia in 2026, and there will be even more designers and publishers with games that are not available to purchase in the US or are too expensive to ship to the US (#fucktariffs).
Also, Singapore and Malaysia have amazing food and you should visit anyway. ;)
P.S. We should also mention that if you are in Singapore, there is a wonderful exhibition at the Asian Civilizations Museum -- Let's Play: The Art and Design of Asian Board Games. Go see it!