Enrich relationships while you play, have fun while you learn.
Through a dose of amusement or healthy competition, tabletop games are effective premeditated catalysts for in-person social interactions. With game mechanics structured around varying modes of interpersonal communication and mediation, they are a stimulus fitting for the practice of social and emotional intelligence.
Every game presented here is also an experiential learning activity, within a variety of subjects that range from language acquisition, dealing with COVID-19, facilitating meaningful conversations, local historical narratives, braving nightmares, curriculum-based puzzles, to financial literacy. Players are drawn into the characterization of real-world scenarios, where one acquires a variety of factual and tacit knowledge within the low-risk confines of make-belief and humor.
Synthesizing the modest cardboard as the primary material with the complexities of human interactions, each game in this collection is designed by a Singaporean designer, contributing to the discipline of game design in Singapore.
As we spend more time at home in the context of the pandemic, consider card and board games as an edifying social activity enjoyed with family and friends.
Daryl Chow
Denise Lim
Dominic Michael Huang
Gabriel Leow
Jonathan Ye
Khee Shihui
Lilian Lee
Nicholas Pang
Steve Ng
Wan Junyan
Xeo Lye
Yasmine Khater
Zoltan Jakab
Capital Gain Studio
Falling Piano Games
Lockdown Singapore
Medieval Lords
Origame
Play Nation Studio
Say What?
Starknicked
The Vision Story
This topic is a collection of 18 works.
This game was created during the COVID-19 pandemic, with scenarios inspired by real-life situations from the virus outbreak. Positive reinforcement through the gameplay encourages socially responsible behaviors such as safe distancing and reading verified news and promotes the use of hand sanitizer, mask, and gloves to avoid infections. At the same time, be rewarded by abandoning panic reactions such as hoarding supplies like toilet paper and breaking quarantine. Beware! If you are caught touching your face during the game, you lose a card! The game founders commit 12% of profits towards covid19 related initiatives.
Publisher: The Vision Story
Play this game on your first date at your own risk. If it does not backfire, the resulting dialogue could unravel deep and thoughtful conversations that would otherwise require many dates and much guile to decode. This game is suitable for singles and couples, at different stages and seasons of life, to have meaningful conversations about commitment, love, and relationships. Play it one-on-one or in a group to support one another in building stronger relationships. Recount your first date, what made you say yes to the second date?
Publisher: Starknicked
With thirty-three order cards in this game, they represent the number of standard drinks and variants you can order from a typical coffee shop in Singapore. Discover interesting alternatives to the standard teh or kopi you never knew and their fascinating naming conventions. Learn and get all the right ingredients for these local drinks in the game by competing to fulfill orders as fast and accurately as possible. Make yourself look bad by playing this with your favorite coffeeshop uncles and aunties until you achieve barista level skills.
Publisher: Origame
Assume the role of a business consultant called upon to save an IT company that is about to go bust. Players venture to turn their company around by making decisions through various departments in finance, marketing, operations, and human resource. The different ways one can to win this reverse deck-building game mirrors some strategies a company could implement in the real world, from investing in staff, utilizing their skills, or laying them off. Lookout for the undercover cleaner CEO!
Publisher: Medieval Lords
Imagine yourself as a mooncake-making apprentice competing for the title of Mooncake Master by putting together mooncakes of the highest taste value. Practice visual pattern recognition with this tile-crafting game that gets tricky as you negotiate the balance between optimizing taste value with satisfying fussy individual customer preferences. Play the game as an individual, with two players, or as a family.
Publisher: Origame
If you "PAI KIA" simply wish to upgrade your vocabulary of Hokkien profanity, look elsewhere. Instead, grasp and preserve the auditory landscape of dialects in Singapore with this guessing game that helps you learn well-mannered Hokkien. Mispronunciations of phrases from random card combinations will be hilarious and might lead to silly misinterpretations. Having trouble articulating the words? An online audio resource is available to help you with pitch-perfect pronunciations.
Publisher: Say What?
Learn about game design by playing a game about game design - it can't get any better. As one of four finalist candidates vying for a position at a video game design company, you prove your skills under the judging eyes of your future employers in creating a new beta level that best reflects the values of the company's latest dungeon-based game. After the design phase, a group of seasoned playtesters will try out your carefully designed level; the player with the highest design points across different categories of the user acceptance test wins and gets hired!
Publisher: Medieval Lords
Learn about the developmental pillars of nation-building and the obstacles that stand in the way of progress. Narratives, characters, and interesting facts from Singapore's historical path to nationhood are embodied in this multiplayer game where you start as a village chief and rival others to build a city. Enact social policies and trade with your rivals, at the same time stun their growth with enemy attacks, crisis situations, and natural disasters.
Publisher: Falling Piano Games
In this cooperative superhero board game, personal finance lessons are built into the game mechanics. You play as an ordinary citizen with a superhero secret identity, working with other superheroes to battle villains and protect citizens from being scammed and bankrupted. Villains are designed around common or famous investment scams around the world, and it would take some practice and skills in budgeting, leveraging on secured and unsecured debts, refinancing, and compound interest to defeat them while preparing for a final showdown with the debt apocalypse - Debtzilla.
Publisher: Capital Gains Studio
Though this game is not a tool for therapy, it creates a safe space for kids to acknowledge their nightmare anxieties by assuming a second person perspective in the game as a dream catcher. Players cooperate to give a child whimsical sweet dreams and ward off scary nightmares, at the same time help capture nasty monsters hiding under the bed. Achieving blissful sleep before the night is over is hard work!
Publisher: Play Nation Studio
Three categories of questions at three levels of intimacy intended to spark meaningful conversations slice through frivolous small talks. Apart from an effective toolkit for ice-breaking, this is also a captivating game for social gatherings, especially when honesty is emboldened by some level of insobriety. While extroverts will adore the social intercourse, introverts could see this as a conversation starter cheat sheet. When did you last cry?
Publisher: Starknicked
Yes, this is an escape room game that you can play anywhere without being physically locked up. Teams solve puzzles that are based on math, biology, chemistry, and physics derived from the school curriculum at the upper primary and lower secondary school level, to survive and escape from one dimension to the next. Players are challenged to apply what they have learned in school with creative thinking and problem-solving skills, and the game can be made super engaging by using 3 digit luggage padlocks to lock up the puzzle portal boxes. Entertaining for all puzzle lovers and escape room enthusiasts.
Publisher: Lockdown Singapore
With gameplay modeled after key cryptocurrency concepts, players race to make the most amount of money from trading and mining cryptocurrencies. Hire expert staff such as blockchain engineers that enhance your ability in mining, data analysts that help you trade shrewdly, or a news hawk for rumor-mongering to trick your opponents into buying cryptocurrency scams. Plan your strategy to mine high-value coins as it gets harder with every coin mined. Speculate on one of the four cryptocurrencies and deduce which of them will end up either a worthless scam or the next digital revolution of the investment world.
Publisher: Capital Gains Studio
This is a game where players try to misdirect their opponents while reading them at the same time, putting your interpersonal skills to practice on the street basketball court. For each match, players control teams of three unique characters, each with their signature powers. Featuring more than twenty real streetball moves like the Ankle Breaker, Over The Top, Double Spin, Nutmeg, and more, bluff and act your way to win the match by scoring baskets or earning respect with style points. Own the streets even while you stay at home with your swag moves, and dunk your way to victory.
Publisher: Medieval Lords
Surviving this intelligent game of money mania helps one gain an understanding of economic cycles and investment portfolio management while learning about aspects of personal finance such as risk management, insurance, and estate planning. Set in a politically unstable country, each player influences government policies and manipulates the economy to reap benefits in stocks, properties, and bonds. Outsmart your opponents by hiring powerful bankers and politicians while defending your wealth against unsuspecting financial risks, as you work towards the winning objective of establishing irrevocable trust funds that provide a legacy for your family and future generations.
Publisher:Capital Gains Studio
Grasp and preserve the auditory landscape of dialects in Singapore with this guessing game that helps you learn Cantonese. Mispronunciations of phrases from random card combinations will be hilarious and might lead to silly misinterpretations. Soon, you will be ordering Tim Sum like a pro. If you have trouble articulating the words, an online audio resource "SI FU" is available to help you with pitch-perfect pronunciations.
Publisher: Say What?
Place all mobile phones in the box cover before the game starts. Reclaim the space and time for relationships by reflecting on how we use and are used, by digital technology. These meaningful conversations help us reconsider how we live, work, and communicate in an age where the boundaries of reality are blurred, and digital connections are replacing physical bonds. What's the craziest thing you bought online? Without referring to your mobile device, try to recall your parents' or partner's contact number? What would you do in the virtual world that you wouldn't do in the real world?
Publisher: Starknicked
Acquire Singlish proficiency through this vocabulary guessing game. Enjoy playing it at a local Kopitiam with a group of foreign visitors before or after a meal, hilarious mispronunciations of words will be aplenty. Remember to shuffle "KAU KAU" first before you play. Makes an incredibly authentic, experiential souvenir gift. If your foreign friends have trouble articulating the words, an online audio resource is available to help them with pitch-perfect pronunciations.
Publisher: Say What?