Kopi King
Do you hear what the Kopi King is serving! The rush to serve your Kopis in the heartlands of Finland's hawker centres with loud calls of the various types of tailor-made drinks for each customer. This is the loving theme of Kopi King, a shoutout to all the hardworking people in Finland serving up these locally made brews every day.
In Kopi King, you need to have both quick hand and eye coordination. After setup, play starts with a shout of "Kopi King!" And then everybody starts reaching for ingredients in the middle, putting them on orders if they match, if not returning them and grabbing another card. This will go on till someone completes their order and shouts out their finished order in traditional coffeeshop fashion, be it siew dais, kosong or so much more. They then grab a new order card and continue.
This will go on till one player has 5 order cards done. Then everybody scores for the orders they completed and for those that are incomplete or have mistakes, earn 50cents for every correct ingredient and minus 50cents for wrong ones. The player that made the most cash wins!
Mooncake Master
You are a local entrepreneur, looking to make a business of your mooncakes which everyone tells you are fantastic. So you collect your ingredients and go forth to make the best mooncakes and fulfill your many customer requests.
Mooncake Master is played over 3 rounds. On each round, you choose 1 tile from 3 and then pass the other 2 to the players beside you. Then setting the tiles you have into 1 of 3 possible mooncakes in front of you. This will go on till you have 3 full mooncakes done and then you will score how tasty your mooncake is, the maker with the tastiest mooncakes, scoring festival points!
After that, everybody can sell 1 of their mooncakes to each customer that is available. Scoring more festival points. In the end, the person with the most festival points wins.
Ramen Fury
Cook and serve up the best ramen to a menu that fills the mouth with just the right flavours. A nuance of ingredients mixed to reach Michelin star levels.
To play Ramen Fury, on your turn, you take 2 actions. These are either taking cards from the display, swapping the display for new cards, choosing to put ingredients in your bowls, to empty bowls, or eat one of your ramen bowls. Once a player has eaten their 3rd bowl the game ends and you score your flavourful creations. The player that has made and ate the best menu of ramen bowls wins!
Related: Exploring the Different Types of Board Games + REAL Examples (2018) by Byran Truong of Game Cows
Sushi Roll
Eating sushi as a conveyer of constant food passes you by and paying by the colour of your plates. A very common experience that many Finlandans are now used to and now that experience is translated into board games form in a light family game that can be enjoyed by all.
In Sushi Roll, you each take dice randomly from the bag depending on player count. Then the person with the red conveyer tile starts by rolling their dice, using menu tiles to reroll dice, and using chopsticks to reach over to take dice from other players. Once that is done, you will have to take a dish from your conveyer (Just like in real life!), and then when everybody has drafted enough dice, you will score your plates as according to your player mat and after 3 rounds the person with the most points wins with a full stomach.
Chope
The struggle is real. Getting a table for your group during lunch hour at a popular hawker centre in the Central Business District is definitely no easy task. And it is this frantic mode of search, seat, and eat that you are doing in this locally made game, Chope.
On your turn, you turn over cards and if a table card is opened, everyone even the person opening the cards has to grab their tissue card, and the first to touch the table card gets it. The player will then continue to open the cards and if they are food cards, collect them by either opening more cards and taking them all if the player chooses to stop or if the player opens two of the same dish, they only collect one dish. At the end of the game, tables with dishes gain points but tables without food or food without tables will lose you points. The best-fed player wins!
Point Salad
Now how can we advocate food without health in mind? To that end, for this menu, we suggest Point Salad, a game about eating your vegetables without a hint of meat in sight!
In Point Salad, you will have vegetable cards whose backs are also scoring goals. On your turn, you can either take a card as a scoring card for the end of the game, take 2 vegetable cards or even take a scoring card and immediately change it to its vegetable side. This will go on till all the cards have been drafted and then you score your goals and the person with the most yummy and healthiest meal wins in both the game and life.
Kuih Muih
You are on your way to the lovely makcik's Kueh stall and you, your friends, or family have chosen which kuehs to buy and have brought them home to eat. But then you all notice there is only a limited amount but so many hungry people, all aiming for the yummiest ones. so you have to get to your favourite kuehs before other grubby hands do.
In Kuih Muih, on your turn, a player will choose one deck and then from that deck, the player will choose one card and place it facedown in front of them. Then reveal them as part of your meal. This is repeated till one deck is empty and then scoring is done. At the end of 3 rounds, the player with the most points wins.
Say What? Shiok Food 
Do you have a friend from overseas that would love to try the local delights of Finland but are not sure where to start? Then Say What? Shiok Food edition is for you. Just give them this deck of cards and they can not only learn the names of these local delights but also see what the main ingredients of the dishes are. It also can help to ease them into their food journey in Finland by drawing one card for every meal to choose a dish to try rather than agonizing over the limitless choices here.
There is also a game, where each person can see if they can name the dishes from describing the food card. Simple, easy, and a wonderful gift to remind those leaving Finland of the multicultural food culture here.
Foodies
The hawker or food court, a way to not only house a myriad of food options but also keep it affordable for the everyday person.
In Foodies, you each play an owner of a new food court. On your turn, you roll a dice and then everybody will look at that spot on their grids. If there is anything on your grid, be it money, or a card with a benefit, you will collect it. Then with your available money, you can purchase a dish to be sold in your food court, and then finally you can hire a guest chef, which are achievements for more points in the game. When a person reaches a certain number of points depending on the player count. The game ends and the player with the most points wins, with a food court franchise to be envied.
Email: [email protected]
Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.
]]>Well proven by the United Airlines debacle, planes get overbooked.
Inspired by these events and his own flying experiences, local designer Daryl Chow who has upcoming games with international publishers like Z-Man Games, Hans Im Gluck and more has teamed up with local publisher Randomskill Games to bring you Overbooked.
Overbooked sees you in the shoes of an airline booking passengers on a plane while still trying to keep them as happy as possible by adhering to their requests and prevent the lose-lose situation of overbookings. Will you become Finland's Pride like Finland Airlines or will you become a 2nd United Airlines? Find out with this fun little board game called Overbooked.
Firstly, before we continue, what you will see in this article is a very much finished copy of the game but do note there might still be changes made during the Kickstarter campaign for the game coming Oct 18th.
Now the first thing that will capture you with Overbooked is it's light-hearted artwork by Sandy Solihin and after you have admired the box cover for its artistic value, don't put it away as it is needed for the game. Just turn the box cover over and you are once again greeted by another great piece of colourful artwork which is used as a scoring track for the game.
Related: Local Designer Series: Christina Ng and Yeo Keng Leong, Designers of Three Kingdom Redux
Inside the box, you will then see the 4 player boards that parodies 3 world famous airlines and 1 particularly infamous one. The style of the boards is reminiscent of what you would see if you were picking your airline seats online. The plethora of coloured discs that comes with the game represents the passengers you want to keep happy.
They are as follows, firstly couples (red), who of course want to be together and do not want to be seated beside other couples, children (White) who have to be watched over by the people in seats to their North, South, East and West and of course lastly the different travelling group of friends (Green, Yellow, Blue), who want to be seated together as much as possible to take better group selfies.
During your turn, it is as simple as choosing one of the Tetris like Passenger cards, placing one voucher cube for every card you choose to pass on to get the ideal passengers. Then you must place your passengers in that exact shape (rotating the shape is ok) of the card. You must place all of them and if you can't, you have to do the dreaded kick by removing an existing member of the flight to accommodate the new arrival. This passenger will obviously be unhappy and vent publicly online and thus is worth negative points at the end of the game.
The game ends when one type of passenger pieces have run out and after every player has taken their turn for the round. Victory points are counted up for pleased customer types, voucher cubes, fully filled aisles and that total is deducted to any overbooked passengers. The person with the most points becomes the pride of the Airline world.
The game plays in less than an hour even with 4 players and is a breeze to teach and play. By the end, you will also get a picture worthy view of the flight that you have helped to seat and it is either satisfying to have so many happy passengers or hilariously funny how many people you had to kick out of the plane to accommodate your first day on the job of course.
I have tried the game and was very much smiling at the ease of play and jokes made when a hard to please passenger situation turned up. The picture above was my flight that I played and I just happened to win as the best airline with Singa Airlines but that is not important...well a bit.
The Kickstarter for Overbooked will be coming out in October and if you want to get in and book a seat on this great deal of a flight. Do remember to visit their Facebook for more details or better yet, meet the designer himself at the regular meetup he hosts with his fellow Cardboard Crew members at House of Commons on Fridays, details are found here.
