Play Play Asia Opens KL Hub to Spotlight Asian Tabletop Game Creators

Daryl Chow stood in a new space on the first level of GMBB in Kuala Lumpur on August 15, looking at what seven years of work had become: a permanent home for tabletop games from across Asia. The Singapore-based board game designer had spent years organizing festivals, hauling games to pop-up events like the one at Paradigm Mall in July, building relationships with creators scattered across the region. Now, finally, there was a place that didn't have to be taken down at the end of the day.

Play Play Asia opened its doors as something more than a store. Yes, you could buy games there—hundreds of them, with more arriving each month. But Chow had built it as a gallery, a workshop, a meeting ground. Visitors could learn how to play. They could find other people who cared about the same things. They could sit at a table and discover what designers from Manila or Bangkok or Jakarta had made. The space was meant to feel like the festivals Chow had organized, except permanent, rooted, a place people could return to.

Why Kuala Lumpur? Chow chose GMBB because the mall itself breathed creativity. Independent art galleries occupied its halls. Craft boutiques and indie bookstores lined the corridors. Workshops hummed in the background. He had also noticed something shifting in Malaysia's tabletop gaming scene over the past few years. More creators were emerging. More families were looking for games to play together. The country felt ready. "Hopefully, this is kind of a place they can call home also," Chow said, "where they can borrow the space and do some showcases of their products."

The collection already reflected the breadth of Asian game design. From Malaysia came Nasi Lemak The Game by Faculty of Fun and Durian Runtuh by Leong Qing Ye. The Philippines contributed Folded Wishes, a tile-sliding game involving paper-folding, and Watchlist, a cooperative card game by Ronald Villaver. Thailand's Name It! Dog Edition sat on shelves alongside Indonesia's Bambam Boom. South Korea sent Inconversible: Dawn Erasing, a cooperative deduction game. Japan offered OPEN, a climbing-and-shedding card game by Takashi Saito. From China came Tofu Shifu, a worker-placement and deck-building game where players ran a virtual tofu restaurant. These were not the games you found in most Western hobby shops. They represented a different sensibility, different mechanics, different stories.

Chow had a clear diagnosis of why these games needed a dedicated space. Western publishers had resources—marketing budgets, social media reach, distribution networks—that most Asian designers simply did not possess. The imbalance was familiar to anyone who watched film or music or any creative industry where Western content seemed to dominate global attention. "I want to give them a chance to showcase their games, without needing to fight with the Western media," Chow said. Play Play Asia was his answer: a place where Asian games could be the main event, not an afterthought.

The store would not be static. Chow planned regular events, workshops, playtesting sessions, and RPG nights. The space would stay alive, changing with the community it served. There was also talk of opening a second location in Bangkok, though Chow wanted to prove the concept worked first. For now, the Kuala Lumpur hub stood open Monday through Sunday, 11am to 8pm, on level one of GMBB. It was a beginning. Seven years in the making, and still just the beginning.