When Board Game is More Than Just a Game

Kaki Lima is one of the few local board games that are themed around the Penang element—the five-foot way. It uses board games as a medium and recreates the authentic portrayal of Penang with its game cards. By taking on the roles of the townies and completing tasks at places like ‘Kopitiam’ and ‘Rojak Shop’ in Kaki Lima, players can stroll through Penang, the historical city, and experience the everyday life of Penangites. In fact, Kaki Lima aims to preserve Penang’s cultural heritage and pass on Penangites’ neighborhood culture, thus integrating board games with deep cultural heritage and a sense of human touch.

On the day of the interview, we walked into the office of Arts-Ed, the production team of Kaki Lima. It was an old house located in Lorong Toh Aka. In the slightly dim office lit up only by a door and a window, Goh Choon Ean and Chen Yoke Pin had already put out Kaki Lima on the table and started telling us the purpose of Kaki Lima’s creation and the ingenuity behind the work.

The ladies, who are dedicated to advocate arts and cultural education, have always wanted to create visual arts regarding Penang’s five-foot ways

(Kaki Lima). Five-foot ways are a unique cultural heritage that can be seen everywhere in Singapore and Malaysia. They refer to the five-foot wide corridors in front of the shophouses built in the British colonial period. They are long and narrow, and they are part of the beauty of the historical architectures in Penang.

In the past, five-foot ways were created due to the hot and rainy climate in Southeast Asia. They then slowly evolved into a public space for people to meet and do business with each other. As the society and city continued to develop, these five-foot ways slowly became a space for people to put their personal belongings, and their role as a public space was no longer retained, in which their communal significance was gradually forgotten. Aside from the architecture, the various encaustic tiles on the fivefoot ways are equivalently remarkable as well. They connect with the city, carrying the memories of the past, isolating themselves from the modern world, and recounting the Nanyang historical stories.

Yoke Pin then asked a question, “Have you ever enjoyed walking on the five-foot ways?” To increase the public awareness in preserving and maintaining public spaces, they followed the memories of and impressions on five-foot ways and restored the sentiments and perceptions onto the design of Kaki Lima. Choon Ean is the designer of the board game, Kaki Lima. She wanted to connect fivefoot ways with arts and hoped to give players an immersive experience. So, she chose to merge photography and board games to present the authentic scenery of Penang.