Hi! I’m Eugene, and I’m starting a brand new board games company, based in Singapore! This is my origin story:
2006. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Yo, Duel Masters. They were all the rage. All my friends were playing them. I wanted to join the fun! So I went to my parents, "please buy me some games 🥹", to which they were like "nooooooo"
So I told myself "If you can't join them, beat them."
And I created my own card game, called Creature Battle.
As you can see, it was heavily heavily inspired by the other popular card games. Think of it as pokemon-style creatures with duel masters gameplay.
I drew the art by hand, scanned it with the home printer, built the cards on Powerpoint, cut them by hand, and sold them. I even brought in my sister Amanda, and two of my classmates, as my first employees.
It sounds great, but in reality, we made a whopping $12 over 1 year.
Life-changing money, clearly. Rats to Riches!
If i had put that into Bitcoin, i could buy a landed house now LOL.
That was my first experience with game design, and entrepreneurship.
But life came along, PSLE, DotA, sports, teenage stuff, and this became a forgotten, distant memory.
Until.. 10 years later. 2017. First year at the University of Manchester.
I joined this volunteering society, where we taught finance to secondary school kids.
But it was difficult finding volunteers, especially during exams and submissions time. At its worst time, it was literally just me and another guy, and we had 14 classes of students to teach.
So I thought: ‘how about we make something that would teach finance without us being there?’
And since we were teaching kids, and already doing little mini-games like role-playing “you are the banker, while you want to withdraw money, etc.” I thought: “why not a game?”
And that seed of an idea led to what would eventually become Rats to Riches!
Of course, the journey was tough. Constant rejection, failure after failure, day after day.
I took THIS (top middle) prototype, texted a bunch of my friends, i said ‘hey guys i made this new game, let’s play it!’
*What do you guys think happened?
It was HORRIBLE! I remember that first game. First playtest. We were at the Engineering School student lounge. The game took 4 HOURS. It was not fun, it was just pain. Torture. One guy had earned so much money in the game, that we ran out of stuff to represent how much he had. Meanwhile, another guy was just flat out broke. Bankrupt. No assets, no investments, no cap. *gotta keep up with the times, guys
That dude, an hour into the game, just stormed off. Just like ‘screw this, im out’
I’m happy to report that we are still friends till today, so all is well.
But where did I go from here?
Back to the library, print, cut, game.
find a new group of friends!
and THEY also tell me that it sucks!
So I did it again and again and again, until…
it only ~kinda sucks. Doesn’t totally suck.
Now this was around version no.8 or 9, and of course now looking back, it kinda sucks, 2017 Eugene thought that it was the BEST game in the world.
So I went back to the leaders of the volunteering society, “we got this game, we can deal with the problem of finding volunteers!”
They said “nope.”
We are a volunteering society. If we take this game, we will cease to exist.
To be honest, this rejection hit me quite bad. I was deflated and lost. The whole time i was playtesting the game, it was working towards the goal of teaching finance to solve the volunteers problem. And after that rejection, it just shattered for me.
But after 1-2 months, I picked myself back up, I was like “ive come this far, there’s some momentum here, let’s just lean into it and see where it goes.”
that led to plenty more playtests at house parties, game nights..
In total, I made over 70 versions, across more than 150 playtest sessions.
And there was an important pivot along the way. Before the rejection by SPOT Finance, the game was going to be an educational tool. But after that, I said that I would just focus on making a solid product. A consistently fun experience. The educational bits would be a bonus. You can see it in the game if you look hard enough, but don’t expect to play the game and pass your CFA level 1 after.
So this was my vision:
A fun, fast, feisty Monopoly.
I pitched Rats to Riches at the university’s startup accelerator program, and thankfully got in!
That gave me some funding, and connected me to like-minded entrepreneurs and mentors. Its so valuable to bounce ideas off those guys, even just working alongside them in the same co-working space.
A major highlight from that accelerator program was a micro-influencer campaign, using the BETA sets. It was a huge success! And the buzz that the campaign generated led to..
3 publishers approaching me to license Rats to Riches. I ended up going with 1 of them, Accentuate.
They helped me turn this into THIS.
After that, life came along. I had to serve my 6-year scholarship bond with the Singapore Navy, so once again, this became a distant memory.
Nearly 20 years since I made my first game, I’ve finally listened to the call of the Universe~ and I’m going to do it properly this time, with my new company, Genie Games. Stay tuned!
Post-script:
People ask me, why do you do this? why make games? And to me, this quote hits it spot on.
“The noblest art is that of making others happy.”
When I see players smiling, laughing, strategizing, because of something I built, that is a beautiful feeling. Bringing people together, making memories, having fun. That is guiding light. That is my Why.