Hawker Wars — The Boardgame

Hawker centres are the most efficient food businesses in the world. A stall does 400 plates a day, runs on 4 staff, makes a profit on a S$4 noodle. And every game about running a small business is set in a McDonald's or a generic medieval tavern. Hawker Wars is the boardgame about the system most Singaporeans have grown up watching but never seen modelled.

What is Hawker Wars?

A 2–4 player strategy boardgame about running a competing hawker stall in 1990s Singapore. 60 minutes per game. Each player takes a stall — char kway teow, kueh, kopi, satay — and over 8 rounds (representing one financial quarter) you buy ingredients, manage queues, hire and fire help, navigate inspection days, deal with weather, and watch your competitors do the same. Highest profit at quarter-end wins.

The setting is deliberately 1990s. Tray-return wasn't a thing yet. NEA inspections were less digitised. The cashless transition hadn't started. Setting the game then means the mechanics stay tight — fewer modern variables, more focus on the actual operational tradeoffs of running a stall.

Why we're making it now

Boardgame audiences worldwide are hungry for region-specific games. Tokaido (Japan), Caverna (medieval Europe), Brass: Lancashire (industrial UK) — strategy games rooted in a specific place outsell generic ones consistently. Singapore has not had a serious original-design strategy game with this kind of cultural specificity. There's a hole in the market and a long-term demand from the SG diaspora for "things from home that aren't food".

I've also wanted to make this for four years and only now have the bandwidth. I'd rather ship it now (with backer co-design on the stretch tile) than hold it for a perfect time that doesn't come.

What's in the box

• 1 modular game board (4 stall layouts that snap together; representing a 1990s hawker centre)
• 4 stall tiles (char kway teow / kueh / kopi / satay) with custom illustrated stall fronts
• 120 ingredient cards (chillies, eggs, kueh moulds, ice, condensed milk, etc.) — the supply chain is the backbone of the game
• 40 customer-queue tokens with personality (the auntie who won't tip, the office-worker rush, the food blogger)
• 30 event cards (NEA inspection day, Pasar Malam weekend, durian season, monsoon downpour, gas-cylinder shortage)
• 1 illustrated rulebook + scoring pad (English; Mandarin/Malay/Tamil summary booklets unlock at S$110k stretch)

How the game actually plays

Each round is a quarter-day (morning prep / lunch rush / afternoon / evening). On your turn you choose one action: buy ingredients (from a shared market with rotating prices), serve a customer queue (resolves 3 customers at once), hire help (faster service, but costs daily wage), or pull an event card. The tension is that you cannot do everything in 60 minutes of play, and the choices interlock — buying chillies cheap in round 2 only matters if you have queue capacity in round 5.

The competitive layer is real but indirect. You don't directly attack other stalls, but the ingredient market is shared (if I buy out chillies, you pay double next round) and customer queues redirect (a queue I can't serve walks two stalls down). It's "polite competition" — the Singapore way — but it bites.

The loop we've focused on is the hardest part of running a hawker stall: the choice between margin and volume. Cheap ingredients = thinner queues but bigger margin. Premium ingredients = longer queues, lower margin per plate, more risk on inspection day. You'll lose three games before this clicks; that's the design.

Where the money goes

Goal: S$60,000. Itemised:

• S$22,000 — manufacturing 1,500 units at OEM (Vietnam — Hanoi-based boardgame OEM, S$14.70/unit at this volume)
• S$8,500 — illustration commission (4 stall fronts, 30 event cards, 40 queue tokens — by SG illustrator; brief locked, contract pending)
• S$3,500 — game design fee (lead designer + 2 paid playtest cycles with Singapore boardgame community)
• S$5,500 — packaging design + custom box + insert tray
• S$8,000 — sea freight from Hai Phong to Singapore (1,500-unit container, customs, last-mile)
• S$5,000 — fulfillment (pick-pack from Tampines + DHL/SingPost domestic + intl postage subsidy)
• S$4,500 — co-designed stall tile production (the 30 backer-designed stall tiles get separately printed at premium short-run cost ~S$150 each, included in retail edition)
• S$3,000 — getthatbread.sg platform fee (5%)

Total: S$60,000. Stretch goals fund the expansions and lore booklet — they sit on top, not inside, the base budget.

Production timeline

Days 0–75 (after campaign close): Design lock + final playtest cycle. Two paid playtest weekends with serious SG boardgame players (Settlers SG community + Tabletop Singapore meetup). Adjust card balance based on data. This is the timeline's most-likely-to-slip phase — boardgame balance work is genuinely hard.

Days 75–150: Manufacturer-ready files to Hanoi OEM. First proof produced and shipped to me in Singapore for sign-off. If proof fails, we iterate (1–2 week delay). If it passes, full 1,500-unit run starts.

Days 150–210: Full production + sea freight + customs. Boardgames at this volume travel by sea — air freight would double per-unit cost. Sea freight Hanoi → Singapore is roughly 14 days plus customs. Allow 3 weeks of slack here for Lunar New Year shutdowns.

Days 210+: Pick-pack + ship. Domestic SG backers first, intl backers across the next 4–6 weeks.

About the team

Daryl Wui — Singaporean, ex-HubSpot Asia-Pacific, currently building getthatbread.sg (this platform). I am NOT the lead game designer — I'm the producer, budget-holder, and SG-side fulfillment lead. The design work is being done by a paid SG-based boardgame designer (locked, name held back at their request until campaign close because they're publicly tied to a different project right now). Illustrations are commissioned from a Singapore illustrator we've test-briefed; full reveal at design lock.

Risks and challenges

• Game-design risk: Boardgames live or die in playtest. We've done 6 internal playtest sessions and the loop holds, but the two paid playtest weekends (with serious players) might surface a balance flaw that needs a redesign of one or two systems. I've budgeted 2 weeks of buffer; if it needs more, I'll communicate openly and shift dates.
• 7-month timeline: Boardgames notoriously delay. Common causes: design redo, manufacturer proof rejection, container shipping delays. I've front-loaded 3 weeks of slack across the timeline; expect occasional 1–2 week slippage to be communicated, not hidden.
• Hanoi OEM around Lunar New Year: The Vietnamese factory shuts for ~3 weeks at Tet. Built into the timeline.
• Custom Stall Tile coordination (30 backers): Each of the 30 Custom Stall Tile backers submits a concept (their fictional hawker stall — name, dish, illustration brief). Coordinating 30 illustration approvals adds genuine overhead. We'll batch-process via a shared Notion within 2 weeks of campaign close.
• Hawker centre naming: Real SG hawker centre names won't appear (no licensing risk). The setting is "a hawker centre in 1990s Singapore", deliberately fictional in specifics.

Will this ship overseas?

Yes — same intl tier coverage as our other campaigns: Australia, NZ, UK, US, Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, most of Western Europe. The base game weighs about 1.6kg packed, so intl postage is reasonable.

Can I get it as a gift?

The Two-Pack (S$150) is designed for gifting — split shipping addresses at fulfillment time. The Founder's Edition (signed by designer) is the natural single-gift tier.

What if you don't hit the goal?

Get That Bread is all-or-nothing. If we don't hit S$60,000, no card is captured and any PayNow pledges refund automatically. I lose the design + illustration deposits (~S$4k); you lose nothing.

How many players and how long?

2–4 players. 60 minutes for a learning game (longer for first play with a heavy rulebook reader). 45 minutes once people know it. Designed to land in the same complexity range as Splendor + light Carcassonne — accessible enough for non-gamers but with enough depth for serious boardgame nights.