by Darryl T.

Hey there, my name is Darryl Tan, and I want to share a little about my first published game: Leaping Lions, which is an 18-card drafting game for two players about putting on the best lion dance performance — not just any lion dance, mind you, but specifically a high-pole lion dance performance.

Setting the Stage

Leaping Lions began life as an entry for a holiday-themed design contest run by Button Shy in late 2023. As I live in Malaysia, a country known for its multicultural heritage, this particular contest theme was hard to ignore. With no shortage of holiday traditions to draw inspiration from, a few Malaysian designers sat down to bounce ideas around and playtest each other's designs.

Lion dancing was a subject I wanted to explore for my entry from the start. One of my core childhood memories of Chinese New Year celebrations was roaming around the neighborhoods in my dad's hometown of Melaka on the lookout for lion dances. We'd listen for the telltale banging of drums, which signaled a performance was taking place nearby.

With the theme in mind, I had a guiding rule for the design: The game should offer enough interesting decisions without feeling restricted by the 18-cards-only requirement. Striking that balance between theme, complexity, and component limitation would be a recurring consideration throughout the design process.

My initial idea was to have players assemble a parade. This was a take-and-make design in which each player would begin with a lion and draft performers for a parade line. Each performer would have its own scoring objective, and a few performers would cause the lion to advance through the parade.

The concept of a lion moving through a parade line was inspired by a design concept I connect most strongly with Russian Railroads and its younger sibling First Class. In both of these games, players balance between laying tracks and moving a piece along said tracks.

The initial parade idea never made it past the solo playtest stage because the decisions felt rather flat. For inspiration, I took another look at the real-life performance.

Enter the High-Pole Lion Dance

A few traditional lion dance performances have the dancers jump on top of stools or upturned flowerpots. Sometime in the late 1980s, a Malaysian lion dance master had a spark of inspiration: What if the dancers jumped onto much, much higher platforms?

As a result, the high-pole lion dance performance was born. This is an acrobatic variation of the performance in which lion dancers jump from pole to pole that range anywhere between 1 to 2.5 meters in height. This is no mean feat as the two dancers must synchronize their jumps, with the dancer in front constantly holding up a papier-mâché lion head.


Over the next two decades, lion dance troupes in Malaysia would develop and perfect the high-pole lion dance. The performance quickly spread in popularity across the region. International competitions were also established, which is likely the only time you'd get to see this performance outside of the New Year celebrations.

The Iteration Process

The poles provided the extra layer my design needed. Rather than draft performers for a parade, players would draft platforms that form the stage for their lion. This necessitated switching to a fixed scoring system. Points were now awarded for arranging platforms in ascending height and moving the lion across the stage. Platforms also had icons on them for a set-collection aspect.

This scoring system proved to be a solid foundation to work on. Since the order of platforms appearing in the draft varied, this also increased the game's replay value. I developed a few iterations based on this scoring system to be tested publicly.

The first major iteration split the game into two phases: a rehearsal phase and the actual performance. Each platform card had two different effects on them, and the effect that would be triggered depended on whether the card was drafted. In the end, it felt like this iteration was too clunky and needed more than just 18 cards to work properly.

The first few iterations were handwritten scrawls on scraps of paper
The second major iteration had double-sided platform cards, with each platform card featuring a lion with a unique scoring condition on its back. Players received a random lion at the start of the game, giving them a personal scoring goal. This iteration fell short because there weren't enough game elements to create 18 distinct scoring goals.


Faced with another roadblock, I leaned in on the real-life performance again. The poles are usually arranged in a linear format on the stage, sometimes as a single pole and other times as two poles side-by-side. I realized this could solve the issue of not having enough game elements to manipulate.

I stuck with the concept of double-sided platform cards, but this time the platforms had a basic side and an upgraded side. The upgraded side would have extra icons or extra poles. (Extra poles are valuable because players score for the number of poles found in a set of platforms in ascending order.)

This iteration struck the balance of complexity I was aiming for. Effects on the cards allowed players to move platforms, advance the lion, or upgrade existing platforms.


The final piece of the puzzle was to figure out how players drafted these platforms. I eventually settled on an open draft from a gallery, with the stars on the rightmost platform on a player's stage determining which columns in the gallery they may draft a card from.

The Final Stretch

From there on, it was a matter of fine-tuning the card effects. Several complex and situational effects were streamlined over playtests, and when possible I tied them in with the icons found on the cards.

Speaking of icons, using drums, gongs, and cymbals as part of the icons was a natural fit. These are the staple instruments of any lion dance performance, so it made sense to reward players for collecting complete sets of these icons.


The fan icons represent the "dai tou fat", or the big head Buddha performer. The big head Buddha wears a distinctive papier-mâché head and (of course) carries a fan. The performer is a jack-of-all-trades, most often acting as a comedic foil for the lion. To reflect the performer's supportive role, a few cards rely on fans to power up their effects. (You can spot the big head Buddha on the cover of the Prosperity expansion.)

Up until the very end, firecracker icons scored points directly but at the expense of causing a negative effect, like causing the lion to retreat. It took me several playtest sessions to realize that players don't like to be penalized for drafting a card in a game that lasts only eight turns. I ended up reworking those negative effects at the last minute.

Showtime!

The whole design process took about six weeks. The tight turnaround time was manageable because the 18-card format is a low barrier to entry; developing prototypes and assembling them takes a fraction of the time needed for most other prototypes. Plus, with a test game taking less than fifteen minutes, it was easy to get a feel for whether the design changes were working.

Leaping Lions ended up winning the contest and was signed by Button Shy shortly afterward. A few changes were made once in development. The biggest change was to merge the two halves of the game into one continuous draft. The number of cards in the open gallery was also reduced to avoid overwhelming players with text to read.

Along the way, the Button Shy team took care to ensure that the game's graphics were respectful of the culture it was based on. The game received vibrant artwork from Nguyen Ngoc Anh Tram, and Mike Mullins also designed a solo expansion — Aspirations — for the game. In keeping with the theme, the game's wallet is red with gold lettering, making it resemble the "hong bao" or red packets given out during New Year.

A Final Word on the Theme

While I kept referring to the actual lion dance performance for design inspiration, the game is obviously not an accurate recreation of the performance. In real life, the stage must be completely constructed before the lion even attempts to jump on it. A few playtesters found it weird that platforms could move around even as the lion was already on the stage, but I just had to concede it was boardgame logic in action.

However, in 2025, one of Malaysia's top lion dance troupes choreographed a viral performance in which the poles on the stage collapse mid-performance – on purpose, of course. This forces the lion dancers to make a gravity-defying, synchronized horizontal jump of over three meters. Perhaps pole swapping as part of the routine isn't too far off after all...

Leaping Lions is available for purchase on Button Shy's website.