Yellow Places - rules

The streets of Hong Kong are brimming with exceptional restaurants, showcasing the city's rich culinary heritage. But a major political crisis has shaken the archipelago, dividing society into two polarized camps. Among the city's businesses, some are quietly committed to support the pro-democracy camp (the yellow ones). Will you be able to share your precious locations without risking exposing them to the authorities?

Idea of the game

Yellow Places is a cooperative game in which players are trying to guess the tiles they have in their hands, by cleverly positioning their pieces on the board. The board represents a district of Hong Kong with 27 businesses. Players win the game together if they manage to guess all their tiles and get everyone to guess them.

Setting up

Place the board in the center of the table.
Each player chooses a color and places the corresponding pieces in front of them: 1 pawn and 3 disks.
Place all the tiles face-down, then shuffle them.

Depending on the number of players, each player draws the corresponding number of tiles (see table below). Players are not allowed to communicate about the tiles they have in hand. Then reveal tiles at random according to the number of players (see table below).

Players	2	3	4
Revealed tiles	9	6	3
Tiles in hand	5	4	3

For each tile revealed, place a neutral-colored cube on the corresponding business on the board. The number on each tile indicates the cell in which the business is situated, delimited by white dotted lines, while the symbol indicates the type of businesses: tea house, restaurant or bakery.

Game sequence

The game is divided into three rounds, each of which is divided into two phases: the disc phase and the pawn phase, and ends with a closing phase.

The disc phase

In this phase, players try to give clues as to where the tiles in their hand are located in the board. In any order they wish, players place a disc in one of 3 ways:

In front of a horizontal street, such as the one containing the numbers 4, 5 and 6.
In front of a vertical street, such as the one containing the numbers 3, 6 and 9.
In front of one of the colored circles, such as the green circle with the "tea house" symbol

After placing the disc, players place yellow cubes corresponding to the number of tiles in their hand on the designated street, or whose color corresponds to the designated symbol. Players may place their disc without placing a cube to indicate that they have no corresponding tile.

Example 1: the green player has two tiles with the number 2, and one tile with the number 5. He therefore places a disc of his color in front of the second vertical street, and places three yellow cubes to indicate that three of his tiles are on this street.

Example 2 : the pink player has three tiles in the second horizontal street. He places a disc of his color in front of this street and places three yellow cubes to indicate that two of his tiles are on this street.

Example 3 : Finally, the blue player has no tiles with the tearoom symbol. He therefore places a disc of his color in front of the disc with the corresponding symbol, and does not place any yellow cubes to indicate that none of his tiles designate a tearoom.

The pawn phase

In any order they wish, players can now place their pawn in one of the cells on the board and designate a sign to check whether it is in a player's hand. All players must then check to see if the businesses corresponds to one of their tiles.

If this is the case, the player owning the tile reveals it, then places a yellow cube on the corresponding businesses on the board. The same player then removes yellow cubes from his discs so that they no longer indicate the revealed businesses.
If no player owns the requested tile, a neutral-colored cube is placed on the corresponding businesses on the board.

Players are not allowed to use their pawn to designate a tile of their own.

The round ends when all players have placed their pawns, at which point they retrieve them and place them back in front of them.

Exemple 1 : Example 1: The green player places his pawn in the 8 cell and designates the restaurant. No player has the corresponding tile, so they place a neutral-colored cube on the designated business.

Exemple 2 : The pink player places his pawn in the 5 cell and designates the tea house. The green player has the corresponding tile, so he announces it and reveals it. A yellow cube is then placed on the designated business, and a yellow cube is removed from the green disc in front of the corresponding street.

Exemple 2 : The blue pawn is not yet on the board, indicating that the green player has yet to play.

Closing phase

After completing the third round, players must now find the remaining tiles in other players' hands by deduction. In any order they wish, each player can point to a business on the board and announce which player's hand the corresponding tile should be in.

If the designated player does indeed have the corresponding tile, he then reveals it, places a yellow counter on the designated business and updates the information on his discs (as in the pawn stage).
If the designated player does not have the corresponding tile, the players lose the game together.

If the players manage to uncover all of each other's tiles, they all share victory.

Example 1 : The players have just completed the third round, and now need to find the remaining tiles. Would you be able to find the pink player's and the blue player's tiles from the information available on the board ?

Designer's note

This project began when the artist Joanna Wong, who is from Hong Kong, asked me to imagine a game to help her talk about pro-democracy resistance on the archipelago. This was followed by several meetings in which memories and stories from relatives were shared with me, including the one about restaurants clandestinely supporting the movement.

Yellow Places was initially conceived to be played during an exhibition. For this reason, I opted for a cooperative game where all players embody activists, favoring simple rules with emerging implications. The solution that appeared to me was to pace the game with this alternation between the stage of discs and that of pawns, the former giving players clear objectives while the latter offers more openness and allows for different levels of interpretation. Finally, the laser-cutting of the tiles in a fablab allowed me to give the game a sculptural presence, giving it the appearance of a traditional game while allowing the public to play hands-free during the exhibition.

While authoritarianism and constraints on freedom weigh heavily on my mind, I would not have been able to address this topic in the form of a game without the solicitation and assistance of Joanna, whom I warmly thank.

This game was designed and illustrated by Colin Thil

Thanks to the testers : Ludyvine Bonhomme, Sabrina Chamorro, Alexandre Doussot, Julien Rodriguez, Gabriel Thil, Joanna Wong.