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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · 8d

starting work on the card art for PREPOTENT, my long-delayed horse-breeding, -racing, and -betting game.

Card # 1, Cowardly: Fall back by the high die. A terrified horse leaps back away from a small mouse, tossing its rider. Flat color is used for the brown horse, white mouse (with red nose), and red-suited rider, while digital watercolor was used for the grass and sky.

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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · 11d

one thing that's interesting is that having anything on the back of the box is a relatively recent phenomenon - becoming commonplace just in the last 40 years or so. Many games prior to the 1980s had entirely blank box backs

definitely cases where I have been tempted myself...

🥧 suzanne 🥧 @425suzanne.bsky.social · 12d

A friend (who is a graphic designer) is just discovering the Horseless Carriage #BoardGame has a blank box bottom. And I'm just dying. Splotter has been Splottering since the 90s. They ain't gonna change now. 😂

screencap of convo about horseless carriage board game - showing that there's nothing on the box bottom.

Friend: terrible
me: rofl
friend: like... anything ont he bottom. cripes.
me: lol. is this your first splotter.

me: roads and boats, food chain magnate
friend: like friggin come on
me: they don't need to
friend: everyone needs to
me: they almost never sell these at stores. it's splotter.
friend: I don't care. shame
me: i'm dying. this is hilarious to me.

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · 20d

New game day! Belinda's Big Bonus is now available. Cookware not included.

Belinda's Big Bonus: A Belinda Blinked Game

Game Design: Amabel HollandIllustrations: Mouldy WoodHex Number: 91Duration: 60 minutesPlayers: 1-4MSRP: $50.00 The officially licensed Belinda Blinked board game adapts Rocky Flintstone's cult classi...

hollandspiele.com

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Brett Rolfe @brettrolfe.bsky.social · 21d

So excited to crack open my shiny new copy of 'Cardboard Ghosts' by @amabel.bsky.social. I'm keen to see how her ideas on metaphor, immersion and agency might translate to classroom play experiences... particuarly with her commentary on several of @colewehrle.bsky.social's historical games.

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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · 21d

LOOKING FOR AN INDIGENOUS COLLABORATOR 🧵

I'm planning a video essay on the Billy Jack films, particularly focusing on Trial of Billy Jack & its angry panorama of 1970s political activism - police brutality, penal reform, Viet Nam, Kent State - it kinda has everything & I wanna dig into that.

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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · 20d

hey, let's learn how the heck I made a Belinda Blinked game

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSNp...

Belinda's Big Bonus - a Belinda Blinked board game (overview)

YouTube video by Hollandspiele

www.youtube.com

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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · Oct 2

I think this is my favorite rules thread title

But Then She Came Back forum thread: Rules regarding use of body parts

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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · Sep 24

I need to take a break between stints at the Six Moons Wood Bits factory, so let's play a solo game of my new release cross4.

Game continues until I can't place valid words. +1 pt per word, -1 per blank, +1 for J, Q, W, X, Z appearing in 2 words. M/W and N/Z are the same face.

Turn 1!

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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · Sep 26

rulebook is now up on BGG for anyone who's been wondering, "how the hell did she make a Belinda Blinked game?"

boardgamegeek.com/filepage/308...

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Sep 18

New game day! cross4! Buy it or else. We have not determined what 'else' is yet, but you should buy it to be safe.

cross4

Game Design: Amabel HollandHex Number: 90Duration: 30 minutesPlayers: 1-4MSRP: $25.00 Amabel Holland's throwback to the classic crossword dice games of the twentieth century, cross4 is the first of th...

hollandspiele.com

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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · Sep 18

I haven't done a game design thread in a bit, and I just got the final proof cards for BELINDA'S BIG BONUS, so let's talk about the exclusives that come with the deluxe "Belinkers Edition". 🧵

Cards for Hazel the Pilot, Hank Skank, Butch the Sunburnt Kid, Professor Slintz, Frau Petra, and Numbered Goons.

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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · Sep 9

The Aurora Plastics Corporation, later Aurora Products, was known for their slot cars and licensed model kits. But the publication of a board game would change everything.

youtu.be/TH3QT05C25w

SKITTLE: the board game series that destroyed its publisher

YouTube video by Hollandspiele

youtu.be

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Buitengebieden @buitengebieden.bsky.social · Aug 21

Cooling off.. 😅

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Amabel Holland @amabel.bsky.social · Aug 19

now that we're clearing out the backlog, I've updated the schedule for the rest of the year, and am preparing for our first new release since May. Unfortunately Rayroads gets pushed to 2026 as a result but I promise it will be worth the wait.

Coming Soon
90. cross4 (Amabel Holland): A word dice game in which you use rolled letters to place words into one of six crossword grids. Each new word entered of course puts constrictions on the rest of the grid. There are four modes of play. The solo game ends and scores when you can't place a word. At two, grids get swapped when a wild is rolled - players try to lay traps for one another while knowing it might come back to bite them. Three or four players may compete in a friendly, heads-down mode, or try to be the last one standing as players are eliminated for their blunders.
91. Belinda's Big Bonus (Amabel Holland): The officially licensed Belinda Blinked board game adapts Rocky Flintstone's cult classic espionage/erotica/business-and-leadership-advice novels. Play as the newest employees of Steele's Pots and Pans! Work with Belinda, Bella, and all your favorite characters, jetting around the world to land big business deals. Will you be part of a new Glee Team? Or will you betray your friends for a payday from the Wickedish Herr Wolfgang Bisch?
92. Persuasion (Xoe Allred): A playful but acerbic game of romance and deception set in the Regency era. Up to eight players can attempt to find the marriage that will make them the happiest. Letters are sent, each revealing a trait that others might find desirable - or traits they want to avoid. This also gives them leverage over you - access to the special abilities on some of your cards. Every revelation exposes vulnerability that might be used against you. Will you make a mutually-beneficial match, catfish some unfortunate soul into a marriage that will make them miserable, or make a play for independence, defining your own happiness outside of social norms?

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Aug 21

US

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Cardboard Time 🔜 PAX Unplugged @cardboardtime.bsky.social · Aug 15

Doubt is our Product changed the way I think about games forever. Nicaea is wild to bring out with people who have never played a Hollandspiele, and I'm sure the rest are awesome too. If you haven't tried one yet, now's a great time to jump in.

Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Aug 15

Nine years of Hollandspiele! Thank you for supporting us.

We're having a flash sale now through Sunday, offering a $9 discount on five of Amabel's games.

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Etrigan wishes Link were back @etrigan.bsky.social · Aug 15

Nicaea is hilarious even if you never play it (guilty).

Endurance is an amazing historical retelling.

Doubt Is Our Product is not just a great commentary on the subject, but a really solid super-asymmetric.

Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Aug 15

Nine years of Hollandspiele! Thank you for supporting us.

We're having a flash sale now through Sunday, offering a $9 discount on five of Amabel's games.

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Aug 15

Nine years of Hollandspiele! Thank you for supporting us.

We're having a flash sale now through Sunday, offering a $9 discount on five of Amabel's games.

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

Hollandspiele is at this moment working on the backlog of orders for Amabel's City of Six Moons. Once we're caught up, we'll have a better idea of the exact release date for BELINDA'S BIG BONUS. But we expect it to be in September or October.

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

Until then, feel free to pester @amabel.bsky.social with any questions. She's been wanting to talk about this for *months* and is eager to blab. :-)

She's also available for interviews. Jus' sayin'.

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

Hollandspiele is at this moment working on the backlog of orders for Amabel's City of Six Moons. Once we're caught up, we'll have a better idea of the exact release date for BELINDA'S BIG BONUS. But we expect it to be in September or October.

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

CONFESSIONS OF A BELINKER 4 / 4

I absolutely adore this convoluted soap opera stuff, and so it’s no surprise it’s when that kicks into high gear - after the books pivot from near-plotless picaresque to espionage spoof - that I really fell in love with the series.
Though the first three books contain some of my favorite characters and moments - Jim’s transplant, Giselle’s hen-do, the utterly grim incompetence of Ken Dewsbury’s cellar turned bachelor pad - it’s the spy stuff I look forward to the most whenever I revisit the books.
I’ve done so a few times in the last five years. Though my life is filled with joy, it is not, strictly speaking, the best moment in world history to be a trans lesbian living in America. And so Belinda, Bella, and all their friends have continued to be a comfort.
These people and the strange, silly world they inhabit have become quite dear to me.
And so imagine my surprise and my delight when I got an email from Rocky Flintstone asking if I wanted to do a Belinda Blinked board game. I’ve never done a licensed game before, and had assumed that would remain the case. I’m not the kind of designer and Hollandspiele isn’t the kind of company where that kind of thing is usually feasible. Like, I love Godzilla but no one’s gonna let me within a hundred feet of designing or publishing (ha!) a Godzilla game.
But, Belinda Blinked isn’t necessarily the kind of property that the people who make Godzilla board games would want to touch. And so, in a way, I’m sort of the perfect fit to make a jet-setting deal-making calendar-managing game based on this property.
People expecting a salacious or titillating game from Belinda’s Big Bonus are going to be disappointed, but, in a way, people expecting salacious or titillating books from Belinda Blinked would be, too. While they’re stuffed to the lids with sex, they’re not really “dirty” books. I think that’s because Rocky doesn’t write the sex as dirty or shameful. It’s always treated as something joyful and exuberant.
And I wanted to make …

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

CONFESSIONS OF A BELINKER 3 / 4

And none of these characters are particularly nuanced or complex, but boy, there sure a lot of them. In that sense, the books remind me of nineteenth century literature. Which isn’t to say that these books give me the same kinds or depths of pleasure as Austen or Trollope. Only that we have a large cast of characters, often defined by one or two traits or ambitions, tied together in a complex web of professional, romantic, and familial relationships.

(Here there is a diagram showing a small sampling of important character relationships.)

Belinda is betrayed by her best friend, Giselle, who works for Bisch to pay for the medical treatment of her own mother’s “weird illness that’s ill-defined and hard to say”. Which is, again, a line that’s funny on purpose.

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

CONFESSIONS OF A BELINKER 2 / 4

Rocky’s prose is often joyfully inappropriate and quite playful. There’s a moment in the first chapter of Belinda Blinked 4 where Belinda struggles to find a parking spot at Giselle’s wedding:
Belinda parked her jaguar in the last available space in the very large Church carpark. “Good God,” she thought, and then remembered she was on hallowed ground, “Sorry God, but I didn’t really think so many people would be here.” God nodded, even he was surprised if truth be told.
“God nodded” slays me every single time. It’s a perfect joke. And it’s also a nice character beat for Belinda to be surprised people would want to attend Giselle’s wedding. One of my favorite running gags is that Belinda is loyal, kind, and optimistic to your face, but often quite catty when there’s no one around.
In the ad copy for Belinda Blinked 6, Rocky refers to himself as the “author who put the ‘rot’ in Erotica” and trumpets the many “totally forgettable characters” – a degree of cheeky self-awareness that runs throughout the books. But I actually think his characters are, to borrow one of his phrases, “instantly rememorable.”
Herr Bisch is a cartoon supervillain, whose rapidly deteriorating body is as much of a gross-out gag as Jim Sterling’s penis transplant. (Like “God nodded”, Bisch’s “stinky gentleman woof” ends me every time.)
Des Martin is a sad sack par excellence, too hapless and repulsive to be truly pitied.
And I love Bella Ridley with all my heart. Belinda uses sex to get what she wants, but what Bella wants is sex. She is a creature of pure and unashamed appetites – always eager to eat or to fuck or to drink, and to do all these things in great quantities. Only Bella would wake from a coma because people nearby were having sex without her.

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

Included in the game's rulebook is "Confessions of a Belinker", Amabel's personal account of why she loves these books.

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CONFESSIONS OF A BELINKER. Like many people, I first came to Rocky Flintstone’s work through the podcast “My Dad Wrote a Porno”. I stumbled across it in 2020. It was an especially vulnerable time in my life.
In addition to the pandemic, I had finally accepted myself as a queer trans woman. Or, to be more precise, I knew I was queer and trans, but didn’t know if I was going to do anything about it. The idea of casting off my old life for an uncertain and dangerous future felt impossible and absurd. The only thing more terrifying than chasing what I really wanted was recognizing how easy it would be to remain within the tight confines of my slow, dead life.
Belinda’s misadventures provided distraction and comfort. When I didn’t want to think about everything, when I didn’t want to feel any of it, I binged the show, one episode after another. People so often look down on “escapism”, so often diminish it, but I needed escape. In order to move forward, I needed time away from the constant shocks of pain and terror. Before I reached the end of the fifth series, I had made my decision.
When I tell the story of how I became Amabel, I don’t usually mention the dozens of hours I spent with Belinda. It’s not because I’m embarrassed of it being smut. I’m openly quite promiscuous, and have centered my life post-transition around the pursuit of pleasure without shame or apology. In a way, Belinda and Bella are girls after my own heart. Role models, even. I have myself written smut, and talked publicly about how it helped me find community. So what gives?
What gives is I find it difficult to communicate the nature and genuineness of my affection for these books. Because I’m not enjoying it “ironically”. It’s not “so bad it’s good”.
There are certainly ways in which one could argue it is “bad”. The sex scenes aren’t really arousing (and in some cases, aren’t anatomically feasible). The punctuation and spelling are, uh, idiosyncratic. But my enjoyment isn’t rooted in laughing at the…

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