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Brett Rolfe @brettrolfe.bsky.social · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 19h

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 · 14d

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 · 22d

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 · 19d

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 · 27d

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 · 27d

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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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

(This is a lightish strategy game about Business and Leadership, and successfully managing one's calendar. Any visits to the Leather Room or the Maze, or any indulgence in a cherished Kilkenny custom, are left up to your imagination.)

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

In Belinda's Big Bonus, 2-4 players join Steele's sales team. 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 betray your friends for a payday from the Wickedish Herr Wolfgang Bisch?

A section of the game map, depicting several nodes (Edinburgh, London, Epsom, Amsterdam, East Berlin) connected by dotted lines. Four of the nodes have special events associated with them – a Factory Tour, the Steele’s Tombola, a Fancy Dinner Party, and a Garden Party. Also visible is a hand of four cards, portraying the characters Bella Ridley, Toffee Apple Chew, Sam the Youngish Manager, and Jail Man.

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Hollandspiele @hollandspiele.bsky.social · Jul 28

The game is designed by @amabel.bsky.social , a Belinker herself! A regular-ish edition will be offered via Hollandspiele's website & through its UK partner, while a special expanded Belinkers Edition will be sold exclusively via Rocky's Pavilion (the author’s etsy store).

Back of the box. A picture of Rocky is accompanied by PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF ROCKY FLINTSTONE: “the man who puts the ‘rot’ in ‘erotica’...”(Chortle Magazine), “It is truly a masterpiece.” (Dan Levy), “Bloody Genius” (Dame Emma Thompson). A photo of Amabel is accompnaied by PRAISE FOR THE GAMES OF AMABEL HOLLAND: “a designer who stretches and strains the medium to its absolute boundaries” (Dan Thurot), “Widely considered one of today’s most innovative game designers” (The New Yorker). Back cover copy informs us that: Rocky Flintstone’s “Belinda Blinked” novels have been enjoyed by millions around the globe. These cult classics defy genre, combining espionage thriller, character comedy, unusual pornography, and, of course, business & leadership advice to tell the story of Belinda Blumenthal, the International Sales Director of cookware company Steele’s Pots and Pans. Among the “Belinkers” who love these books is Amabel Holland, the enfant terrible bad girl of board games. (No, I can’t believe I wrote that sentence about myself either!)
In Belinda’s Big Bonus, you and your pals take on the role of new Steele’s employees, creatively working together to score Bigger and Bigger Business Deals. Along the way you’ll connect with fan-favorite characters like Bella Ridley, James Spooner, the Duchess of Epsom, and even Toffee Apple Chew. But make sure you manage your calendar and itinerary – you don’t want to miss special events like the Steele’s Tombola or the Pots-and-Pan-Pacific Cooking Convention. Will you come out on top of the other players, and win that Big Bonus? Or will you betray this new Glee Team for a payday from the wickedish Herr Wolfgang Bisch?
A light, accessible business strategy game, Belinda’s Big Bonus is “perfecto” for fans of Rocky Flintstone, fans of Amabel Holland, people who are both, and, what the heck, let’s go for broke, for people who have never heard of either. Buy it! It’s neat!

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