Amabel Holland
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amabel.bsky.social
Amabel Holland
@amabel.bsky.social
5K followers 680 following 5.8K posts
She/her. "Widely considered one of today’s most innovative game designers." - The New Yorker

Board games: https://hollandspiele.com
video essays: youtube.com/@hollandspiele
Patreon: patreon.com/amabelholland
sidekicking: youtube.com/@SBPlaysGames
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amabel.bsky.social
sale starts tomorrow at twelve a.m. eastern
Info for "Our Tenth Annual Hollandays Sale: November 14 - November 23, 2025" The Basics: $5 off all boxed games / 10% off $100+ orders / Buy 2 games, get Hartfield (this year's freebie card game!) New Game: Persuasion. Xoe Allred's Game of Deduction & Catfishing in the Regency Era Goodbye...: Westphalia & Ginormopod going out of print; limited number of copies available Reminders: We don't ship to the UK or Europe. You can buy our games through Second Chance Games in the UK. / Games are printed on demand. It may take up to a month or more for your order to ship due to high volumes during our sale. / We cannot adjust your order after the fact.
November 13, 2025 at 3:20 PM
amabel.bsky.social
more people should interview me; I am funny, charming, and informative
Holland added, “I had been aware of the form for a while. The thing about hanging out with trans girls is they’re always trying to show you video essays. I dodged it for a bit but then I started dating my partner, Samhain, and she showed me some work I really resonated with. “And that prompted my interest in the form as it currently exists – certainly you could argue things like F For Fake (Orson Welles) or Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (Mark Rappaport) are a kind of early video essay, films I have always been fascinated by.”
November 13, 2025 at 1:42 PM
amabel.bsky.social
And Zoidberg (non-derogatory)
Dr. Zoidberg
November 11, 2025 at 12:12 AM
amabel.bsky.social
But also
Stitch
November 11, 2025 at 12:12 AM
amabel.bsky.social
I say this with love
Fozzie Bear
November 11, 2025 at 12:12 AM
amabel.bsky.social
preparing my new lawsuit against Asmodee for their game that uses my unique mechanism "put the board in the center of the table"
Ravensburger’s claim describes Upper Deck’s litigation tactics as “extremely costly”, with the trading card company having alleged copyright infringement on 43 separate game elements which included mechanisms such as “taking alternating turns”.
November 10, 2025 at 3:47 PM
amabel.bsky.social
Help a girl out -- give me board game covers that are a worse fit for their game than this cover for a bog-standard historical hex-and-counter game

not looking for "bad art" which is subjective. but art that is tonally or substantially "wrong" for what the game is
Cover for Operation Husky features a tank, flag-waving dog, and infantry man against a backdrop of ... explosions? meat? are they inside someone's intestines? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE
November 10, 2025 at 2:50 PM
amabel.bsky.social
Zohran sign format, counting one through ten.
November 9, 2025 at 10:47 AM
amabel.bsky.social
Sara is showing me a cartoon show, which we're part of the way through, and god damn do I hate this awful little fucker
close-up of Kyubey, the... cat? thing?... from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Kyubey, rings around his floppy... second ears? ear hair?... with subtitle reading "I'd better go search for girls with greater need to make a contract with me."
November 8, 2025 at 3:17 AM
amabel.bsky.social
I'll admit, this comment flares up my profound insecurity about my difficulties playing video games

but it also flares up the "oh, fuck off" reflex because video games and board games have transparently sharp differences as forms, as do game-playing and game-design as skills
YouTube comment from xNealus: I always wondered why Amabel has a game designer has very little idea how to play actual videogames. How do you do game design, then? Even the board games are similar to videogames in terms of making rational decisions and understanding the mechanics What is you judgement's worth if you cannot engage with game systems designed by someone else?
November 7, 2025 at 12:19 AM
amabel.bsky.social
The global market selects out a tiny group of privileged babies who are born in certain parts of certain towns in certain countries, and these babies are allowed to lead privileged lives. Some will be scientists, some will be bankers. Some will command, rule, and grow fantastically rich, and others will become more modestly paid intellectuals or teachers or artists. But all the members of this tiny group will have the chance to develop their minds and realize their talents. As for all the other babies, the market sorts them and stamps labels onto them and hurls them violently into various pits, where an appropriate upbringing and preparation are waiting for them. If the market thinks that workers will be needed in electronics factories, a hundred thousand babies will be stamped with the label “factory worker” and thrown down into a certain particular pit. And when the moment comes when one of the babies is fully prepared and old enough to work, she’ll crawl out of the pit, and she’ll find herself standing at the gate of a factory in India or in China or in Mexico, and she’ll stand at her workstation for 16 hours a day, she’ll sleep in the factory’s dormitory, she won’t be allowed to speak to her fellow workers, she’ll have to ask for permission to go the bathroom, she’ll be subjected to the sexual whims of her boss, and she’ll be breathing fumes day and night that will make her ill and lead to her death at an early age. And when she has died, one will be able to say about her that she worked, like a nurse, not to benefit herself, but to benefit others. Except that a nurse works to benefit the sick, while the factory worker will have worked to benefit the owners of her factory. She will have devoted her hours, her consideration, her energy and strength to increasing their wealth. She will have lived and died for that. And it’s not that anyone sadly concluded when she was born that she lacked the talent to become, let’s say, a violinist, a conductor, or perhaps another Beethoven. The reason she was sent to the factory and not to the concert hall was not that she lacked ability but that the market wanted workers, and so she was assigned to be one. My belief in the performance unfolding before me allows me not to remember those dreadful moments when all of those babies were permanently maimed, and I was spared. The world hurled the infant who became the domestic worker to the bottom of a pit and crippled her for life, and I saw it happen, but I can’t remember it now. And so it seems quite wonderful to me that the world today treats the domestic worker and me with scrupulous equality. It seems wonderfully right. If I steal a car, I go to jail, and if she steals a car, she goes to jail. If I drive on the highway, I pay a toll, and if she drives on the highway, she pays a toll. We compete on an equal basis for the things we want. If I apply for a job, I take the test, and if she applies for the job, she takes the test. And I go through my life thinking it’s all quite fair. If we look at reality for more than an instant, if we look at the human beings passing us on the street, it’s not bearable. It’s not bearable to watch while the talents and the abilities of infants and children are crushed and destroyed. These happen to be things that I just can’t think about.
November 4, 2025 at 6:47 PM
amabel.bsky.social
as is customary, the hospital selfie
At the hospital, wearing a plaid mask, dark blue dress, and brown cardigan.
November 4, 2025 at 3:48 PM
amabel.bsky.social
portrait of a bitch what's about to conduct some interviews
I'm seated in my red chair, smiling, wearing a blue dress.
November 3, 2025 at 4:52 PM
amabel.bsky.social
I miss this goofball.
Monster in 2017, hanging out on the porch (on a lead and collar), her head upside down. She was just rolling around on the cement and is completely filthy and ridiculous.
November 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
amabel.bsky.social
11/2024. The last one, and probably my favorite of them all. "Chipmunk, listen to me:" cracks me up.
People think I have it easy. “Monster,” they say, “you have a dream job.” No. My dream job is the one where my job is to be asleep, and while I am sleeping, I have a dream also about being asleep. Asleep all the way down. That’s a good job. I would do overtime for that job. This job, on the other hand? The job where I tell you to buy Hollandspiele games, except for once a year where I tell you to not buy Hollandspiele games because there’s going to be a big sale starting on November 11, so now stop buying things, but also buy them, just not yet? That’s very confusing. That is a confusing job. It’s like when I have the dream where the chipmunk does not want me to eat him. Chipmunk, listen to me: I am an obligate carnivore. That means I am obligate to eat you please. I have explained this to you many times but you do not get it. And because he doesn’t listen, I don’t get to eat him. That is what this job is like. It is not like the one where I am asleep at all.
November 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
amabel.bsky.social
11/2023.
Usually I am supposed to tell you to buy things but this time I am supposed to tell you to stop buying things, which does not seem like a good way to business. That is my personal opinion. If I was the one in charge of business, I would tell people to buy games from us every day. That would make more money. But apparently we’re having a big sale starting November 20, where we will sell everything for less money, and also give away a card game for free. And, again, my hot take is that selling games for less money is not a great move. It is not the move that I would do. What I would do is a better move, and then I would say “checkmate”, as in, “write me a check, mate, for all the monies please”. But the business geniuses who decided to put a cat in charge of their public relations also decided they’d rather have people wait to buy games until the sale starting November 20, so they asked me to ask you to stop.
November 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
amabel.bsky.social
08/2023. I wrote this one because we had a little anniversary celebration, and it was over, and we needed a front page thingy for the time between that and our next new release.
A message from Monster, the Hollandspiele Spokescat: One time I was sitting at the window, when suddenly there was a chipmunk on the porch. And I let people know right away, because I don't think there should be a chipmunk on the porch. If I had to make a list of places where chipmunks should be, there would only be three places, and those would be "my mouth" and also "my tummy", those are the best, but also "somewhere else but not the porch" is an option. So "the porch" isn't even on the list, but that's where he was, and like I said I let people know right away so that they could make him go somewhere else but not the porch or maybe they could pick him up and put him in my mouth. But they didn't do any of that. Instead, they went outside and - get this - they gave him food? So he would keep coming back to the porch? How does that even make sense? "The porch" isn't even on the list. I cannot stress this enough. Also buy our games I guess.
November 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
amabel.bsky.social
12/2022, after that year's sale:
A message from Monster, the Hollandspiele Spokescat: Every day I get electronic mails that are like, "Monster where is my game" and "Monster I placed my Hollandays order two weeks ago where is it" and "Monster do you want to improve your stamina in the bedroom" and re: that last one, I am already napping as hard and as often as I can what are you going on about what even do you want from me. As for the rest of you, please be patient. Every order is checked by a human, who then passes it onto our printer to make and ship your game. During this time these humans are, tragically, NOT giving my little head all the scritches I want, only most of the scritches, which we can all agree is the worst thing to happen, ever, to anyone, but that's the kind of selfless sacrifice I make for you during the Hollandays sale.
November 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
amabel.bsky.social
This is the time of year when I wrote the message for Monster, the Hollandspiele Spokescat (2006-2025), asking you not to buy our games until our sale starts. It was a favorite part of the weird job I made up for myself.

Here's some favorites in chronological order 🧵

11/2022:
A message from Monster, the Hollandspiele Spokescat: The large servants in my house are very busy preparing for something called the 2022 Hollandays Sale. I don't really know what that is because I am a cat, but mostly it involves them counting out tiny pieces of wood? Why would you do that? You can't even eat tiny pieces of wood. You should trust me on this, I tried. So it's a lot of that, and also a lot of "dou you think we're going ot have enough of these tiny pieces of wood" and "how many tiny pieces of wood does this game have again" and also "whose bright idea was it to go on vacation two weeks before the sale" and also also "gee I hope people don't buy stuff before the sale starts on November 21, they would miss out on all these great deals". I would really hate it if you did that probably, I don't know, I am a cat, but maybe don't buy anything until November 21. STOP BUYING THINGS I MEAN IT
November 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
amabel.bsky.social
I don't remember much about this film, but I definitely don't remember it being anywhere near as jaunty as this poster
Poster for THE BLACK MARBLE, which makes it look like some kind of sex comedy??
October 30, 2025 at 6:17 PM
amabel.bsky.social
"I think trans people are hot beautiful"

I regret to report that it's not just men, some cis women also have no game
Hi I'm happy you message me back you are beautiful Love to go out hangout see what happens . I am with trans men fmt . binary. We open dating. Others . I think trans people are hot beautiful
October 29, 2025 at 11:56 PM
amabel.bsky.social
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.
October 27, 2025 at 8:15 PM
amabel.bsky.social
they don't write back cover copy like they used to

also, the cat's name is Miaow and Paul's "sensual awakening beyond human comprehension" is a non-conformist alien catgirl named Tigerishka

(for Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer)
back cover copy for the wanderer, black text on orange (except a yellow BUT right near the end): FOR MARGO GELHORN Fiancee of the one of the astronauts stationed on the Moon, the giant spheroid that had inexplicably appeared in the heavens would mean grief greater than she had ever known... and romance more exotic than she had ever experienced! FOR PAUL HAGBOLT A Project Moon publicist, the dazzling heavenly wanderer would mean an excursion into abject terror... and a sensual awakening beyond human comprehension! FOR THOUSANDS OF OTHERS It would mean their sanity... for millions of others it would mean their lives! BUT FOR ONE SMALL CAT... It would be heaven!
October 27, 2025 at 4:26 PM
amabel.bsky.social
"The first fight in any bloodlines playthrough is the game's audio"

@sbmakesstuff.bsky.social is having me play Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines on her channel and it's already going so well and so normally
October 26, 2025 at 2:04 PM
amabel.bsky.social
perks of being a slut: the girl I just slept with had one of the few Dr. Peppers presently in the state of Michigan
Amabel holding a bottle of Dr. Pepper
October 25, 2025 at 9:34 PM