Game boxes of Pacts and Persuasion
Great game night tonight! Got Pacts and Persuasion to the table. I was blown away by both designs. So fresh and fluid. What a time to be a gamer!
@xoe.gay
@hollandspiele.bsky.social
@enzyshade.bsky.social
@dvcgames.bsky.social
It was deeply gratifying to have my work mentioned in this. I stumbled into board games via a handful of things discovered at the same time, in a Baader-Meinhof way; one of those was BGwS, a series that was incredibly important to me.
I don't think I would be here without Board Games with Scott.
A photo of Amabel’s game Ten Dollar Words, with its bold red box, circular blank disks, and lots of small letter chips.
A (bad) photo of Striking Flint in the table. Meeples and circular tokens on cards. We’re about to get our butts kicked by the game.
Had a @hollandspiele.bsky.social game night yesterday. Striking Flint by @johndubois.bsky.social was really good, even though our strike got busted. Ten Dollar Words is going to become one of my favorite @amabel.bsky.social games, I can feel it.
A shivering and stressed Amabel declares, "IT'S TOO COLD IN HERE! The furnace broke, and not just a little bit broke, but 'oh you're going to need a brand new furnace' broke. Said new furnace is in the process of being installed, but apparently they don't do that for free. We checked, and we even asked really nicely, but they confirmed that we need to pay for the new furnace. Help us pay for the new furnace! For the next couple days we're offering a hot deal on our c-c-c-coldest game, Endurance." A red starburst indicates that Endurance is selling for $10 off its usual price.
The furnace broke. It's very cold, so we're having a sale on an appropriately chilly game!
Heck yes! Amabel is talking about one of my favorite subjects in tabletop production (and, to be honest, even design): boxes and what they say.
Amabel's latest video is a fantastic watch, with great personality and cadence, leaving me wishing there was more, as with her other videos. For transparency, I've been a patron of Amabel's and customer of Hollandspiele a long time, and been enjoying the great products of both.
I like this video for a lot of reasons — the shade over the new Meltwater edition is *perfect* — but foremost among them is the fact that I once wrote an article about "The Board Game Box Review." It was a surprising breakout moment for my goofball site. And this is so much better than that.
A little bit for everyone: some CMYK, some Chudyk, some frowny Euros. Topped with a deeper look at why Meltwater is such an important game and what that means in the context of the new edition.
Another INCREDIBLE video from Amabel. If you’re even mildly interested in board games her channel (and her games at Hollandspiel!) are essential
An interesting, thoughtful video about an under appreciated aspect of board game design and publication.
We accidentally had an Amabel Holland night at our board game meetup last night. We played Dual Gauge: Honshu, cross4 (my final board pictured below), and Hartfield. These three games are nothing alike. #boardgames @amabel.bsky.social @hollandspiele.bsky.social
Let's talk about board game boxes and their role in selling a game, framing and contextualizing the experience, and creating meaning.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgfV...
I was really tempted to get my first hexes and counters but financial wisdom prevailed so made my modest little order to support a publisher I love. I am very curious about Hartfield!!
big recommend for Endurance and Heading Forward and This Guilty Land and Comet oh and Striking Flint! also
Welp been meaning to get Endurance for awhile and I love Persuasion so this was an easy yes. Check them out and order some truly unique games.
I'm going all early 19th century this year with Prelude to Leipzig and Persuasion. If you want to check out some of the most compelling designs out there, do yourself a favor and check out the Hollandspiele catalog!
@amabel.bsky.social makes the most thought provoking and innovative games. Few publishers have a catalogue as rich and stacked with gems.
I've lost count of how many Hollandspiele games I've played that have floored me with their inventiveness.
4 days left of this great sale from one of the best publishers around! I ordered Oblique, City of Six Moons, and a Table Battles expansion. I definitely recommend Table Battles and the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and I feel safe recommending everything else in their catalogue.
Go buy some @hollandspiele.bsky.social board games. They’re weird and fun and iconoclastic and a little punk rock. And it’s their annual sale right now. #boardgames
Many people wait until our sale to pick up some of our newest titles. In that spirit, let's take a look at the seven games @hollandspiele.bsky.social and I have published in 2025! 🧵
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.
starting work on the card art for PREPOTENT, my long-delayed horse-breeding, -racing, and -betting game.
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...
New game day! Belinda's Big Bonus is now available. Cookware not included.
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.
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.
hey, let's learn how the heck I made a Belinda Blinked game
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSNp...
But Then She Came Back forum thread: Rules regarding use of body parts
I think this is my favorite rules thread title
YPLWILT, WILT, 1A.
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!
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...
