Life-style Content XXX | SPACE-BIFF!

Certain phrases set my tooth on edge. “Content” is the worst offender. If you need to inform me you don’t care about one thing, name it content material. The different is “influencer.” Michael Barnes, as soon as the best critic of board video games and the supply of my first gig writing paid critiques, would typically name me an influencer. I by no means knew what to make of that. I figured he was joking. I hope so.

Wendybuxxx leans into each phrases and understands intimately the hard-edged meanings they carry. As a sport it’s an enigma. Combine one measure new-media crossover, one other bitter satire, and a 3rd earnest arrested metamorphosis, and the slurry would look one thing like Wendybuxxx. It carries deep redolences to its creator’s earlier title — that title being Molly House, the creator Jo Kelly — however calls to thoughts sickly-hued movies like I Saw the TV Glow and Love Lies Bleeding. It’s an enchanting artifact. Provided you will get previous the purposely confounding cardplay, that’s.

Where to start?

Maybe it begins with a narrative. Wendybuxxx is the story of influencers delivered to life via unusual science to promote necrocurrency, the titular wendybuxxx, on the behest of their grave-digging matron, Wendy Miasma. Over the course of three episodes, they are going to generate content material each optimistic and destructive, courtroom controversy — not a lot as to get canceled, not so little as to be perceived as tedious — and in the end burn out shiny, tens of millions of adoring fanatics watching oh so parasocially via smartphone screens throughout the globe.

Maybe it begins with outward appearances. Wendybuxxx arrives in an outdated VHS rental case from peak-epoch Blockbuster, all milky plastic and dulled edges. There are two boards, one folded in half and the opposite segmented like an accordion, and playing cards in 5 colours with the distinction pumped up till they conflict like jagged tooth. The characters are embodiments of dislocation. There’s Holly, the Cyber Witch, winking behind cyberpunk-esque shades, and Dr. Jonas, Bonerologist, eagerly describing the fantastic world of boners. The Eyes have seen an excessive amount of, the Queen of Hell has formed gender right into a razor-edged weapon, and the Skeleton Salesperson jogs my memory of the outdated good friend from elementary faculty who requested if he and his spouse might have an vital dialog with me, then started his gross sales pitch with a fumbling, “So, you might have noticed that we wear nice clothes and take care to present ourselves in a certain way…” After fifteen minutes of preamble, his embarrassment caught as much as him and he refused to inform me what he was promoting. I want I used to be making this up.

Or possibly it begins with the best way Wendybuxxx crosses mediums. This isn’t solely a board sport. One supposes its fathoms won’t even be restricted to the ten-track album that accompanies the sport. What else is down there, via the mirk? Is this a life-style? Is this a pale reflection of who we have now turn out to be as a tradition? No, not that. This isn’t any pale reflection. It’s a direct mirror, daylight beating via the window, not even a smudge of toothpaste on the glass to distract from the complete imaginative and prescient of who we’re. We stand bare earlier than the brass, and tremble with the information that had been we to see ourselves with out the advantage of reflection, our horrible magnificence would render us statuary.

Or possibly it begins with an outline of how this dang factor features.

Imagine a hand of playing cards, their 5 fits every representing a distinct type of influencer/content material/slop that’s intuitively acquainted to we world beings of bytes and filament. There’s Ascetic (poverty porn), Charitable (donation porn), Everyday (tradlife porn), Decadent (glitz porn), and Billionaire (pretending a bottomless checking account does something apart from wring out your soul till it resembles a cactus porn).

These playing cards govern all the things in Wendybuxxx. In your hand, their sum represents the embodiment of your private model. (“Brand.” There’s one other phrase I despise.) When performed to the “content strip,” they turn out to be parcels of content material prepared for the consumption of the lots. When performed to your offshore account, they turn out to be destructive content material. Notably, destructive content material is simply distinct from optimistic content material in how they’re marketed.

Turns are easy, however the life cycle of content material is something however. Turns encompass two actions, one public, which different gamers are then given the prospect to copy, and the opposite personal, on your lonesome alone. There are solely three actions to talk of: one for drawing new content material into your hand, one other for growing optimistic content material for the numb lots, and a 3rd for concealing destructive content material in your offshore account.

The import of those actions requires a couple of rounds to make clear, which is one other method of claiming that whereas Wendybuxxx is lifeless easy to play, it’s an actual beast to play nicely. I’ve discovered that it’s best to show in reverse. Like so:

(IV) At a spherical’s completion, the tally in my hand determines which sort of content material I’ve made my private model. For instance, if I’m holding a sum of three to 4 wendybuxxx, meaning I’ve made Everyday content material my entire deal. I’ve remade my picture into that of the divine tradwife, perpetually pregnant and clad in fetish sundresses, strolling barefoot via campylobacter-ridden rooster dung as I grin toothily via my denim jail bars.

(III) To churn Everyday content material into as many tens of millions of followers as attainable, I need to guarantee the fitting playing cards discover their solution to the corresponding area on the content material bar. This is normally performed by producing a lot of optimistic content material, however in a pinch heaps of destructive content material will do. Negative content material additionally has the extra bonus of being secret. No meddling from rival influencers!

(II) However, destructive content material could generate controversy. Although the playing cards in my offshore account will likely be added to the content material bar alongside the optimistic stuff, their sum, if too excessive, will trigger me to lose followers. Basically, I did a boo-boo and obtained canceled. Then once more, too little controversy and my followers will ditch me out of boredom. The objective is to stroll the tightrope of public opinion. It’s one factor to neglect concerning the father of 9 I locked inside an deserted mall to see if he might survive for a month in trade for 50 grand, however one other factor completely to share a destructive opinion concerning the newest developments within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

(I) Turns, then, are all about constructing a model that may rating excessive, making certain you’re holding the fitting playing cards to attain it, and holding your controversy ranges smack dab within the center.

See? Easy!

Fine, high quality. But whereas Wendybuxxx isn’t straightforward to explain, it’s simpler than you may assume from description alone. Like the cardboard manipulations in Molly House, Wendybuxxx is all about movement. If two influencers are dumping a great deal of content material into the billionaire class, there’s a great likelihood their palms are full of sufficient playing cards to qualify them as billionaires. Maybe you will get in on the enjoyable by scrounging up sufficient playing cards to nibble at their extras. Or possibly splitting an viewers isn’t your type, so that you give attention to one thing completely totally different, as a substitute blinging your self out in jewellery. Or possibly it’s time to sabotage their efforts by tweaking the opposite classes upward, turning billionaire into the social pariah it deserves to be.

Point is, the cardplay in Wendybuxxx takes a couple of rounds to essentially wrap your head round, however when you’ve internalized the best way the playing cards transfer, shifting from place to put in little bids and assaults, the sport reveals some unusually sharp gameplay. It’s nasty with out being direct. Snitty, even. Which is exactly what it ought to be, on condition that it’s principally depicting what would occur if the CrunchLabs man determined to suffocate Mr. Beast in elephant toothpaste.

(Golly, I hope in twenty years no one is aware of what the hell I’m speaking about. Wouldn’t that be nice.)

This satirical slant is concurrently Wendybuxxx’s sharpest nook and its bluntest instrument. Rolling round within the muck of on-line content material creation is ok and dandy, however life-style influencers are self-satirizing. I do know they’re ridiculous. You know they’re ridiculous. The solely individuals who don’t know they’re ridiculous are to this point gone that there’s no reaching them, regardless of what number of board video games with ten-track albums we stack on their kitchen desk.

Fortunately, whereas the superficial particulars are each bit as abrasive as millionaires who fake to dwell in repurposed delivery containers in coniferous forests, that isn’t all there may be to Wendybuxxx.

At its deeper reaches, that is additionally a sport about remaking oneself. It isn’t sufficient to forge a private model. No matter how strong your preliminary bid, the sport will throw a wrench into your plans. Rivals will convey you down. Controversy will canine your heels. Winning life will exit of style. And so the wheel turns. You are one factor. And then you’re one other factor. In each circumstances, the sport solely allows you to turn out to be the flawed factor, one other clout-chaser, one other hole one who yearns to really feel one thing however has been brainwashed by the web and late-stage capitalism to make quantity go up. Wendybuxxx doesn’t wind up as a cautionary fable about life-style influencers. It turns into a query mark. What are you. What will you be. Who is it that you should turn out to be. Not on the desk. But above it. To play Wendybuxxx is to see your worst self realized many times.

And, within the seeing — within the taking part in — possibly Wendybuxxx turns into a possibility to resolve to turn out to be one thing else.

Or possibly not. Maybe Wendybuxxx is none of these issues. That’s would even be all proper. Because at worst, Wendybuxxx affords some incisive satire, some sharp card-play, and a few eerie colour in a world the place drab folks would drain us dry to fill the black holes of their bellies. As a sport, it’s well worth the effort.

Either method, I hope this content material has influenced you. Remember to love, subscribe, and share.

Wendybuxxx will likely be on Kickstarter tomorrow.

 

A complimentary copy of Wendybuxxx was supplied by the designer.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is efficacious to you indirectly, please think about dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can learn my first-quarter update of 2026: the perfect board video games, motion pictures, books, and extra!)