Certain words set my teeth on edge. “Content” is the worst offender. If you want to tell me you don’t care about something, call it content. The other is “influencer.” Michael Barnes, once the finest critic of board games and the source of my first gig writing paid reviews, would sometimes call me an influencer. I never knew what to make of that. I figured he was joking. I hope so.

Wendybuxxx leans into both terms and understands intimately the hard-edged meanings they carry. As a game it’s an enigma. Combine one measure new-media crossover, another bitter satire, and a third earnest arrested metamorphosis, and the slurry would look something like Wendybuxxx. It carries deep redolences to its author’s previous title — that title being Molly House, the author Jo Kelly — but calls to mind sickly-hued films like I Saw the TV Glow and Love Lies Bleeding. It’s a fascinating artifact. Provided you can get past the purposely confounding cardplay, that is.

Van life! You can poop in a bucket for clout!

Where to begin?

Maybe it begins with a story. Wendybuxxx is the tale of influencers brought to life through strange science to sell necrocurrency, the titular wendybuxxx, at the behest of their grave-digging matron, Wendy Miasma. Over the course of three episodes, they will generate content both positive and negative, court controversy — not so much as to get canceled, not so little as to be perceived as tedious — and ultimately burn out bright, millions of adoring fanatics watching oh so parasocially through smartphone screens across the globe.

Maybe it begins with outward appearances. Wendybuxxx arrives in an old VHS rental case from peak-epoch Blockbuster, all milky plastic and dulled edges. There are two boards, one folded in half and the other segmented like an accordion, and cards in five colors with the contrast pumped up until they clash like jagged teeth. The characters are embodiments of dislocation. There’s Holly, the Cyber Witch, winking behind cyberpunk-esque shades, and Dr. Jonas, Bonerologist, eagerly describing the wonderful world of boners. The Eyes have seen too much, the Queen of Hell has shaped gender into a razor-edged weapon, and the Skeleton Salesperson reminds me of the old friend from elementary school who asked if he and his wife could have an important conversation with me, then began his 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 up to him and he refused to tell me what he was selling. I wish I was making this up.

Or maybe it begins with the way Wendybuxxx crosses mediums. This isn’t only a board game. One supposes its fathoms might not even be limited to the ten-track album that accompanies the game. What else is down there, through the mirk? Is this a lifestyle? Is this a pale reflection of who we have become as a culture? No, not that. This is no pale reflection. It’s a direct mirror, sunlight beating through the window, not even a smudge of toothpaste on the glass to distract from the full vision of who we are. We stand naked before the brass, and tremble with the knowledge that were we to see ourselves without the benefit of reflection, our terrible beauty would render us statuary.

“Positive” and “negative” content all seem the same to me.

Or maybe it begins with a description of how this dang thing functions.

Imagine a hand of cards, their five suits each representing a different form of influencer/content/slop that’s intuitively familiar to we global beings of bytes and filament. There’s Ascetic (poverty porn), Charitable (donation porn), Everyday (tradlife porn), Decadent (glitz porn), and Billionaire (pretending a bottomless bank account does anything other than wring out your soul until it resembles a cactus porn).

These cards govern everything in Wendybuxxx. In your hand, their sum represents the embodiment of your personal brand. (“Brand.” There’s another word I despise.) When played to the “content strip,” they become parcels of content ready for the consumption of the masses. When played to your offshore account, they become negative content. Notably, negative content is only distinct from positive content in how they’re advertised.

Turns are simple, but the life cycle of content is anything but. Turns consist of two actions, one public, which other players are then given the chance to replicate, and the other private, for your lonesome alone. There are only three actions to speak of: one for drawing new content into your hand, another for developing positive content for the numb masses, and a third for concealing negative content in your offshore account.

Dr. Jonas, Bonerologist, has a deep dark secret. It isn’t the boners.

The import of these actions requires a few rounds to clarify, which is another way of saying that while Wendybuxxx is dead simple to play, it’s a real beast to play well. I’ve found that it’s easiest to teach in reverse. Like so:

(IV) At a round’s completion, the tally in my hand determines which type of content I’ve made my personal brand. For example, if I’m holding a sum of three to four wendybuxxx, that means I’ve made Everyday content my whole deal. I have remade my image into that of the divine tradwife, perpetually pregnant and clad in fetish sundresses, walking barefoot through campylobacter-ridden chicken dung as I grin toothily through my denim prison bars.

(III) To churn Everyday content into as many millions of followers as possible, I want to ensure the right cards find their way to the corresponding space on the content bar. This is usually done by generating lots of positive content, but in a pinch heaps of negative content will do. Negative content also has the additional bonus of being secret. No meddling from rival influencers!

(II) However, negative content may generate controversy. Although the cards in my offshore account will be added to the content bar alongside the positive stuff, their sum, if too high, will cause me to lose followers. Basically, I did a boo-boo and got canceled. Then again, too little controversy and my followers will ditch me out of boredom. The goal is to walk the tightrope of public opinion. It’s one thing to forget about the father of nine I locked inside an abandoned mall to see if he could survive for a month in exchange for fifty grand, but another thing entirely to share a negative opinion about the latest developments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

(I) Turns, then, are all about building a brand that will score high, ensuring you’re holding the right cards to score it, and keeping your controversy levels smack dab in the middle.

See? Easy!

Riding the tide of public opinion.

Fine, fine. But while Wendybuxxx isn’t easy to describe, it’s easier than you might think from description alone. Like the card manipulations in Molly House, Wendybuxxx is all about motion. If two influencers are dumping loads of content into the billionaire category, there’s a good chance their hands are stuffed with enough cards to qualify them as billionaires. Maybe you can get in on the fun by scrounging up enough cards to nibble at their extras. Or maybe splitting an audience isn’t your style, so you focus on something totally different, instead blinging yourself out in jewelry. Or maybe it’s time to sabotage their efforts by tweaking the other categories upward, turning billionaire into the social pariah it deserves to be.

Point is, the cardplay in Wendybuxxx takes a few rounds to really wrap your head around, but once you’ve internalized the way the cards move, shifting from place to place in little bids and attacks, the game reveals some unusually sharp gameplay. It’s nasty without being direct. Snitty, even. Which is precisely what it should be, given that it’s basically depicting what would happen if the CrunchLabs guy decided to suffocate Mr. Beast in elephant toothpaste.

(Golly, I hope in twenty years nobody knows what the hell I’m talking about. Wouldn’t that be great.)

This satirical slant is simultaneously Wendybuxxx’s sharpest corner and its bluntest instrument. Rolling around in the muck of online content creation is fine and dandy, but lifestyle influencers are self-satirizing. I know they’re ridiculous. You know they’re ridiculous. The only people who don’t know they’re ridiculous are so far gone that there’s no reaching them, no matter how many board games with ten-track albums we stack on their kitchen table.

Fortunately, while the superficial details are every bit as abrasive as millionaires who pretend to live in repurposed shipping containers in coniferous forests, that isn’t all there is to Wendybuxxx.

CONSUME CONTENT.

At its deeper reaches, this is also a game about remaking oneself. It isn’t enough to forge a personal brand. No matter how solid your initial bid, the game will throw a wrench into your plans. Rivals will bring you down. Controversy will dog your heels. Winning lifestyles will go out of fashion. And so the wheel turns. You are one thing. And then you are another thing. In both cases, the game only permits you to become the wrong thing, another clout-chaser, another hollow person who yearns to feel something but has been brainwashed by the internet and late-stage capitalism to make number go up. Wendybuxxx doesn’t wind up as a cautionary fable about lifestyle influencers. It becomes a question mark. What are you. What will you be. Who is it that you must become. Not on the table. But above it. To play Wendybuxxx is to see your worst self realized again and again.

And, in the seeing — in the playing — maybe Wendybuxxx becomes an opportunity to decide to become something else.

Or maybe not. Maybe Wendybuxxx is none of those things. That’s would also be all right. Because at worst, Wendybuxxx offers some incisive satire, some sharp card-play, and some eerie color in a world where drab people would drain us dry to fill the black holes in their bellies. As a game, it’s worth the effort.

Either way, I hope this content has influenced you. Remember to like, subscribe, and share.

Wendybuxxx will be on Kickstarter tomorrow.

A complimentary copy of Wendybuxxx was provided by the designer.

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