The Alien Enigma: Inside Hollandspiele’s Radical New Board Game, ‘City of Six Moons’

In the world of tabletop gaming, the rulebook is typically a sacred document—a bridge of clarity between the designer’s intent and the player’s experience. Designers spend years refining phrasing, adding clarifications, and obsessing over layout to ensure that a game is as accessible as possible. However, the upcoming solo board game City of Six Moons, published by Hollandspiele, is set to shatter these conventions by turning the rulebook into the game’s primary adversary.

Designed by the idiosyncratic and provocative Amabel Holland, City of Six Moons features a rulebook written entirely in an invented alien language. There is no translation key, no "How to Play" section in English, and, perhaps most controversially, no support from the designer. Players must treat the rulebook not as a manual, but as an archaeological artifact, deciphering a complex system of icons, glyphs, and symbols before they can even begin to understand how to move a piece on the board.

The Core Concept: A Game About First Contact

At its heart, City of Six Moons is a single-player experience that tasks the player with guiding the fortunes of an extraterrestrial civilization. However, the "alien" nature of the game extends far beyond its thematic setting. Holland’s goal was to simulate the genuine cognitive dissonance of encountering a truly foreign culture.

"The game is designed as if it were actually made by an alien civilization," Holland has suggested. By stripping away the common language of human instruction manuals, the player is forced to confront their own biases. To succeed, one must rely on intuition, pattern recognition, and an acceptance that the logic of a non-human entity might be fundamentally incompatible with human patterns of thinking.

The game forces players to reconcile their own cultural assumptions with a system that may operate on entirely different principles of cause and effect. It is a meta-narrative experience where the process of learning the rules is just as significant as the gameplay itself.

Chronology of an Artistic Experiment

The journey of City of Six Moons from concept to release is a testament to the niche but adventurous spirit of Hollandspiele, the label co-owned by Amabel and Mary Holland.

• The Inception: Amabel Holland began conceptualizing a game that would challenge the traditional "pedagogy" of tabletop gaming. The core premise—a game where the barrier to entry is the language of the game itself—was developed as a way to evoke the "wonder and terror" of first contact.
• The Development Phase: Throughout the development cycle, Holland remained tight-lipped regarding the specific mechanics, choosing to focus instead on the aesthetic and semiotic construction of the game.
• The Public Reveal: Early teasers on platforms like Bluesky and BoardGameGeek began to generate buzz, not just for the game’s intriguing cover art, but for the cryptic nature of its delivery.
• The Imminent Launch: With the game scheduled for release next month, the anticipation—and anxiety—among the solo-gaming community has reached a fever pitch.

The Silence of the Designer: An Intentional Barrier

Perhaps the most radical decision regarding City of Six Moons is Amabel Holland’s explicit refusal to answer any rules questions. In an industry where designers often spend hours on forums like BoardGameGeek clarifying edge cases or answering FAQ threads, this silence is a profound statement.

Holland’s refusal is not born of arrogance, but of artistic intent. By refusing to intervene, she preserves the integrity of the puzzle. If the player were to ask, "How does this symbol work?" and receive an answer, the mystery of the alien culture would evaporate, replaced by the mundane reality of human-to-human instruction.

This silence places the entire burden of proof on the player. As noted by observers on BoardGameGeek, this creates a unique psychological state. The player is never truly certain if they have mastered the rules or if they have merely constructed a functional, yet incorrect, interpretation of the game’s logic. This uncertainty is not a bug; it is the core feature.

Implications for the Board Game Industry

The release of City of Six Moons poses a fascinating challenge to the board gaming industry. For decades, the trend has been toward "streamlining"—making games easier to learn, faster to set up, and more intuitive to play. Holland’s project represents the antithesis of this trend.

The "Lesser" Experience

Holland has acknowledged a provocative truth about her design: once the code is broken, the game may become a "lesser" experience. The sense of discovery and the thrill of the "Aha!" moment are finite. Once a player understands the mechanics, the game transitions from a puzzle into a standard strategy title.

However, Holland views this as a necessary trade-off. "That loss is a thing I want you to feel; I want it to linger," she stated on social media. This reflects a desire to treat board games as transient, emotional experiences rather than static objects to be optimized and solved.

The Role of Components

While specific details remain scarce, it is expected that the physical components of City of Six Moons will mirror the cryptic nature of the manual. If the rulebook is an alien artifact, the game board and pieces are likely to be similarly abstract. This creates a tactile, immersive experience where the player is truly isolated, acting as an interpreter for a silent, alien world.

Supporting Data and Player Expectation

As the release date approaches, potential players are already preparing for the intellectual labor involved. The game is being marketed as a "functional, replayable game," which suggests that despite the high barrier to entry, there is a robust engine beneath the iconography.

For the dedicated solo-gamer, this is the ultimate challenge. The market for solo board games has exploded in recent years, with players increasingly seeking experiences that offer deep, meditative engagement rather than just social interaction. City of Six Moons taps into this by offering a "closed loop" of discovery.

The game’s success will likely not be measured by the number of units sold or the speed of the gameplay, but by the community discourse that will inevitably follow its release. How long will it take for a "Rosetta Stone" to appear on Reddit or Discord? Will the community come to a consensus on the rules, or will there be "dialects" of play where different players interpret the glyphs in entirely different ways?

The Philosophical Weight of the Game

Ultimately, City of Six Moons is an experiment in empathy. By forcing the player to work for understanding, Holland is replicating the historical struggle of explorers, scientists, and linguists who have attempted to decode unknown systems.

It is an anti-game in the sense that it rejects the "user-friendly" ethos of modern product design. Instead, it invites the player to experience a form of intellectual struggle that is increasingly rare in our age of instant information and tutorials. By the time a player finishes their first session, they will likely feel a sense of accomplishment that goes far beyond winning or losing. They will have participated in a shared act of creation with the designer, building a bridge between two worlds—one human, one alien, and one entirely imagined.

As the industry looks toward the release of City of Six Moons, it is clear that Hollandspiele has created something that transcends the typical definition of a "product." Whether it becomes a cult classic or a divisive point of frustration, it is undeniably one of the most daring experiments in the history of the medium. For those brave enough to open the box, the city of six moons awaits—provided you can learn to speak its language first.