Unwinnable

Featured Story

Crop of the cover of Monster Mayhem, a painting featuring your classic mosters like Sexy Ghost, Necktie Werewolf, Dog Collar Dracula, Too Many Teeth Mummy, and Jock Zombie

Offensive Stereotypes: Monster Mayhem Rises from the Crypt… But Maybe Shouldn’t

By Orrin Grey • September 30th, 2022

Despite its cartoony demeanor, Monster Mayhem is no different from White Wolf’s RPGs, and its approach is… not exactly sensitive, even for 2007.

Current Issue

Letter from the Editor

A shark person standing in front of a field of video monitors.

Unwinnable Monthly – September 2022

By David Shimomura • September 19th, 2022

Welcome to the spoopy season, new columnists await!

This Mortal Coyle

The protagonist Bailey Ward from the videogame Switchcraft. She is a young woman with long auburn hair shaved on one side and an olive skin tone. She is casually dressed and smiling in what looks like the interior of a cafe.

Ruby Blue from Switchcraft

By Deirdre Coyle • September 30th, 2022

Ms. Blue’s aesthetics speak volumes: she wears librarian clichés – cardigans and tortoiseshell glasses – with bodycon animal prints, statement jewelry and long, blue nails.

Assigned, (De)limited Desire

A woman in a sheer dress appears three times, in nearly the same image, staring up and to the left in an almost doll-like fashion

Marissa Marcel, You Will Never Be Famous

By Trevor Richardson • September 29th, 2022

The character is the actor, is the art, is the artist.

Self-Insert

A shot of Jacob in wolf form from the movie Twilight.

Hybrid Shifters

By Amanda Hudgins • September 29th, 2022

Ultimately you see in hybrid shifter fiction a desire to create people who are closer to their “natural instincts” over reason, a call back to nature. Is the reason usually sexy? Of course it is.

Dimensions

The title screen for There Swings a Skull: Grim Tidings, featuring those words over an interior castle wall with a few coffins assembled

There Swings a Skull Completes the Bigger Picture with Grim Tidings

By Caroline Delbert • September 28th, 2022

How do you turn a tightly told jam game into something more? For Quinn K. and Conor Walsh, it was a creative challenge.

Run It Back

In a still from The Last of England, a woman with long blonde hair wearing a wedding dress rends her dress apart while screaming in front of an open flame.

1987

By Oluwatayo Adewole • September 28th, 2022

Tayo’s back discussing two films from 1987, both by trailblazing gay directors, Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys and Derek Jarman’s The Last of England.

The Beat Box

In a still from the movie Men in Black, Will Smith's character prepares to use his memory-erasing device.

Noteworthy Hip Hop – September 2022

By Noah Springer • September 27th, 2022

1997 was a good year for hip hop and an even better one for Noah.

Friction Burns

A house with a tin roof built on top of horizontal oil drums sits in a warehouse that is also a museum, a single light illuminating an old man asking questions of the residents on the porch

Finding The On-Ramp To Route Zero

By Ruth Cassidy • September 26th, 2022

Kentucky Route Zero carries its own ghosts of its critical legacy. How do I get past that?

Revving the Engine

A 3D rendering of a gray metal robot wearing a shoulder-slung pouch and a loose piece of red fabric tied around its head. A teddy bear with glowing blue eyes perches on the robot's right shoulder.

2020s Tech, 1980s Spirit

By Ben Sailer • September 26th, 2022

Dykom Software’s twin-stick side-scrolling shooter invokes 80s geek culture nostalgia while hiding a few twists underneath an absurdist premise.

DNGN

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • September 26th, 2022

Ten levels down and more to go…

Feature Excerpt

To Be a Bird on an Island

By Taylor Hidalgo • September 23rd, 2022

During unsteady times, it’s easy to get caught up in the sadness of uncertainty. Thankfully, there are little animals tromping around an island to remind us that it doesn’t have to be that way.

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