Category: Games

HeroQuest

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • April 6th, 2020

Prepare for adventure! This week, we dive into Milton Bradley/Games Workshop’s classic board game HeroQuest!

Animal Crossing and Queer Agency

By Jeremy Signor • April 2nd, 2020

Animal Crossing gives queer folks the kind of agency they may not have in the real world.

Feature Excerpt

Expanding Worlds with Video Game Tabletop RPGs

By Scott Roepel • April 2nd, 2020

Unlike in roleplaying videogames, for tabletop roleplaying, all you need is an imagination, a good storyteller and a set of dice.

Feature Excerpt

Carrington’s Dreamscape

By Daniel Lipscombe • April 2nd, 2020

Videogames, especially those of the horror variety, could seriously stand to take a leaf from surrealism’s book.

Feature Excerpt

Accepting Death as the Sun Goes Out

By Ryan Cooper • April 2nd, 2020

The Outer Wilds’ tragic time-loop helps Ryan Cooper process real-world struggles.

Loading the Potato: A Song of Doom, Eternal

By David Shimomura • March 31st, 2020

Certainly, Doom Eternal is bigger, louder, badder and more filled with gore than its predecessor.

Star Frontiers

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • March 30th, 2020

Join us in the far reaches of known space as we explore Star Frontiers!

Gingy's Corner

Raging Loop

By Gingy Gibson • March 27th, 2020

Raging Loop is a horror visual novel that makes you care more about the ‘how’ than ‘who’ behind its mystery.

Gliding by the Light of The Red Lantern

By Levi Rubeck • March 26th, 2020

This upcoming rogue-lite adventure novel has been two years in development, a bit before the annual Alaska race crashed through puppy Twitter, but happy to ride some of those waves nonetheless.

Archipelago America

By Jeremy Signor • March 25th, 2020

Video games give us a window into how the US is structured, how it isolates us, and how we can connect.

Revving the Engine

A Juggler’s Tale: Pull the Strings

By Stu Horvath • March 25th, 2020

“There is a traveling circus inside a puppet theater play inside a videogame – it’s always so hard to summarize this game in one short sentence.”

The Happenstantial Politics of Need for Speed: Heat

By Evan Dennis • March 24th, 2020

Heat’s quite possibly the most anti-cop game in the entire Need for Speed franchise.

The Shadow People

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • March 23rd, 2020

Descend into the depths of the earth to meet The Shadow People!

Towards a Carrier Bag Theory of Videogames

By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell • March 23rd, 2020

Applying the lessons of Ursula K Le Guin’s criticism to the art of videogame storytelling.

Pox Free at PAX East 2020, Part 2

By Levi Rubeck • March 19th, 2020

Levi serves up two more from PAX East.

Letter From the Editor

Unwinnable Monthly – March 2020

By Stu Horvath • March 18th, 2020

Welcome to March, gang. It is getting weird out there, but a new Unwinnable Monthly is here, as ever.

Vanquish and the Joy of Movement

By Jeremy Signor • March 18th, 2020

Speed in games makes us crave that adrenaline rush we get when we go fast. Vanquish captures the joy of locomotion and the thrill of velocity.

Bunnies & Burrows

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • March 16th, 2020

An RPG about rabbits? From 1976?!

Farewell to my Dead Horse

By Gingy Gibson • March 13th, 2020

My favorite horse in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild died weeks ago, and I’m still upset.

Another Look

Fantasies of Fatherhood

By Yussef Cole • March 13th, 2020

In Death Stranding, players get a chance to parent less a child than the idea of one.

The Fail Cycle

Healing and How to Make It All Better

By Declan Taggart • March 12th, 2020

[redacted] was a huge success last year for [redacted] Studios, Inc., but players consistently complained that being a healer was boring. How can we improve on that?

Pox Free at PAX East 2020, Part 1

By Levi Rubeck • March 12th, 2020

Three mini essays for the price of one!

Good Grades

By Jeremy Signor • March 11th, 2020

Grading systems in games are more than about showing the player how well they’re doing. They also plant the seed for expanding the possibilities available.

Forms in Light

The Genius of Beauclair Palace

By Justin Reeve • March 11th, 2020

Justin dives into why, exactly, this Witcher 3 structure commands such a presence.

Collision Detection

Could the Decline of Violent Football Videogames Have Predicted the Future of Player Safety?

By Ben Sailer • March 10th, 2020

Football videogames in the early to mid-1990s reveled in over-the-top physical violence. Could the disappearance of that tendency be connected to changing public perception around the safety of the sport?

Revving the Engine

Backbone: We’re All Animals

By Stu Horvath • March 9th, 2020

What better way to examine the human condition than in a story about animals?

This Mortal Coyle

The Ad Salesman from Animal Restaurant

By Deirdre Coyle • March 9th, 2020

Animal Restaurant is a mobile game that does the impossible: It makes promoting in-game ads adorable.

Wizards & Spells

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • March 9th, 2020

Jim Zub is back on the show this week, dishing about the newest Young Adventurer’s Guide, Wizards & Spells, and dropping some hints about volume five!

Afternoon Cable Justice

By Levi Rubeck • March 4th, 2020

Regardless of what’s kept a card-based metaphor of practicing law from hitting kitchen tables across the globe in the past, Rock Manor games are toiling under green lampshades to fill in the gaps, by preparing their upcoming modular card game Lawyer Up for Kickstarter.

Horror on the Orient Express

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • March 2nd, 2020

Choo-choo! All aboard the Orient Express, where horrors beyond imagining await you!

Look For Me Under Your Bootsoles

By Jeremy Signor • February 26th, 2020

We all have things that are haunting us. What matters is how we move forward together.

The Isle of Dread

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • February 24th, 2020

We set sail into danger. Our course: The Isle of Dread.

Gingy's Corner

Occult Crime Police

By Gingy Gibson • February 21st, 2020

The truth is out there, and sometimes it’s absolutely insane. Good thing this perpetually exasperated detective is on the case.

Feature Excerpt

Picking Fruit in Hyrule: Playing Breath of the Wild Like It’s Animal Crossing

By Alyssa Wejebe • February 21st, 2020

If you’re sick of emptying your pockets to Tom Nook and microtransactions, another Nintendo mainstay may be exactly what you’re looking for.

Feature Excerpt

Heavy Metal Hits the Tabletop

By Tom G. Wolf • February 21st, 2020

For both metal and tabletop gaming, the allure of the forbidden draws in similar crowds.

I Believe that My Scoring Potential Has Been Maximized

By Levi Rubeck • February 20th, 2020

The game is called No Return because the one thing you must always remember is that there is no returning any pieces to the bag.

Unwinnable Monthly, February 2020

By Stu Horvath • February 17th, 2020

The February issue of Unwinnable Monthly is here to infect your brain!

Fantasy Wargaming

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • February 17th, 2020

We crack the cover of Fantasy Wargaming (1981) and check out the stats for the big cheese, God Himself!

Gingy's Corner

Baptism

By Gingy Gibson • February 14th, 2020

Baptism is a short, emotionally removed kinetic visual novel about the horrors of unchecked psychosis (and our own fascination with them).

PAGAN: Autogeny and Queering Online Spaces

By Jeremy Signor • February 12th, 2020

Queer people have to fight to exist. Sometimes, that means queering something that was never meant to be queered.