Category: Unwinnable Monthly

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.

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.”

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.

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?

Musings

Rock is Dead. Long Live the Dirty Nil.

By Blake Hester • March 12th, 2020

The Dirty Nil, in just one 39 minute album, is more intelligent, interesting and fun than most classic rock out there.

Try Reading...

It’s Just a Game

By Harry Rabinowitz • March 11th, 2020

DIE Volume 1 asks: if your game becomes real, can you still treat it like a game?

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?

Here's the Thing

Avatar and the Importance of the Mundane

By Rob Rich • March 10th, 2020

Rob takes a look at one of the most well-loved episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and posits that it’s mundane slice-of-life moments that truly draw us in to stories about people with superhuman abilities.

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.

The Usurper

Noteworthy Metal – February 2020

By Astrid Budgor • March 6th, 2020

New year, new metal.

Noteworthy Hip Hop

Noteworthy Hip Hop – February 2020

By Noah Springer • March 6th, 2020

This month’s column includes one of the more powerful albums Noah’s heard in a while.

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.

Unwinnable Monthly, February 2020

By Stu Horvath • February 17th, 2020

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

Try Reading...

Middlewest and the Scars of Parental Abuse

By Harry Rabinowitz • February 12th, 2020

When you peel back its fantasy veneer, Middlewest Book One is a story of parental abuse and the scars, both literal and figurative, it leaves.

Rookie of the Year

GOAT vs. Block

By Matt Marrone • February 11th, 2020

How could you suddenly be twice as good at a game you’ve played so often there’s simply no conceivable room for improvement?

Collision Detection

What I Think About When I Think About Grandia

By Ben Sailer • February 10th, 2020

What can we learn about social activism from an aging 32-bit-era role-playing game? According to one writer who probably needs to get more sleep, maybe more than one might think.

This Mortal Coyle

Jesse Faden from Control

By Deirdre Coyle • February 7th, 2020

Deirdre desperately wants to be friends with Jesse Faden, someone similarly comfortable with the surreal and unexplainable.

Self-Insert

Dead Dove Do Not Eat

By Amanda Hudgins • February 6th, 2020

Let this be your warning.

Revving the Engine

Dead Static Drive: A Dark and Winding Road

By Stu Horvath • February 5th, 2020

“I didn’t ever feel like I sought out horror so much as people brought it to me.”

The McMaster Files

Ghosts in the Machine

By Jason McMaster • February 4th, 2020

What happens to our digital life when we die?

No Accounting for Taste

Socialism in One Solar System

By Adam Boffa • February 3rd, 2020

The Outer Worlds knows exactly what’s wrong with capitalism. So why doesn’t it talk about what might come next?

Here's the Thing

Enough With G1 Already!

By Rob Rich • January 31st, 2020

Hasbro and Takara have been giving fans and collectors G1-inspired homages for years, and while it was neat at first, it’s getting pretty of stale

Another Look

Spectating at the End of the Universe

By Yussef Cole • January 29th, 2020

Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds rebels against the shortcomings of traditional perspective.

Feature Excerpt

Searching for Kirby(‘s) Air Ride, a Game that Does(n’t) Exist

By Don Everhart • January 28th, 2020

Nostalgic for a game that never existed, Don Everhart considers how he has carried a torch for the never-released Nintendo 64 version of Kirby’s Air Ride. Chasing an online game swap for the Gamecube game Kirby Air Ride may have been the next best thing.

Feature Excerpt