Feature Excerpt Hideo Kojima Hates You By Emma Kostopolus • January 23rd, 2023 A study in difficulty scaling.
Feature Excerpt Time Loop of Trauma By Alma Roda-Gil • January 20th, 2023 There is no catharsis to be had at the end of Returnal’s time loop. It becomes clear, as the player finishes the story, that it will keep going.
Feature Excerpt An Ode to Little Freaks By Phillip Russell • December 20th, 2022 On a surface level, Gremlins is a movie that evokes classic horror tropes, but when you dig deeper you find a meta horror satire that attempts to comment on American excess and consumerism.
Feature Excerpt Surviving Humanity By Jon Bailes • November 21st, 2022 The cat, the fox and the apocalypse.
Feature Excerpt Lost in Translation By Aidan Moher • November 18th, 2022 The Sega Saturn is one of the best JRPG consoles of all time…just not in the west.
Feature Excerpt Monsters Built by Human Hands By Hyacinth Nil • October 20th, 2022 A close reading of Lakeview Hotel.
Feature Excerpt Stop/Motion By Orrin Grey • October 20th, 2022 Ray Harryhausen and the magic of stop motion monsters.
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.
Feature Excerpt Shark Party By Michael Lee • September 22nd, 2022 The kinds of relationships people form in online spaces can be as meaningful and socially rewarding as physical encounters with human bodies.
Feature Excerpt The Horror of Finding a Home By Andrei Filote • August 25th, 2022 Path of Exile doesn’t end when the story concludes but when the player’s will to imagine the next character fails.
Feature Excerpt The Chaos Detective By Daryl Li • August 24th, 2022 The Return of the Obra Dinn supports a detective fantasy by casting the player into the role of textual interpreter who seeks to organize the chaos into coherent solution.
Feature Excerpt Misremembering DOOM By Ben Sailer • July 27th, 2022 In this revised reprint from 2018, Ben revisits the SNES version of DOOM, and destroys part of his childhood in the process.
Feature Excerpt Blue Keys on a Red Planet By Ollie Hardy • July 26th, 2022 An excerpt from Ollie Hardy’s cover story for our special all-DOOM edition of Unwinnable Monthly.
Feature Excerpt Why Aren’t There Treasure Chests in Demon’s Souls? By Jon Thumas • May 25th, 2022 Not having treasure chests is a provocative decision for a Japanese action RPG to have made in 2009, but it was far from a transgressive one.
Feature Excerpt Cyberpunk 2077 is a Haunted House By Alma Roda-Gil • May 24th, 2022 Just because death permeates Night City doesn’t mean it’s a privilege afforded to everyone.
Feature Excerpt Imagine the Possibilities By Noah Hertz • March 23rd, 2022 How a college course in Second Life taught me everything I needed to know about the Metaverse.
Feature Excerpt Missing Mediocrity By Van Dennis • March 22nd, 2022 The extinction of regular cars in racing games.
Feature Excerpt Hell is Other Shooters By Andrei Filote • February 22nd, 2022 If we organize our play to prepare for the demands of later life, then is it possible to create a new set of values simply by the games that we choose to play?
Feature Excerpt Comfort in the Abyss By Luke Rotella • February 21st, 2022 My relationship with That Night, Steeped By Blood River.
Feature Excerpt Become Cursed: Doubt By George Umbarger • January 21st, 2022 Slaying uncertainty via an unusual in-Spire-ation.
Feature Excerpt Children of the Night By Alma Roda-Gil • January 20th, 2022 Vampires, blood libel and Midnight Mass.
Feature Excerpt The Sixties That Weren’t, or, How Psychonauts 2 Forgets Politics By Christian Haines • December 22nd, 2021 Double Fine’s videogame Psychonauts 2 draws on the experimental energies of the 1960s only to mute that decade’s political fervor.
Feature Excerpt This Is My Favorite Shop in the Citadel By Emma Kostopolus • December 20th, 2021 The ethics of Mass Effect roleplay.
Feature Excerpt Roleplaying Freedom: Joel Rosenberg and White Fantasies of Oppression By Noah Berlatsky • November 23rd, 2021 Rosenberg’s depiction of liberation is less about those liberated and more about the moral awakening of the white liberator.
Feature Excerpt Rebels Without a Cause By Gerry Hart • November 19th, 2021 Watchdogs: Legion could have been a powerful or at least insightful piece of cultural commentary. It’s more like the Kylie Jenner Pepsi advert.
Feature Excerpt Pendragon and Anti-Fascist Medievalism By Ruth Cassidy • October 29th, 2021 “Camelot has, for the moment, fallen, but the dream of Camelot – of a sane Government by consensus, led by an Arthur and not a Mordred – must and will live on.”
Feature Excerpt A World Beyond: The Inadvertent Sci-Fi of Universal’s Original Mummy Sequels By Orrin Grey • October 27th, 2021 If you think about it, mummies are the original time travelers.
Feature Excerpt Blasting the Canon By Andrew Goddard • October 7th, 2021 What classical music can teach us about constructing a videogame canon
Feature Excerpt Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Crises of Faith By Ryan Stevens • October 6th, 2021 Assassin’s Creed has long been able culture clash, but what about clashes of faith?
Feature Excerpt On Orientalism and Exoticism in Videogame Music By William Dowell • August 18th, 2021 The insidious way that Orientalism exists in videogame music.
Feature Excerpt The Mutated City By Zsolt David • August 17th, 2021 The world living in the husk of another.
Feature Excerpt Ecstatic Truth in Games By Ben Rueter • July 28th, 2021 What nonfiction games offer if you can find them
Feature Excerpt Mother Loves You: Monstrous Parenthood in Amnesia: Rebirth By Emma Kostopolus • July 27th, 2021 There’s a deeper, more metatextual horror to Amnesia: Rebirth.
Feature Excerpt Podracing Towards an Absent Future By Samuel Kendall • July 26th, 2021 Because Star Wars isn’t really Star Wars anymore.
Feature Excerpt Imagining the Future in Games By Ruth Cassidy • June 24th, 2021 A vision of tomorrow, today!
Feature Excerpt The Personification of the House By Matthew Brown • June 22nd, 2021 The walls could always talk, we just have to listen.
Feature Excerpt Dancing in Solitude By Clint Morrison Jr. • June 10th, 2021 Dance has a long history of media representation during and following “plague” years.
Feature Excerpt Hidetaka Miyazaki’s Middle Earth By Jamie Redgate • April 29th, 2021 How does one go about making a modern fantasy touchstone?
Feature Excerpt Dungeons and Comrades: The Capitialism Catharsis of Going Under By Andrew Kiya • March 19th, 2021 “Disrupting” is great if by that you mean smashing up corporate hell.
