Unwinnable Monthly – November 2025
This is a reprint of the letter from the editor in Unwinnable Monthly Issue 193. You can buy Issue 193 now, or purchase a monthly subscription to make sure you never miss an issue!
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Dear Reader,
It really feels like the spoopy season leaves us too soon. This time of year, I’m constantly thinking about how if Halloween didn’t hold the door for many of us then Christmas would be on the shelf basically as soon as summer began to wane. Maybe even right in the heart of fireworks season for those of us in the United States.
This month we’re highlighting James Tocchio and a tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto. Cover by Daniel Gomez Vega.
And now, the regular people doing their regular thing. Oluwatayo Adewole winds thing back to 1964. Elijah Beahm exerts Control. Jay Castello digs into the enlightening friction of Lumiose City. Maddi Chilton puts down a book, turns on the TV and finds it is full of gender. Sara Clemens is back! Everyone say hi to Sara! Emma Kostopolus laments the loss of everything we had in Resident Evil 4. Matt Marrone is the most athletic person to ever contribute to this magazine and he has the silverware to prove it. Natasha Ochshorn writes about a bunch of kids airplaning around. Emily Price is trapped in the House that Emma longs to be. Justin Reeve is lost in the woods. Rob Rich wants you have some moral fortitude. Levi Rubeck is the bane of dragons. No, not those dragons. Phoenix Simms also goes to the house with Emily. Secret theme issue unlocked! Noah Springer should be emailed relentlessly about his feelings on a certain band from California. Alyssa Wejebe gets radical!
I’d also like to take a moment to remember another luminary gone before their time, Rebecca Heineman. Looking through her credits, which are many and storied, I think my first encounter with her work was Battle Chess. This was the first and probably last videogame my dad had any respect for and though neither of us are high level chess players, our ability to play chess with each other stems directly from this game.
Heineman was a luminary in the truest sense of the word, not just an inspiration but a natural light-giver. One of the first and truest gamers, a person who played to work and worked so we could play. Her credits have such a deep echo in our space, an echo perhaps only rivaled in its depth by the ferocity of her advocacy. She made wonderful games but she also made games wonderful.
We always lose people before their time, however. No one is here forever, and we’ll always wish for one more day, one more chance to tell someone their work impacted us, moved us and kept us. I edit a videogame magazine; I don’t need to convince you I take this kind of seriously. But we can all take it a little more meaningfully by sharing the thing we love with another person and thanking the people who made it (and certainly not the CEOs who want you to think they did) possible for us to do that.
Thanks Rebecca.
See you all in the next Exploits!
David Shimomura
Chicago, IL
November 17, 2025
