Funeral Rites Smelting RPGs Down to Simple Bliss with Outcast Silver Raiders By Justin Reeve • July 26th, 2024 “Perhaps out of a sense of satire or perhaps just because I really like horror movies, metal and the occult, I wanted to create something that would have been absolutely forbidden in my house.”
Feature Excerpt The World Outside the Glass was Almost Gorgeous By Will Borger • July 25th, 2024 The first step to solving a problem is admitting a problem exists, and the role you played in causing it. None of us are innocent.
Feature Excerpt The Games Space By Jay Castello • July 24th, 2024 Geoff is excited for videogames at Opening Night Live in August. Geoff is excited for videogames at the Game Awards in December. Geoff is excited for videogames at Summer Game Fest in June. Soon it will be August again.
Letter to a Heroine Bobot Bobot and the Power of Cute By Melissa King • July 23rd, 2024 Mel’s back with an essay praising the most important heroine of all: herself.
Nonhuman Meditations Godzilla: From Nuclear Trauma to Emotionally Recovering in the Colosseum By Alyssa Wejebe • July 22nd, 2024 While Godzilla was created from nuclear warfare – he’s ultimately not his creator. Or he doesn’t have to be.
Here's the Thing Godzilla’s Legacy of Humans By Rob Rich • July 19th, 2024 Rob has always rolled his eyes whenever people complain about spending too much time with the people in Godzilla films, and watching Monarch: Legacy of Monsters gave him even more Strong Opinions on the subject.
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – July 2024 By David Shimomura • July 19th, 2024 It’s Skinner’s game industry.
Forms in Light Taming the Beast By Justin Reeve • July 18th, 2024 The tale of Japan’s Bubble Economy and the metaphorical devastation wrought by Godzilla provides valuable lessons for the future of generations everywhere.
Always Autumn Hoplophobia By Autumn Wright • July 17th, 2024 In the great tradition of obscuring the true big bad of its story, the ostensible antagonist of Chainsaw Man is a compelling kaiju.
Area of Effect Can You Kill the Dog? By Jay Castello • July 16th, 2024 If Cerberus’s anger is anything to go by, this may be a more nuanced look at the mythology the Hades games pull from.
The Burnt Offering A Little Lecture on the Biggest Beasts of Tabletop Roleplaying Games By Stu Horvath • July 11th, 2024 Tabletop roleplaying games crossed paths with kaiju in utero.
Interlinked Oh Mothra, Advance With Silk and Song By Phoenix Simms • July 10th, 2024 Mothra is at once an icon of ritual and tradition as well as one of feminine transgression.
This Mortal Coyle Purrcy from Mystic Mansion By Deirdre Coyle • July 9th, 2024 I find myself thinking about how Purrcy fits into the kawaii template of vulnerability and harmlessness. Purrcy does have these visual signifiers. I do want to help him. I am also terrified of him.
The Guest Monsterfucking By Amanda Hudgins • July 5th, 2024 Monsterfucking is about showing a mirror to the monstrosity within – both in terms of society and in terms of the relationships between the parties involved.
Past Presence Killing the Dragon By Emily Price • July 3rd, 2024 Both Dungeon Meshi and the Katamari franchise ask you to zoom in and look closely, keep your eyes peeled for small details, and never forget them even when they’re a speck on the surface of a massive star.
Run It Back Cute By Oluwatayo Adewole • July 2nd, 2024 Kawaii is consumed by the West as beauty without threat, whereas the very designation of Blackness is full of threat. What does it mean for a Black woman to try and be “cute?”
Noise Complaint Kawaii, Kaiju, and Guitar Pedals: Window Shopping With Effects Bakery By Ben Sailer • June 28th, 2024 Ben falls in love with an impossibly cute guitar pedal company that brings kawaii style and rock and roll together.
Funeral Rites The Capricious Gifts Found in Portents of a Dying God By Noah Springer • June 27th, 2024 Soul-crushing realities are something that MÖRK BORG tends to revel in, so it’s nice to see that Matt Johnson’s newest deck offers the same type of disastrous opportunities.
626 Day This is Your Badness Level: Lilo & Stitch and Mental Health By Orrin Grey • June 26th, 2024 As a weird kid myself, who grew up into a weird adult, it’s easy to see aspects of myself in both Lilo and Stitch – and I’m not alone.
Feature Story Minus One Is King By David Shimomura • June 26th, 2024 Everyone has trauma. Godzilla is definitely still cool but he’s deeply threatening and he probably hates you.
Feature Story Making a Mess in Kaiju No. 8 By Van Dennis • June 25th, 2024 Kaiju No. 8 is a wonderfully refreshing series: a show about someone in their early 30s who finds out that their dream is still achievable, even if it’s by unconventional means.
Here's the Thing ACAB Includes Martin Brody By Rob Rich • June 13th, 2024 Roy Scheider’s depiction of Amity Island police chief Martin Brody is charming, sweet, and charismatic. But that doesn’t make him any less of a bastard.
Forms in Light The First City By Justin Reeve • June 12th, 2024 What do the settlement of Plainsong in Horizon Forbidden West and the Neolithic city of Çatalhöyük have in common?
Always Autumn The Worst Case Scenario By Autumn Wright • June 11th, 2024 It’s worth asking whether people in the past thought they lived at the end times. It’s worth more to realize that despite the recurring sentiment, we do.
Casting Deep Meteo Zazen Boys and the Healing Riff By Levi Rubeck • June 7th, 2024 Zazen Boys, even after so long, is clearly not afraid to confront multiple shades of life, breaking time and time signatures while remaining achingly human.
Area of Effect Supergiant’s Scrappier, Better Underworld By Jay Castello • June 6th, 2024 So much of Hades, and by extension Hades II, can be seen in the primordial soup of Pyre.
Rookie of the Year If You Can’t Wed It, Reddit By Matt Marrone • June 5th, 2024 Reddit seems to actually care when no one else does.
Interlinked Intergenerational Design By Phoenix Simms • June 4th, 2024 Despite all the technical aspects of game design, it’s human involvement that makes the process vibrant and organic.
Here Be Monsters I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream: The Terror of Tamagotchi By Emma Kostopolus • May 31st, 2024 This is not a cute piece of nerd nostalgia, but a brutal PsyOp designed to drive us to the brink of despair.
Mind Palaces Booking It (Vol. 1) By Maddi Chilton • May 30th, 2024 Maddi sets out to read the International Booker Prize longlist, 13 books from around the world that were translated into English within the last year.
This Mortal Coyle The Gothic Writer from Game of Vampires By Deirdre Coyle • May 29th, 2024 Do I love this game, or do I hate it? Am I being a downer because of latent mobile game snobbery?
Run It Back 1966 By Oluwatayo Adewole • May 28th, 2024 Much like Isherwood, Capote’s writing relies on a gay fly-on-the-wall positioning.
Noise Complaint May 2024 By Ben Sailer • May 24th, 2024 There’s no reason to believe there’s some sort of age cutoff where your place on stage has to be replaced with a seat at the bar.
Funeral Rites Sailing the Ashen Sea with Tephrotic Nightmares By Maddi Chilton • May 23rd, 2024 The strongest character in the setting – the most vivid, the most realized, and the most overwhelming – is the Ashen Sea itself.
Feature Excerpt An Attempt Against Muscular Demonstrations of Power: Child of Light at Ten By Luis Aguasvivas • May 22nd, 2024 A decade after its release, the whimsy of Ubisoft Montreal’s Child of Light still twinkles.
Noah's Beat Box Post-Truth Beef By Noah Springer • May 21st, 2024 This may become known as the first post-truth beef in hip hop.
Here's the Thing MST3K and My New Appreciation for Bad Movies By Rob Rich • May 14th, 2024 The semi-recent discovery of a perpetual Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathon has made Rob realize that a lot of bad movies really aren’t so bad. On paper, anyway.
Forms in Light Stone to Screen By Justin Reeve • May 10th, 2024 The monumental structures at Göbekli Tepe offer plenty of potential for modern fields of study including videogame level design.
Noah's Beat Box Going to Extremes By Noah Springer • May 9th, 2024 Drawing lines between Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things and Nikos Nikolaidis’ cult favorite Singapore Sling. Did the latter influence the former?