Run It Back 1979 2019 By Oluwatayo Adewole • December 1st, 2023 This month we turn our attention to Coppola’s 1979 epic Apocalypse Now, and more specifically to its 2019 Final Cut.
Eyeing Elsewhere Boots on the Ground By Phillip Russell • November 30th, 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon is a complicated film, less so because of the story it tells, and more so with how it’s told and by whom.
Noise Complaint On the Outside Looking Into Christian Hardcore By Ben Sailer • November 29th, 2023 Ben wonders what happened to all the Christian hardcore bands that once dominated VFW basements and Hot Topic shelves, and lands on a conclusion that reveals his own ignorance.
Funeral Rites ARC Turns Disaster Into a Fighting Chance By Emily Price • November 28th, 2023 While ARC is a TTRPG about the end of the world, it uses humor and warmth as often as horror to imagine what responding to the apocalypse actually looks like.
Feature Excerpt The Stories of Virtual Fragments By Clint Morrison Jr. • November 22nd, 2023 Modern games are littered with fragmented narratives, digital ephemera often left obscured or abstracted in their incompleteness.
Feature Story We Need to Talk About the Warrens By Orrin Grey • November 21st, 2023 There is plenty of evidence that the Warrens were hucksters who exploited vulnerable people for their own profit.
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – November 2023 By David Shimomura • November 17th, 2023 We’re not putting up the Christmas decorations yet.
Friction Burns Never to Return By Ruth Cassidy • November 15th, 2023 It feels like knowing Pyre’s secrets should remove its surface tensions, but a risk you know how to calculate just makes the gambles feel larger.
I Played It, Like, Twice... What You See in the Dark: Night and Day in Vampire Hunter By Orrin Grey • November 15th, 2023 Vampire Hunter is a fairly straightforward board game with one exception – you play it in the dark.
Nonhuman Meditations Where are the Giant Bats? By Alyssa Wejebe • November 14th, 2023 The shape of vampires could stretch and be more.
Here's the Thing Vampire, and the Importance of a Good Storyteller By Rob Rich • November 14th, 2023 Rob reminisces about his early days of tabletop RPGs, and how much a bad Storyteller in Vampire: The Masquerade almost torpedoed his interest entirely.
Forms in Light Parasites and Predation By Justin Reeve • November 10th, 2023 While Vampyr has been critically acclaimed for its narrative depth and gameplay mechanics, the architectural design is definitely worth a mention, being at once a thematic and functional cornerstone of the game.
Casting Deep Meteo One Thousand Year Old Vampire Hunter D By Levi Rubeck • November 8th, 2023 While watching Vampire Hunter D, one can’t help but connect it to the relatively recent solo role-playing game Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings.
Area of Effect Open World Vampires By Jay Castello • November 7th, 2023 The open world map is almost nothing but a center for consumption.
Interlinked Don’t Fear the Reaver By Phoenix Simms • November 3rd, 2023 Raziel, the tragic wraith protagonist of the Soul Reaver series, contains within his arc a nuanced portrayal of how an energy vampire is made and unmade.
Here Be Monsters A Different Sort of Vampire: The Endemic Issue Behind Redfall’s Critical Flop By Emma Kostopolus • November 2nd, 2023 Redfall is an excellent test case for how capitalist gamer culture has turned some gaming consumers into a particularly odious, never-satisfied group of soulsuckers.
Mind Palaces I Will Come Up With a Punny Title I Promise By Maddi Chilton • October 31st, 2023 Somewhere along the way in Redfall’s development someone should have asked: What is this game, and why are we making it?
This Mortal Coyle Hammer Horror Nightgown Ranking By Deirdre Coyle • October 27th, 2023 It’s easy to get lost in the aesthetic pleasures of Hammer’s smooching Draculas and bangin’ 1970s haircuts on 19th century characters; you might gloss over the more ethereal wardrobe choices.
Past Presence Taking the Cullens to Uniqlo By Emily Price • October 26th, 2023 You can wear Uniqlo anywhere. Its styling is bizarre and frequently, ugly. I don’t know of a better way to summarize Twilight’s fashion.
Funeral Rites Campfire Carnage Conjures the Real Monsters By Oluwatayo Adewole • October 25th, 2023 Campfire Carnage writer Valkyrie T. Loughcrewe sees potential for “campsite as being for horror games what a dungeon is to fantasy,” an iterative space through which you can tell all sorts of stories.
Feature Excerpt Killing the Vampire By Elijah Gonzalez • October 24th, 2023 Xenoblade Chronicles 3 exorcizes an age-old symbol of stagnation and exploitation to foreground a story about systemic change.
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – October 2023 By David Shimomura • October 20th, 2023 Vamps, the ones you’d expect and some others.
Here's the Thing Collecting Sucks and is Awesome By Rob Rich • October 12th, 2023 Rob reflects on the up and downs of toy collecting, and how some days he wishes he’d never started.
Forms in Light Building Baghdad By Justin Reeve • October 11th, 2023 Archaeological reconstruction is at best a double-edged sword, providing valuable insight into the past while grappling with a host of issues that challenge its accuracy and integrity.
Always Autumn When the Fire Falls From on High; Or, the Meteor Is Not a Metaphor By Autumn Wright • October 10th, 2023 Comparing the animation in scenes that appear both in its 2020 reveal trailer and the final product, it’s obvious that three years of something bad happened to Goodbye Volcano High.
Noah's Beat Box All the Content Warnings By Noah Springer • October 6th, 2023 Comedy and horror truly reside next to each other in some off-kilter way, balancing the truly debauched with the truly buffoonish.
Area of Effect Space in Translation By Jay Castello • October 4th, 2023 What Baldur’s Gate 3 loses in creativity by being a simulation, it gains in slapstick.
Rookie of the Year I Went to Miami During a Heat Wave So You Don’t Have To By Matt Marrone • October 3rd, 2023 If you’re thinking of going to the beach, don’t.
Interlinked Grounding The Games Industry By Phoenix Simms • September 29th, 2023 Games, despite all their innovative trappings, are trash. To be more specific – games can create a lot of socioeconomic trash.
Here Be Monsters RE7 as American Folk Horror By Emma Kostopolus • September 28th, 2023 Folk horror is having a minute in the scholarly study of horror.
Mind Palaces A Secret Third Thing By Maddi Chilton • September 27th, 2023 The Venture Bros. premiered in 2004. Seven seasons later, it finally gets its finale, or what amounts to one.
Past Presence Object Lessons #2: Smartphone By Emily Price • September 26th, 2023 How do you represent a technology that’s had an earthquake’s impact, that almost everyone owns and that has made our private lives public?
Funeral Rites Challenge Cult Horror with Maximum Mystic Punks Vol 2: Crypt By Alyssa Wejebe • September 25th, 2023 “I’ve always been fascinated with medieval crypts, ossuaries and mausoleums,” Mystic Punks series creator Anthony Meloro says. “So, placing a dungeon crawl in one is an obvious choice.”
Feature Excerpt May Chaos Take the World By Gerry Hart • September 22nd, 2023 The cosmology of Elden Ring’s world is complex and daunting even for veteran players, but there is little in the way of ambiguity with the Frenzied Flame.
Feature Excerpt AI is Advancing Rapidly – The Outer Worlds Tells Us Why That’s Bad By Mira Lazine • September 21st, 2023 The Outer Worlds gives us insight into what it’s like to live in a society run exclusively by corporations, but it also gives us insight into what it’s like to live in a world dominated by AI.
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – September 2023 By David Shimomura • September 18th, 2023 Remember remember, the 21st night of September.
Here's the Thing I’m Finally Going to Therapy By Rob Rich • September 15th, 2023 Therapy (and mental health in general, really) is still something of a taboo in our society, but now that Rob’s finally started going himself he’s started to realize how ridiculous that is.
Forms in Light Finding Lost Santos By Justin Reeve • September 14th, 2023 Carrying out a detailed comparison of GTA5’s Los Santos and Los Angeles through the lens of Michel Foucault sheds light on the intricate interplay between space, place, social order and power.
Noah's Beat Box An Adult Critique of Books for Children By Noah Springer • September 13th, 2023 You know what doesn’t get enough hate in Noah’s opinion? Children’s books.
