I Played It, Like, Twice... Coded Capers: Counting Clues in Scooby-Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion By Orrin Grey • May 15th, 2024 The moment seems ripe for an escape room-style Scooby-Doo game like this, as the show feels poised in the cultural zeitgeist right now.
The Black Rainbow Society By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • May 13th, 2024 Best beware when you’re walking on the nightside!
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.
Learning to Love the Mountain While Getting Over It By Joshua M. Henson • May 9th, 2024 To begin the task of climbing was to promise myself that I could reach the summit.
Casting Deep Meteo PAX East 2024: Family Time By Levi Rubeck • May 8th, 2024 We wandered the show floor and the convention center for two days, getting boba, shitty pizza and standing in plenty of lines. All in service of the greater question: What’s the youth take on gaming today?
Inazuma Eleven Deserves More Triumphs and Trophies By Quinn Quimby • May 7th, 2024 For everything weird about it, I can’t stop myself from coming back to Inazuma Eleven. In the midst of the absurd is heart – for every weird alien subplot or time travel conspiracy is hundreds of moments filled with incredible depth.
Area of Effect A Wilderness of Thoughts Grown in Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley By Jay Castello • May 7th, 2024 The garden is not the park, although the tension of its civilizing influence is never resolved.
Bryan Ansell, 1955-2023 By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • May 6th, 2024 A giant of tabletop remembered.
Rookie of the Year Minecraft Menagerie By Matt Marrone • May 3rd, 2024 So . . . how many pandas does it take to crash Minecraft?
Mind Palaces Empathetic Magic By Maddi Chilton • May 2nd, 2024 Wiktor’s entire mode of interaction with the world is one of applied empathy, concentrated and made into magic through the indefinite occultisms of thaumaturgy.
Exploits Feature The Impossibility of Mods Makes Them So Valuable By Elijah Beahm • May 1st, 2024 Why would anyone do this, with minimal support, working uphill against someone else’s code, for free?
A Tale of Game Restrictions By Zonghang Zhou • April 30th, 2024 “I know what you want better than you do, and I am doing this for your own good.” Such blatant patronizing attitudes reveal the inherent disparity of identity between adults and minors.
This Mortal Coyle The Lyktgubbe from Bramble: The Mountain King By Deirdre Coyle • April 30th, 2024 My adult brain feels desperate to chase after lights in the forest, lights I haven’t seen in some time. As a child, I knew better.
Gameplayers By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • April 29th, 2024 Where does the game end and real life begin?
Slay the Princess Again and Again and Again By Phil Hoare • April 26th, 2024 Do I want to watch the gruesome deaths in a film such as Saw? Not particularly, but I won’t be beaten by the film either
Friction Burns Surveillance Paranoia Where You Most and Least Expect It By Ruth Cassidy • April 25th, 2024 When Life Eater takes away access, you realize just what you were getting from it.
Funeral Rites The Tower, The Fool, The Meatgrinder By Noah Springer • April 23rd, 2024 “His Majesty the Worm is very focused on megadungeon-crawling, and I wanted players to have this sense that surviving the dangers means something.”
Star Trek: The Role Playing Game By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • April 22nd, 2024 Set phasers to stun!
Rebuilding Derceto with Alone in the Dark’s Developers By Elijah Beahm • April 18th, 2024 “In the horror genre, it’s key to make everything feel grounded in the world you’re creating. How all details must feel as a natural part of the environment, no object is there purely by accident; it has its own story to tell.”
Feature Excerpt It’s Not a Loop, It’s a Spiral By Autumn Wright • April 18th, 2024 Maybe Alan Wake is like me. Maybe I’m like Alan. Trying to write my way out. Maybe the writing is just incidental to this compulsion, something we’re drawn to.
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – April 2024 By David Shimomura • April 16th, 2024 Blake’s back. Autumn is here for Spring.
Turn of the Zillennial By Perry Gottschalk • April 12th, 2024 This is the real lesson of Emily is Away and the series as a whole. It isn’t a statement that over time, friendships fade. It’s that the experiences you have with them are vastly more personal than who you were at the time.
Forms in Light Disdain and Devotion By Justin Reeve • April 11th, 2024 Similar to how some videogame levels have been criticized but later hailed as masterpieces, many buildings have transcended their initial criticism to become beloved landmarks.
Casting Deep Meteo Mega Man X Doesn’t Begin Until Dr. Light Sings “My Blue Suit” By Levi Rubeck • April 9th, 2024 Gamers have some idea of flow state but we do not debase ourselves with general gamerisms here.
Brain Scratch Puzzling-er and Puzzling-er By Steven Nguyen Scaife • April 8th, 2024 Do the really good puzzle games pull more players than normal through to the very end, able to string them along with the pure thrill of discovery and positive reinforcement?
Dragon’s Lair By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • April 8th, 2024 There may be a million ways to die, but you’re probably only going to see the first two or three.
Area of Effect Some Questions I Personally Find Interesting About Paint By Jay Castello • April 5th, 2024 Cloud Strife might be a cleric. Yes, sorry, I’m talking about the yellow paint.
I Played It Like Twice... But Not Too Bold: Building a Better Dungeon in Boss Monster By Orrin Grey • April 3rd, 2024 The real draw of both Boss Monster and Overboss is the low-res pixel art of side-scrolling dungeon rooms (in the former case) and top-down overworlds (in the latter).
Interlinked A 16-Bit Memorial Garden By Phoenix Simms • April 3rd, 2024 If All the World and Love were Young is not only a stunning elegy for Stephen Sexton’s mother, but an ekphrastic piece about the nature of play and memory.
Why Max Hass Matters By Joshua M. Henson • April 1st, 2024 The act of resisting the Nazi occupation with violence is not enough. The Resistance must also revolt via empathy towards those that fascism casts aside.
Exploits Feature Liminality: Fear of Transition By Kasio Dalton • April 1st, 2024 “It’s a terrifying suggestion that someone might call a transitory space home.”
Arkham By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • April 1st, 2024 If the Colour is out of Space it should maybe consider weeding some of its shelves, amirite?
Friction Burns (Sometimes) Literally Unwinnable By Ruth Cassidy • March 29th, 2024 It would be easy for Mosa Lina to feel like an opponent to conquer, but instead it feels like we’re on the same team.
Past Presence Octopia is a Sweet Farming Sim That Rewrites Eastward’s History By Emily Price • March 29th, 2024 Simple stories don’t have to overcomplicate themselves to be good.
Funeral Rites Between the Skies and Beyond the Horizon By Justin Reeve • March 28th, 2024 Designer Huffa Frobes-Cross refers to Between the Skies as “rules minimalist, fiction maximalist.”
Melting Time With Autoexec Games By Elijah Beahm • March 27th, 2024 “Our players really love overcoming challenges. Forming a great strategy, incorporating all your echoes, slowly watching it come together. It’s been incredible to see people play. I don’t think there’s a better feeling as a game dev.”
Feature Excerpt Ueda, Buddha & Me By Perry Gottschalk • March 27th, 2024 Don’t come to these games as experts of others, come to these games as someone who has never played one.
Caverns of Thracia By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • March 25th, 2024 Are you brave enough to face the Minotaur King?
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – March 2024 By David Shimomura • March 19th, 2024 In which I lay the groundwork for spring/summer surprises.