Feature Excerpt Friday Nights in the Hostile Environment By Rob Haines • January 28th, 2019 British developer PanicBarn’s Not Tonight offers a Brexit-flavored critique of the past ten years of the hostile environment.
Feature Excerpt Teaching Crunch By Melissa Brinks • January 28th, 2019 Many students enter the video game industry well aware of its infamous crunch culture. After all, their colleges groomed them for it.
Feature Excerpt Videogames in Kuwait By David Wolinsky and Tali XOXO • January 7th, 2019 David Wolinsky and Tali XOXO share their impressions of GX and Kuwait Battle Royale.
Feature Excerpt Go to Jail: The Complicated World of Pirated Board Games By Ryan Cooper • January 7th, 2019 Tabletop Simulator lets board game fans recreate their favorite games and craft a globalized shared space. . . even if that means breaking a few laws to do so.
Feature Excerpt Scorched Earth By Devin Raposo • January 7th, 2019 Fornite’s 50v50 mode can feel like performance art or improvisational city-planning, with outcomes based more on luck than coordination.
Feature Excerpt Crack the Network: It’s Called Cyberpunk Not Cybersecurity By Liam Conlon • November 23rd, 2018 While disappointed by Cyberpunk 2077’s announcement to exclude a non-binary option, Conlon thinks it’s necessary to desire more than small kernels of representation.
Feature Excerpt Flash Forever By Phantom • November 21st, 2018 A history of the delightful weirdness of Flash games.
Feature Excerpt God of Shame By Kenneth Shepard • November 1st, 2018 Violence is a language with meaning in God of War, rather than the gratuitous thrill of the game’s predecessors. And this legacy is exactly what Kratos means to hide from his son.
Feature Excerpt A History in Translation By Odile Strik • October 25th, 2018 Heaven’s Vault turns learning a language into a game mechanic.
Feature Excerpt Your Hands Are Always Tied By Adam Goodall • September 27th, 2018 A card game wrestles with the darker side of the clothing production and its own mission to change how players see the world.
Feature Excerpt Climbing the Virtual Mountain By Rowan Evans • August 23rd, 2018 When rendered in videogames, a mountain becomes more than an obstacle. They’re living sites, where introspection, healing and learning take place.
Feature Excerpt Never Alone Again (Digitally) By Gavin Craig and David Wolinsky • August 20th, 2018 Meditations and musings on the lack of solitary videogame experiences, and what that might mean.
Feature Excerpt For She Has Tasted the Fruit By Katherine Cross • August 1st, 2018 In a universe divided by Sith and Jedi, Knights of the Old Republic 2’s Kreia forges her own philosophy in one of Star Wars’ rare instances of feminism.
Feature Excerpt The In-game Museum By Daniel Fries • July 26th, 2018 Devoid of physical limitations, games examine what museums represent and what they soon could be.
Feature Excerpt Skin Deep By Malindy Hetfeld • July 25th, 2018 For a modern racial allegory, David Cage repeats a lot of history’s mistakes
Feature Excerpt A New York Adventure By Alyssa Hatmaker • July 12th, 2018 The Blackwell Convergence captures the ambiance and rumble of “old” New York as it tells the story behind one author’s decades-long writer’s block.
Feature Excerpt Remembering Doom on SNES By Ben Sailer • July 12th, 2018 Doom for the Super Nintendo was an incredible feat of technical trickery. It’s also my favorite game of all time that I never want to play again.
Feature Excerpt Gorogoa and the Power of the Frame By Rachel Watts • July 2nd, 2018 An exploration into how the beautifully crafted puzzle game Gorogoa uses the power of framing and panel composition to create a unique puzzle mechanic and an immersive storytelling technique.
Feature Excerpt The Mass Effect Issue: At All Costs By David Shimomura • June 6th, 2018 Humanity never needed Cerberus.
Another Look The Mass Effect Issue: Artificial Immortality By Yussef Cole • June 6th, 2018 Mass Effect makes us question our preconceived notions about artificial intelligence.
Feature Excerpt The Origins of Assassin’s Creed By Yussef Cole • April 20th, 2018 Yussef Cole explores the complex relationship between Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Egypt and blackness.
Excerpt The Games of Appalachia By Dylan Bishop • April 11th, 2018 If game development can flourish in the foothills of West Virginia, it can also crop up in a small town near you.
Excerpt The Man of Many Ways By Kate Gray • March 21st, 2018 Was it Mario who blinded the cyclops or Odysseus? I forget.
Feature Excerpt Observer’s Videogame Aesthetic By Edward Smith • February 26th, 2018 It is not discursive or a broad parable; Observer’s themes are emotional and less tangible.
Feature Excerpt Peaks and Valleys in Observer By Reid McCarter • February 22nd, 2018 Reid McCarter explores a cyberpunk landscape made of emotions and memories.
Feature Excerpt Social Media Life Crisis By Denis Farr • January 30th, 2018 On social media, videogames and the Self.
Feature Excerpt A Tale of Two Worlds By Yussef Cole • January 24th, 2018 The more perfect the theme park, the larger its landfills.
Feature Excerpt Lasagna Cat and the Internet We Lost By David Wolinsky • January 16th, 2018 David Wolinsky talks to Jeffrey Max and Zach Johnson – collectively known as Fatal Frame – about the return of Lasagna Cat and the internet we used to have.
Feature Excerpt A Most Curious Black Hole By Maxwell Neely-Cohen • December 21st, 2017 Is Crusader Kings II a strategy game? A simulation of history? A storytelling engine? Maxwell Neely-Cohen dives into the black hole to find out.
Feature Excerpt Localize It! By Jun Wilkinson • December 20th, 2017 Earthbound is a masterpiece of localization. How did they do it?
Feature Excerpt The Successful Sidescroller By Aron Garst • December 6th, 2017 What makes a successful sidescroller? Aron Garst turns to the developers of Shovel Knight and Runbow to find out.
Feature Excerpt Industrial Waste is Good for You By Agustin Lopez • December 1st, 2017 Don’t worry about all that trash our society produces – we’re going to need it to survive the post-apocalypse.
Feature Excerpt I, Murderspy – An Excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly 96 By Bill Coberly • November 9th, 2017 Good or bad, the Mass Effect‘s murderspy Commander Shepard is always right.
Feature Excerpt Gods & Astronauts – An Excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly 96 By Oliver Milne • November 1st, 2017 If space is the final frontier for science, how come so many scientists and science fiction writers use the language of religion to describe it?
Hit the Pavement – An Excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly 95 By Ryan Cooper • September 20th, 2017 Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a game about storytelling, so Ryan Cooper sets out to find a story to tell. He starts by picking up a hitchhiker…
Seeing Whilst Sleeping – An Excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly 94 By Rachel Watts • August 23rd, 2017 Sleep. Dream. Play.
The Gothiest Dad – An Excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly 94 By Deirdre Coyle • August 22nd, 2017 Dream Daddy’s goth dad gets (almost) everything right about goth.
Whatever Happened to the Startup Sound? – An Excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly 93 By Jordan Oloman • July 31st, 2017 What do Frank Ocean, Lil B, Sonic 06 and Max Coburn have in common? They’ve been seduced by the allure of the system startup sound.
Meeting Diane – An Excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly 93 By Logan Ludwig • July 27th, 2017 With Twin Peaks: The Return, David Lynch and Mark Frost built a machine to confound the expectations of viewers. Diane is that machine’s perfect creation.
Separate Invisibilities – An Excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly 92 By Yussef Cole • June 23rd, 2017 Invisibility is impossible when you’re black.