Mind Palaces Our World and the Others By Maddi Chilton • May 30th, 2023 Our scientific mindset, our modern rationalism is a handicap when attempting to represent the premodern, where the boundaries that we consider so key for understanding our world have no presence.
This Mortal Coyle Elora the Faun from Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage By Deirdre Coyle • May 26th, 2023 “I’m a faun, you dork!”
Past Presence Virtual Citizen By Emily Price • May 25th, 2023 A legend, per the OED, is “a story from ancient times about people and events that may or may not be true.” If the residents of Wild World are anything in my memory, they are that: ancient stories.
Funeral Rites Composing the World of Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City By Phoenix Simms • May 24th, 2023 Luka Rejec’s world is suffused with mind-expanding, psychedelic heavy metal and is also inspired by “the Dying Earth genre, and Oregon Trail games.”
Feature Story Whatever Knows Fear By Orrin Grey • May 23rd, 2023 The uncanny history of Marvel’s muck monster.
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – May 2023 By David Shimomura • May 16th, 2023 Welcome to myths and legends.
Here's the Thing The Importance of the Small Stuff in the RE4 Remake By Rob Rich • May 12th, 2023 Resident Evil 4 Remake has won Rob over, but a big reason why is because of all the really small things it’s changed and refined.
Forms in Light After Us By Justin Reeve • May 11th, 2023 There’s a remarkably prevalent misconception that if people suddenly disappeared from the planet, the environment would eventually return to how it was before we started transforming the landscape.
Casting Deep Meteo Beats and Feets at PAX East 2023 By Levi Rubeck • May 10th, 2023 PAX East 2023, mostly the same as it ever was. (A place with cool games!)
Rookie of the Year It Takes a Villager By Matt Marrone • May 9th, 2023 Are the villagers idiots? Or am I the village idiot?
Interlinked Less Punk and More Funk By Phoenix Simms • May 5th, 2023 What would a character like Daisy Fitzroy have been capable of if her script in Bioshock Infinite were handled by an African American writer with a Steamfunk sensibility?
Mind Palaces Honor Among Adaptations By Maddi Chilton • May 4th, 2023 A faithful adaptation can be satisfying, but an unfaithful adaptation can be invigorating.
Here Be Monsters Videogames and the Global Haunted House By Emma Kostopolus • May 3rd, 2023 The internet is now a place where creations such as SCP: Containment Breach can exist because of the cumulative creative and intellectual work of an entire community of people.
Self-Insert Cisswap By Amanda Hudgins • May 2nd, 2023 Known under many tags (including Rule 63, genderbending, gender swap, Always a Different Sex), cisswap is an fandom device most commonly used to make male characters women.
Run It Back 1994 By Oluwatayo Adewole • April 28th, 2023 The year of John Wayne Gacy’s execution, Jeffrey Dahmer’s baptism and John Waters’ suburban comedy Serial Mom.
Eyeing Elsewhere What Are Ya Buyin’? By Phillip Russell • April 27th, 2023 From what I’ve played of Resident Evil 4 Remake thus far, I’ve come to feel that while I am immensely enjoying the game, I wonder why it exists.
Noise Complaint Calling In a Noise Complaint By Ben Sailer • April 26th, 2023 After four and a half years of writing the Collision Detection column, Ben starts something new by going back to something old.
Funeral Rites After Ragnarok: Featuring Colin Le Sueur By Oluwatayo Adewole • April 24th, 2023 It’s a bold move for Le Sueur to make a Norse-inspired Souls-like tabletop roleplaying game, and yet he manages to avoid some extremely fraught territory.
Feature Excerpt The Future Will Forget Us By Ben Thorp • April 21st, 2023 Season and Pentiment on how art fails to capture our complicated present.
Feature Excerpt What Video Games Did to Haunting By Nathan Schmidt • April 20th, 2023 Where are all the haunted videogames?
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – April 2023 By David Shimomura • April 18th, 2023 New look, same writers!
Here's the Thing You’re Not Actually Mad At Mobile Games By Rob Rich • April 13th, 2023 Rob explains how all the mobile game hate isn’t really about mobile games at all.
Forms in Light A New Era By Justin Reeve • April 12th, 2023 Fires are frequently a source of positive change in the real world, at least from an historical perspective.
Area of Effect Moving Sitting Still By Jay Castello • April 11th, 2023 Skipping between the individual characters’ stories requires continent-hopping, back and forth over and over across the map.
Rookie of the Year Breath of the Elevator By Matt Marrone • April 7th, 2023 My son went right back down the elevator again. Then he went up again. Then down. Then up. Then, at last, he opened the map, traveled to another shrine, and went down that elevator.
Interlinked Rolling Up By Phoenix Simms • April 6th, 2023 We Love Katamari and the series it’s a part of is about the alchemy of persistence at its core. You take what’s available to you and turn it into a star.
Collision Detection Light the Beam By Ben Sailer • April 5th, 2023 As a lapsed and reformed Sacramento Kings fan, Ben learns that sometimes backing a loser is the winningest thing you can do.
Mind Palaces Eat, Prey, Love By Maddi Chilton • April 4th, 2023 The question at the heart of Prey is whether Morgan is more human than alien.
Funeral Rites The Neon Nightmare of Portents of the Degloved Hand By Emily Price • March 31st, 2023 Portents of the Degloved Hand’s promotional material describes its purpose as adding “additional chaos, misfortune, and even dark humor” to MÖRK BORG.
Here Be Monsters Every Game is Happy Death Day By Emma Kostopolus • March 30th, 2023 Videogames, with their very direct focus on death and rebirth as a normal part of play, are uniquely positioned to get us thinking about the horrors of our own mortality.
This Mortal Coyle Skyrim and Existential Angst Redux By Deirdre Coyle • March 29th, 2023 Why can’t I marry Serana? I would like to take this up with Todd Howard personally.
Self-Insert Thread Fics By Amanda Hudgins • March 28th, 2023 In a lot of ways, Twitter is the home of the thread fic and when it goes, so will they.
Run It Back 1982 By Oluwatayo Adewole • March 24th, 2023 This month we’re taking on two grand pieces of homoeroticism, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film Querelle and Judas Priest’s Screaming for Vengeance.
Eyeing Elsewhere Behind the Camera By Phillip Russell • March 23rd, 2023 While the subjects of Minding the Gap share a love for skateboarding, the heart of the documentary lies in the shared histories and traumas surrounding domestic abuse.
Feature Excerpt The Environmental Horror of Elden Ring By Kathryn Hemmann • March 22nd, 2023 Caelid resists the post-apocalyptic fantasy that the detrimental effects of human activity on the environment are temporary and reversible.
Feature Excerpt Hope and Sacrifice in Andor By Kiernan Elam • March 21st, 2023 Andor paints a clear and lucid picture of the absolute power authoritarians can wield over people and how cruel fascism must be in order to preserve that power.
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – March 2023 By David Shimomura • March 16th, 2023 Another brick thrown against the wall.
Here's the Thing When We Love Something Bad By Rob Rich • March 15th, 2023 Rob contradicts himself by exploring the idea that it can be okay to enjoy something we know is problematic, despite itself.