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.
A Time to Harvest By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • March 20th, 2023 Maybe don’t go collecting rocks and folklore in the hills of Vermont?
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.
Forms in Light Best Games Architecture of 2022 By Justin Reeve • March 14th, 2023 The fourth annual roundup of the best architecture in games.
The Maze of Peril By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • March 13th, 2023 Down we go into the depths again!
Casting Deep Meteo Managing Minds and Blue Fascists at PAX Unplugged 2022 By Levi Rubeck • March 10th, 2023 Levi plays a few games and waxes a little nostalgic at PAX Unplugged.
Rookie of the Year ChatBOTW By Matt Marrone • March 9th, 2023 With a deadline fast approaching and no good idea about how to ridicule himself this month, Matt asks ChatGPT to take a crack at his column.
Interlinked What We Make From the Ruins By Phoenix Simms • March 8th, 2023 Phoenix chats with the lead game narrative designer of The Archipelago about writing a game that explores both the political and personal.
Collision Detection Learning to Love Roguelikes with Deathloop By Ben Sailer • March 7th, 2023 Ben plays Deathloop and finally gets roguelikes, showing that sometimes all it takes for a genre to click is a change of context and perspective.
Mind Palaces Almost All About Eve By Maddi Chilton • March 3rd, 2023 She was flagrantly, cheerfully, and simply bisexual. Odd that her biographer did not seem to have noticed this.
Here Be Monsters Dead Space’s Unsettling Colonialism By Emma Kostopolus • March 2nd, 2023 If you’ve been reading this column, like, at all, you know that praise must always be coupled with loving criticism.
Past Presence Being So Normal By Emily Price • February 28th, 2023 Sally Rooney books are basically Victorian novels in millennial form, Middlemarch if Dorothea and Lydgate had cell phones and email.
The Beat Box Enter the Wu-Tang By Noah Springer • February 24th, 2023 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and something like the 18th anniversary of Noah listening to it.
Funeral Rites Capturing Wonder and Play in Kosmosaurs By Phillip Russell • February 23rd, 2023 Diogo Nogueira’s most recent release, Kosmosaurs, harkens back to the classic aesthetics of pulp science fiction novels, but with a twist – dinosaurs!
Feature Excerpt Lifelong Friends are Made in Dead and Dying Games By Brian Lee-Mounger Hendershot • February 22nd, 2023 Videogames lost something special when developers pivoted from server browsers to matchmaking. A small group of players show us what we’re missing.
Feature Excerpt A Ride Through the Objective Field of Passion By Braden Timss • February 21st, 2023 Disneyland is a place where one can fall backward from the future to the frontier days of the American westward expansion without the slightest struggle, physical or cognitive.
Zine Month Roundtable By John McGuire • February 20th, 2023 Featuring special guests Tony Vasinda, Adam Vass and Levi Combs!
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – February 2023 By David Shimomura • February 17th, 2023 Statistically, no one can spell February correctly on the first try.
Here's the Thing Grappling With Game Pass By Rob Rich • February 14th, 2023 A brief sojourn with Xbox Game Pass helps Rob come around on the concept of online game streaming.
This Mortal Coyle Get Her What She Really Wants for Valentine’s Day and Avoid the Wrath of the Ancient Ones By Deirdre Coyle • February 13th, 2023 A holiday gift guide that just might save your skin.
Dungeons & Dragons Toys in 2023 By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • February 13th, 2023 Everything old is new again. Again.
Forms in Light Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire By Justin Reeve • February 10th, 2023 Dishonored is a game which harkens back to a time when protection for working people was practically nonexistent, ruthless exploitation being the rule.
Always Autumn A Golden Halo That Could Be the Sun Part I: Whose Apocalypse Is This? By Autumn Wright • February 9th, 2023 What does the beauty of a world born anew look like from the depths?
Casting Deep Meteo Mapping MÖRK BORG’s Cruel Delights By Levi Rubeck • February 8th, 2023 Then it hit me, like a dirty lightbulb in an ancient office that’s gone undisturbed for far too long – I can draw these rooms.
Area of Effect “The Abundant Nature” By Jay Castello • February 7th, 2023 The only thing I remembered from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s advertisement cycle was the shot where they cut to a deeply bland outdoor scene overlaid with the phrase in question.
Exploits Feature The Beauty of Backlog By Connor Queen • February 3rd, 2023 Speak to most gamers, and they’ll probably tell you the same thing: Backlogs are annoying.
Rookie of the Year No Rules Newport By Matt Marrone • February 3rd, 2023 Something happened at the most recent Newport Folk Festival – Sylvan Esso debuted their as-yet-to-be-released and previously-unheard album, No Rules Sandy – for the first time.
Interlinked The Triple Goddess Effect By Phoenix Simms • February 2nd, 2023 Like Hades protagonist Zagreus, Melinoë is also connected to an Orphic hymn, this time one that sings of her as a “saffron veil’d” nymph that inspires both night terrors and madness in people.
Exploits Feature Biking the Beat By Autumn Wright • February 1st, 2023 “After biking some 2,000 miles in the city last year, my memories of my new home are tied to rides and their soundtracks.”
Mind Palaces Athletic Feats of Narrative By Maddi Chilton • January 31st, 2023 Experiencing a story as it happens, one where an ending hasn’t been decided – that is what gives sports their fun and their nerve.
Cairn By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • January 30th, 2023 Part two of our series on ultra-light RPGs, this one mashes up Into the Odd and Knave!
Here Be Monsters Can Scorn Get Out From Under the Cosmic Horror Legacy? By Emma Kostopolus • January 27th, 2023 Scorn and other sci-fi horror games like it rely almost entirely on the horror of the unknown – the unknowable, the inconceivable, and the, well, alien.