Revving the Engine Network Effects By Phoenix Simms • May 26th, 2022 Pull Stay is personal, pulling from solo developer Nito Souji’s experience as a hikikomori, his unique sense of humor and his favorite genre of beat ‘em ups.
Revving the Engine Beyond the Backdrop By Levi Rubeck • April 20th, 2022 The digital scene maker RPGScenery helps pen and paper RPG game masters visualize their stories while making combat scenes more immersive and manageable.
Interlinked Reverse-Engineering a Living Archive By Phoenix Simms • March 31st, 2022 Creative ideas in games, just like politics in games, don’t exist in isolation. Everything is a remix.
Another Look Killing My People By Yussef Cole • March 4th, 2022 My mother once walked in on my brother and I playing a PlayStation game called SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs. She interrupted our session, asking why we were “killing our people?”
Collision Detection Pressing Pause By Ben Sailer • March 2nd, 2022 Ben gets his year-end wrap-ups from various entertainment services and has an unexpected epiphany.
Interlinked Spiritfarer’s Recipe for Solarpunk By Phoenix Simms • February 23rd, 2022 Spiritfarer is perhaps one of the most authentic solarpunk games out there today.
Revving the Engine Mean Streets: Project Haven By Ben Sailer • January 24th, 2022 Watch the trailer for Project Haven and you might assume you’re seeing something from a large studio. Its actual origin story is rooted in humble beginnings.
Gimmicks Aside, The Tingler is Fucking Fantastic By Ciara Moloney • January 21st, 2022 The Tingler is a gimmick movie: not (just) a campy bit of fun, but a genuinely scary, inventive and clever film.
Revving the Engine Surviving the Near Future in Phobos Subhuman By Ben Sailer • December 27th, 2021 There can be something especially empowering about feeling as though you can shape and survive whatever is around the next corner.
Rookie of the Year Deep Space Infinity By Matt Marrone • December 6th, 2021 In the time of television binge-watching, what we really need is a show that goes on forever.
Revving the Engine Mods & Mythology By Melissa King • November 24th, 2021 The Australian Writers’ Guild Award-winning and critically acclaimed The Forgotten City had humble beginnings as a Skyrim mod.
Friction Burns Dishonored’s Chaos System Was Never Punishing You By Ruth Cassidy • November 12th, 2021 Dishonored’s Chaos system introduces a world where you can take exactly what you want, and have fun with it, but the cost is laid bare.
Another Look The Real Quake Was The Friendships We Made Along The Way By Yussef Cole • November 9th, 2021 Razor-sharp precision. Chunky symmetry. Beauty.
Revving the Engine Connecting with Tetrominoes By Diego Nicolás Argüello • October 30th, 2021 Last year, Tetris Effect: Connected promised a way to come together even as we were suspended in our quarantine bubbles. It still delivers.
Feature Excerpt A World Beyond: The Inadvertent Sci-Fi of Universal’s Original Mummy Sequels By Orrin Grey • October 27th, 2021 If you think about it, mummies are the original time travelers.
Casting Deep Meteo Swaying from Seed to Stalk with The Body and BIG|BRAVE By Levi Rubeck • October 12th, 2021 Coming together, The Body and BIG|BRAVE tear down their own houses to build back from their shared beams.
I Played It, Like, Twice... Dead Ends: Learning Something About Myself with Cursed City By Orrin Grey • September 30th, 2021 I dove into Cursed City in the hopes that the familiarity of its similarities to Silver Tower would help to ease some of that intimidation fact, but Cursed City has more in common with Blackstone Fortress.
Revving the Engine Broken Helms, Shattered Shields By Sara Clemens • August 19th, 2021 Videogame Vikings are having a moment.
The Seduction of Solitude By Harry Mackin • July 14th, 2021 Harry Mackin discusses the long lost last year
Traces From the Man Who Sold the World By Diego Nicolás Argüello • July 10th, 2021 “In our struggle to survive the present, we push the future away,”
Collision Detection Dos Vedanya, Kudryavka By Ben Sailer • June 29th, 2021 Correcting the tragedy of the first dog in space.
Casting Deep Meteo The Play About the Scottish Hitman By Levi Rubeck • May 11th, 2021 Hitman (2016) is a game that conjures this spirit of the theater and allows me to flow through that liminal space of being directed while remaining free to wander the stage at my whim.
This Mortal Coyle Model_Interference the Aisha from Neopets By Deirdre Coyle • May 6th, 2021 Deirdre goes to a magical land of friends and Flash.
Revving the Engine Under the Hood By Ben Sailer • April 1st, 2021 The beauty of having a dream, and making it so, and then having thousands of others make their dreams within your dream.
Revving the Engine Creature in the Well: Between the Known and the Unknown By Melissa King • March 2nd, 2021 “Every aspect of gameplay is a teaching moment”
I Wish Quarantine Was More Like Demon’s Souls By Lucas DeRuyter • February 16th, 2021 Demon’s Souls mechanics also remind me that other people are struggling against the same challenges that I am.
Casting Deep Meteo The Lust of Early Access: Everspace 2 and 30XX By Levi Rubeck • February 11th, 2021 Everspace 2 fulfills a similar desire to expand upon the past, in this case, more Star Fox vibrations.
Casting Deep Meteo El Hijo, the Solid Snake of Tag By Levi Rubeck • February 4th, 2021 In stealth games, I always aspire to be the ghost.
They Live is Evergreen By David Peddicord • February 3rd, 2021 They Live’s messaging isn’t just evergreen; it is the kind of film you can read from just the memes of star Roddy Piper putting on magical sunglasses and discovering subliminal messages behind advertisements.
Revving the Engine Torchlight III: Relight the Torch By Jason McMaster • January 28th, 2021 A little time, some love and some Diablo DNA and what do you get?
Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You) Review By Amanda Hudgins • January 25th, 2021 Advice books need to hit a sweet spot of giving the right amount of advice for the audience of course, but again I’m not sure who Everybody Has a Podcast is for.
Collision Detection Countering COVID-19 Disinformation in Five Minutes or Less with Go Viral! By Ben Sailer • January 8th, 2021 Separating fact from fiction on the Internet and in the media is more difficult than ever. In the middle of a global pandemic, the consequences are potentially lethal. Could a simple browser game be part of the solution?
Best of 2020 The Best TV Shows of 2020 By Team Unwinnable • December 30th, 2020 Has there ever been a better year to binge?
Revving the Engine Adios: Farewell, Goodbye, Good Luck, So Long By Stu Horvath and David Shimomura • December 18th, 2020 Unwinnable talks to Doc Burford about his forthcoming game Adios, a melancholy game about a pig farmer who won’t dispose of the mob’s bodies any more.
No Accounting for Taste Patterns in the Ivy By Adam Boffa • October 9th, 2020 What can city-building games tell us about climate change?
Here's the Thing Alone in Duskers By Rob Rich • October 8th, 2020 Rob reminisces about his favorite roguelike, which is also one of his favorite horror games.
Collision Detection We Can’t Afford to Log Off By Ben Sailer • October 1st, 2020 Twitter isn’t just a time-wasting hellsite. It’s also the world’s worst multi-user dungeon.
Talking Splats: An Interview About Insect in Films By Stephen Wilds • September 25th, 2020 Ahhhh! BUGS! Unwinnable talks to the BugDoctor about everything that creeps and crawls through pop culture.
Feature Excerpt Watching Myself Die By Phillip Russell • September 22nd, 2020 On Blackness in The Last of Us