Unwinnable

Last Thursday afternoon, I asked my mother what she thought of Cara Ellison’s Twine game Sacrilege. Mom reads just about everything that goes up on Unwinnable (hi, Mom!) and, because of that, she has learned a lot more about videogames than she probably would have discovered on her own. (more…)

“Right naow Barnabas is abaout changed. Can’t shet his eyes no more, an’ is all aout o’ shape. They say he still wears clothes, but he’ll take to the water soon.”

- Zadok Allen

When Captain Obed Marsh made his deal with the devil, he didn’t sell his soul; he sold something infinitely more insidious: his lineage. (more…)

After GDC 2012, someone asked, “Why can’t we all just live together and be awesome?” For GDC 2013, we decided to give that a shot and rented a 19-room mansion on the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. Over the course of the week, more than 20 journalists slept under our roof at one time or another. Surprisingly, none of them brought even a single Nerf gun, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have our share of fun. We have a ton of videos in the works to share with you, detailing our time at the conference, the amazing people we met and the secret salon we held the last night of the trip. All of that will be coming soon, but like every good sitcom, we thought it would be good to introduce the house and its residents in a good old-fashioned credit sequence. Welcome to Unwinnable House. (more…)

The House of Fabergé was a Russian jewelry firm that rose to prominence by making a number of ornate jeweled eggs over the 32 years between 1887 and 1917. Many of those eggs were small and worn as pendants, but the most famous were the 50 or so large Imperial eggs made for Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II of Russia. (more…)

On April 4, 2013, film critic Roger Ebert passed away after a long battle with cancer. His career as a critic spanned over forty years and three mediums – in print in the Chicago Sun-Times, on television with Siskel and Ebert at the Movies and on the internet with both his blog and his endlessly entertaining Twitter account. He edified a massive audience in his time and inspired countless writers to try their hand at criticism. In fact, there is no critic in the world today who had as far a reach and as much esteem as Roger Ebert. His loss is a terrible one. (more…)

The last day at home before traveling to a conference is the worst. I fret over my luggage. I regret booking the trip at all. It is too expensive. It is too long. It is going to be a disaster. Surely it cannot possibly be as amazing as last year. I should cancel it entirely, but I am expected. People are relying on me. So I go. (more…)

You know what there is a lot of at GDC? Beards. We’re not talking five o’clock shadows, we’re talking elaborate facial topiaries that would be the envy of Viking warriors. Unwinnable is no stranger to facial hair – there are at least half a dozen mighty beards currently on staff – so we sent our intrepid photographer Daniel Imperiale into the wilds of the GDC 2013 show floor to track down the most exquisite examples of beard-growing that he could find (not to mention a couple handsome mustaches).  (more…)