Noah's Beat Box Vamps – Otherwise By Noah Springer • November 9th, 2023 Repetition and transformation.
Casting Deep Meteo One Thousand Year Old Vampire Hunter D By Levi Rubeck • November 8th, 2023 While watching Vampire Hunter D, one can’t help but connect it to the relatively recent solo role-playing game Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings.
Area of Effect Open World Vampires By Jay Castello • November 7th, 2023 The open world map is almost nothing but a center for consumption.
Interlinked Don’t Fear the Reaver By Phoenix Simms • November 3rd, 2023 Raziel, the tragic wraith protagonist of the Soul Reaver series, contains within his arc a nuanced portrayal of how an energy vampire is made and unmade.
Here Be Monsters A Different Sort of Vampire: The Endemic Issue Behind Redfall’s Critical Flop By Emma Kostopolus • November 2nd, 2023 Redfall is an excellent test case for how capitalist gamer culture has turned some gaming consumers into a particularly odious, never-satisfied group of soulsuckers.
Mind Palaces I Will Come Up With a Punny Title I Promise By Maddi Chilton • October 31st, 2023 Somewhere along the way in Redfall’s development someone should have asked: What is this game, and why are we making it?
This Mortal Coyle Hammer Horror Nightgown Ranking By Deirdre Coyle • October 27th, 2023 It’s easy to get lost in the aesthetic pleasures of Hammer’s smooching Draculas and bangin’ 1970s haircuts on 19th century characters; you might gloss over the more ethereal wardrobe choices.
Past Presence Taking the Cullens to Uniqlo By Emily Price • October 26th, 2023 You can wear Uniqlo anywhere. Its styling is bizarre and frequently, ugly. I don’t know of a better way to summarize Twilight’s fashion.
Funeral Rites Campfire Carnage Conjures the Real Monsters By Oluwatayo Adewole • October 25th, 2023 Campfire Carnage writer Valkyrie T. Loughcrewe sees potential for “campsite as being for horror games what a dungeon is to fantasy,” an iterative space through which you can tell all sorts of stories.
Feature Excerpt Killing the Vampire By Elijah Gonzalez • October 24th, 2023 Xenoblade Chronicles 3 exorcizes an age-old symbol of stagnation and exploitation to foreground a story about systemic change.
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – October 2023 By David Shimomura • October 20th, 2023 Vamps, the ones you’d expect and some others.
Here's the Thing Collecting Sucks and is Awesome By Rob Rich • October 12th, 2023 Rob reflects on the up and downs of toy collecting, and how some days he wishes he’d never started.
Forms in Light Building Baghdad By Justin Reeve • October 11th, 2023 Archaeological reconstruction is at best a double-edged sword, providing valuable insight into the past while grappling with a host of issues that challenge its accuracy and integrity.
Always Autumn When the Fire Falls From on High; Or, the Meteor Is Not a Metaphor By Autumn Wright • October 10th, 2023 Comparing the animation in scenes that appear both in its 2020 reveal trailer and the final product, it’s obvious that three years of something bad happened to Goodbye Volcano High.
Noah's Beat Box All the Content Warnings By Noah Springer • October 6th, 2023 Comedy and horror truly reside next to each other in some off-kilter way, balancing the truly debauched with the truly buffoonish.
Area of Effect Space in Translation By Jay Castello • October 4th, 2023 What Baldur’s Gate 3 loses in creativity by being a simulation, it gains in slapstick.
Rookie of the Year I Went to Miami During a Heat Wave So You Don’t Have To By Matt Marrone • October 3rd, 2023 If you’re thinking of going to the beach, don’t.
Interlinked Grounding The Games Industry By Phoenix Simms • September 29th, 2023 Games, despite all their innovative trappings, are trash. To be more specific – games can create a lot of socioeconomic trash.
Here Be Monsters RE7 as American Folk Horror By Emma Kostopolus • September 28th, 2023 Folk horror is having a minute in the scholarly study of horror.
Mind Palaces A Secret Third Thing By Maddi Chilton • September 27th, 2023 The Venture Bros. premiered in 2004. Seven seasons later, it finally gets its finale, or what amounts to one.
Past Presence Object Lessons #2: Smartphone By Emily Price • September 26th, 2023 How do you represent a technology that’s had an earthquake’s impact, that almost everyone owns and that has made our private lives public?
Funeral Rites Challenge Cult Horror with Maximum Mystic Punks Vol 2: Crypt By Alyssa Wejebe • September 25th, 2023 “I’ve always been fascinated with medieval crypts, ossuaries and mausoleums,” Mystic Punks series creator Anthony Meloro says. “So, placing a dungeon crawl in one is an obvious choice.”
Feature Excerpt May Chaos Take the World By Gerry Hart • September 22nd, 2023 The cosmology of Elden Ring’s world is complex and daunting even for veteran players, but there is little in the way of ambiguity with the Frenzied Flame.
Feature Excerpt AI is Advancing Rapidly – The Outer Worlds Tells Us Why That’s Bad By Mira Lazine • September 21st, 2023 The Outer Worlds gives us insight into what it’s like to live in a society run exclusively by corporations, but it also gives us insight into what it’s like to live in a world dominated by AI.
Letter from the Editor Unwinnable Monthly – September 2023 By David Shimomura • September 18th, 2023 Remember remember, the 21st night of September.
Here's the Thing I’m Finally Going to Therapy By Rob Rich • September 15th, 2023 Therapy (and mental health in general, really) is still something of a taboo in our society, but now that Rob’s finally started going himself he’s started to realize how ridiculous that is.
Forms in Light Finding Lost Santos By Justin Reeve • September 14th, 2023 Carrying out a detailed comparison of GTA5’s Los Santos and Los Angeles through the lens of Michel Foucault sheds light on the intricate interplay between space, place, social order and power.
Noah's Beat Box An Adult Critique of Books for Children By Noah Springer • September 13th, 2023 You know what doesn’t get enough hate in Noah’s opinion? Children’s books.
The Burnt Offering The Music and the Dice By Stu Horvath • September 11th, 2023 Like any live performance, a tabletop roleplaying game’s greatest power resides in the moment, experiencing the event as it happens.
Interlinked Squall is Extradimensional By Phoenix Simms • September 8th, 2023 When Laguna knew Squall and his allies were there but felt they were like faeries hovering in the ether unseen, wasn’t that what early encounters on forums and instant chat services felt like?
Here Be Monsters We Can’t Get Out Without Talking About Slenderman By Emma Kostopolus • September 7th, 2023 Born of a 2009 creepypasta and culminating in the 2014 violent assault of a twelve-year-old girl by two classmates, Slenderman was largely responsible for a digital Satanic Panic in miniature.
Mind Palaces Architectural Intent By Maddi Chilton • September 6th, 2023 For a book that is nominally about the hubristic imaginings of a genius architect, Rose/House seems to have no actual interest in architecture.
Self-Insert Mafia By Amanda Hudgins • September 5th, 2023 KinnPorsche is probably the best example of the mafia alternative universe aesthetic. Everyone is beautiful and darkly dressed and prone to drinking and smoking in dark rooms.
Past Presence Object Lessons #1: Field By Emily Price • August 31st, 2023 Are fields a stage for action to take place on, or are they the action themselves?
Run It Back 1982 By Oluwatayo Adewole • August 30th, 2023 This month we step on over to 1982 to discuss two films which tell the stories of a Black relationship on each side of the Atlantic.
Noise Complaint Nu-Metal Might Be Good, Actually? By Ben Sailer • August 29th, 2023 Ben recalls a time he talked shit about a Korn cover band and is forced into several personal epiphanies.
Funeral Rites Inventing a World of Insectoid Wonders By Justin Reeve • August 25th, 2023 We delve into the mind of creator Eduardo Carabaño, exploring the history, philosophy, inspirations and design processes that carried Settlers of a Dead God from inception to publication.
Feature Story Spacemen & Dinosaurs By David Busboom • August 24th, 2023 Interplanetary explorers have been encountering dinosaurs or dinosaur-like creatures in fiction for more than a century.
Feature Excerpt Odes of the Boomershooter By Holly Boson • August 23rd, 2023 “If we’re entering an age of renewed zeal for nu-metal, I think Slayers X deserves to be mentioned within the first breaths of the conversation.”
Here's the Thing Enough With The “Alien” Comparisons By Rob Rich • August 16th, 2023 Most modern sci-fi horror movies that involve a monster (or monsters) wind up being compared to Alien, which Rob thinks is a load of bull.