My tabletop role-playing group has been playing a lot of Alien:  The Roleplaying Game by Free League Publishing. It’s a great, tense reproduction of the Alien movies with rules and […]

It’s another great weekend in Chicago with plenty of things to do at home from a long list of amazing virtual plays to watching live streams of music and so […]

I can remember my “git gud” moments in video games pretty clearly. I always think I’m good enough, and then something comes along to challenge that—whether it is insanely good […]

Jimmy (Twilight’s Jackson Rathbone) and Maggie (Narcos’ Andrea Londo) keep meeting. Not in real life, mind you, but in each other’s dreams. They’ll bump into one another in waking life […]

Being totally unfamiliar with author Nancy Springer’s six-novel series about the teenage sister of detective Sherlock Holmes and Mycroft Holmes (who is also technically Enola’s legal guardian), I wasn’t exactly […]

Everything has an origin story, but not all origin stories are created equal. Sometimes things begin without much fanfare–but sometimes the story of how things came together is one of […]

Last year, Matt Muse released his EP Love and Nappyness, a fantastic snapshot of the rapper’s incredible flow and unique outlook. The small collection of songs focused on different types […]

Twice a year—on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes where the sun hangs directly above the equator—Chicago gets a spectacular light show at sunrise and sunset. Dubbed “Chicagohenge,” the effect is […]

Taught by Women: Poems as Resistance Language, New and Selected by Haki R. Madhubuti Third World Press One of my favorite poems in Haki R. Madhubuti’s new, career-spanning collection Taught […]

Tower defense games are a bit of a stigma to some. Unless you can stand out from the crowd, you’re doing what’s already been done before. But when a tower […]

The Sword and the Shield  by Peniel Joseph Basic Books Reviewed by Carr Harkrader When Martin Luther King Jr. came to Chicago in 1966 to promote integrated housing, his marches […]

To some the subgenre “roguelike” is a bad word. It means difficult gameplay, and to some, frustration. What if I told you that roguelikes aren’t all for hardcore gamers, and […]