Tag Archives: difficult game

[Game: Hollow Knight, Team Cherry, 2017]
Little Ghost in the Machine:

A Thorough Philosophical Analysis of Mind in Team Cherry’s Original Hollow Knight

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Introduction:

Hollow Knight offers one of the most engaging and intriguing experiences in the medium. Its engagement comes in equal measure from its sweeping orchestral music; intricate-yet-open level design; grand-yet-unobtrusive narrative; precise-yet-flexible mechanics; and charmingly illustrated and densely layered art. Its intrigue, on the other hand, derives principally from the fact that Hollow Knight is an interrogative text, meaning that it asks many more questions than it answers.

Some of its deliberate mysteries pertain to the history and plot of its world, but others are open thematic questions. The former group has been combed exhaustively by the game’s community since its release, but the latter have received comparatively paltry attention. The focus here, then, will be Hollow Knight’s oft-overlooked thematic questions, which predominantly revolve around the topics of intelligence and consciousness. To draw out what these questions are, why they are important, and why so many of them remain unanswered (in both the game and reality), in this analysis we will be primarily employing resources from the philosophy of mind.

Philosophy of mind is the field that covers (obviously) the mind—what it is, what it does, and how or if it relates to everything that isn’t the mind. Frameworks and concepts developed by those working in the field will help us to clarify Hollow Knight’s treatment of topics such as intellect, memory, thoughts, dreams, and, well, hollowness.

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[Game: Hollow Knight, Team Cherry, 2017]
Little Ghost in the Machine:

A Thorough Philosophical Analysis of Mind in Team Cherry’s Original Hollow Knight

 was last modified: November 26th, 2025 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Demon’s Souls, FromSoftware, 2009]
Slayer of Reason:

A Thorough Epistemological Philosophical Analysis of FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls

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Introduction:

From the immersive maturity of its mechanical and narrative details, to the unparalleled sense of consideration for consequences that it fosters among players, to the sheer number of genuinely unique and refreshing design risks that it takes—Demon’s Souls is as much a captivating revelation today as it was upon release. Yet, as with each of the later Miyazaki-led FromSoft games that follow in its footsteps (in fact, perhaps moreso than any of its descendants), Demon’s Souls poses numerous difficulties for analysis.

It shares the cryptic approach to storytelling and the elements of nonlinearity that crop up in all of FromSoftware’s recent works, but that’s not all. In addition, it is a game which changes from player to player and session to session in a non-random fashion. Enemy placements, enemy statistics, NPC interactions, and even the availability of a few small regions of the levels all depend to some degree on the circumstances in which the player succeeds or fails.

You will not be surprised to hear me claim, however, that the odd structure and content of Demon’s Souls nevertheless do coalesce into a coherent reading. In the interest of pursuing that reading, our primary ally will be the field of epistemology. In a nutshell, epistemology is the study of knowledge—which includes such topics as belief, truth, justification, and skepticism. Armed with tools from that and related fields of philosophy, we will explore the following interpretation: Demon’s Souls offers a discussion of the limits of human knowledge, and how people believe and act given such limits. That might sound strange or overly vague—but in the sections ahead I intend to provide specificity and support for it, through careful attention to both the game itself and the relevant philosophy.

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[Game: Demon’s Souls, FromSoftware, 2009]
Slayer of Reason:

A Thorough Epistemological Philosophical Analysis of FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls

 was last modified: April 28th, 2025 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Enter the Gungeon, Dodge Roll, 2016]
Center the Gungeon:

Achievements as a Desirable Compromise Solution for Completing Games like Enter the Gungeon

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Introduction:

In this article, I will explain a potentially unintuitive belief that I hold about a specific style of games: that the best possible experience of playing roguelikes and derivatives of roguelikes is usually attained by pursuing 100% achievement completion as the primary end goal of the game. My test case for this purpose will be Dodge Roll’s highly polished and mechanically satisfying top-down shooter Enter the Gungeon.

Like so many of its peers in the increasingly-loosely-defined genre it at least partially shares with notables like Rogue, Spelunky, and FTL—Gungeon is a game that is played by repeatedly attempting to win difficult randomization-heavy play sessions averaging less than an hour each, where dying means a total end to that playthrough; to continue playing, a newly-randomized session must begin from the very start.

And why do I think that pursuing achievements (or trophies, or badges, or whatever you want to call them) offers the best way of engaging with Enter the Gungeon and other games in this style? Simply, because doing so offers a balanced, varied, thorough, satisfying compromise between two inferior extremes.

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[Game: Enter the Gungeon, Dodge Roll, 2016]
Center the Gungeon:

Achievements as a Desirable Compromise Solution for Completing Games like Enter the Gungeon

 was last modified: February 27th, 2023 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Super Meat Boy Forever, Team Meat, 2020]
Bandage Man:

In Defense of Super Meat Boy Forever, the Unjustly Hated Sequel to an Indie Platforming Legend

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Introduction:

Super Meat Boy is one of the greatest 2D platformers of all time, and it is rightly renowned for having some of the best level design in the entire genre. Its follow-up is an auto-runner with randomized levels, sporting both a genre and a limited control scheme that seem targeted toward mobile gaming. The original creator of the title character, Edmund McMillen, who acted as artist and codesigner on SMB, was completely uninvolved in the development of the newer game. The musician Danny Baranowsky, who provided the iconic original soundtrack for Super Meat Boy, was also absent from the development of the new title due to parting ways with Team Meat after some kind of dispute in the intervening years. And for the first year that it was available, the new title was distributed on PC solely through a controversial platform: the exclusivity-favoring, light-on-features Epic Games Store.

These facts about Super Meat Boy Forever are by now well-established reasons that many players have bounced off of, negatively reviewed, or (more commonly) simply avoided the game. And seeing as I am a big fan of Super Meat Boy, and not in general a fan of most mobile games, you may suspect that I would agree with those unhappy and dismissive appraisals.

But get this: I don’t.

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[Game: Super Meat Boy Forever, Team Meat, 2020]
Bandage Man:

In Defense of Super Meat Boy Forever, the Unjustly Hated Sequel to an Indie Platforming Legend

 was last modified: October 24th, 2024 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Elden Ring, FromSoftware, 2022]
Tarnishing:

A Thorough Critique Detailing the Few Mechanical Flaws of FromSoft’s Elden Ring

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Introduction:

Imagine sitting next to a friend and looking out over a majestic seaside vista. The sky is clear and there are birds in the sky. The sun warms your skin and occasionally a soft breeze sweeps through. Now, over the gentle sound of the waves, your friend turns to you and says, “Look, someone left some litter on the beach.” In this context, I am that friend. That remark is the equivalent of what I am about to do. Welcome to my article on Elden Ring!

Elden Ring overflows generously with quality, beauty, and entertainment.

Despite its incredible boss and enemy variety, it includes several of the best boss fights that are present in any game, FromSoft or otherwise. Despite the staggering number of weapons, weapon arts, shields, and magical abilities in the game, genuinely novel methods of attack and defense are found from the start of the game to the end. And despite the immense size of its map, it contains multiple individual areas, such as the Volcano Manor and Elphael, which stand alongside earlier creations like the Painted World of Ariamis and the Boletarian Palace as some of the best level design FromSoftware has ever done. But you don’t really need me to tell you that. If you’ve encountered any review or other type of media about Elden Ring since its release, then you already know all of that.

In setting out to write an article about the game, I wanted to approach it from an angle that would be different from the thousand others in existence, while also providing something valuable. There’s really no sense in me just throwing my praise on the praise pile. So, instead of talking about Elden Ring’s overwhelmingly large number of mechanical (and other) strengths, I’m going to dig into its vanishingly small number of mechanical weaknesses. For reference, prior to writing this article, I played through the game three times with drastically different builds, racked up well over a hundred hours of playtime, gathered 100% of the game’s achievements on Steam, and (as far as I know) beat every single unique and repeated boss that is present in the game.

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[Game: Elden Ring, FromSoftware, 2022]
Tarnishing:

A Thorough Critique Detailing the Few Mechanical Flaws of FromSoft’s Elden Ring

 was last modified: October 24th, 2024 by Daniel Podgorski