{"id":16637,"date":"2026-01-08T19:42:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/?p=16637"},"modified":"2026-01-17T20:00:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T18:00:06","slug":"the-ludic-sublime-from-dark-souls-to-animal-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/the-ludic-sublime-from-dark-souls-to-animal-well\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ludic Sublime from Dark Souls to Animal Well"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve ever played an open, exploration-heavy game, you might be intimately familiar with the following scenario: you\u2019re looking around, orienting yourself in the terrain, and you notice that far down below you, in an area you never expected to be able to reach, there\u2019s the familiar glow of a collectible item. Unbounded by the confines of a detailed map, the game\u2019s world seems only as big as your experience of it, and suddenly your expectations have expanded. If I can get to those distant rooftops, you might ask, then where else can I go?<\/p>\n

\"Dark<\/a>
Looking down into a new area in Dark Souls<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Daniel Vella, a games researcher from the University of Malta, calls this an experience of the ludic sublime<\/i>. He uses Dark Souls,<\/i> a game which gives you no map and only vague objectives, as his primary example of the phenomenon. <\/i>Taken from the greater meaning of sublime<\/i> as something boundless and unknowable, the ludic sublime describes a particular tension between mastery<\/i> and mystery<\/i>.<\/i> As you play a game, you\u2019re building up a sense of its world, its mechanics, its whole \u201cphenomenal cosmos,\u201d and trying to understand and master these systems. At the same time, thanks to how games are structured as a medium, it\u2019s impossible to grasp a full sense of a game system without picking apart the code yourself. When a game makes you realize how little you understand about it\u2014when it creates a sense of mystery by hinting at its own depths\u2014that\u2019s the ludic sublime.<\/p>\n

The Dark Souls<\/i> example above, in which a game blurs the boundaries between in-bounds and out-of-bounds (\u201cludic and extra-ludic space\u201d) and converts I can\u2019t go there<\/i> into I can\u2019t go there YET,<\/i> is only one type of design that can create a sense of the sublime. Dark Souls<\/i> veterans will likely remember the obtuse humanity system, a core mechanic that never quite explains itself. This too is another kind of hint that the game system may be far deeper than a player\u2019s present understanding can account for. Playing a game like Dark Souls<\/i> without help from online tutorials or other players, you can imagine stumbling across some secret mechanical interaction that makes you question how many other similar ones you\u2019re missing. The obtuse, unintuitive questline that lets you save Solaire, for example, has so little in-game indication of the possibility of pursuing it that it invites this sort of speculation. On the other hand, entities with no clear function can provoke suspicion: if the mysterious Peculiar Doll can turn out to be a key, might the same be true of the Pendant, an item described as having \u201cno effect\u201d?<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Animal Well<\/em>\u2019s single inaccessible room, visible yet tantalizingly out of reach.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once you recognize the telltale markings of the ludic sublime, you start to realize how central this affect is to a certain sort of mystery-oriented game. Animal Well, a critically-acclaimed, exploration-focused puzzle-metroidvania from last year, is one recent title whose ridiculous depths might be taken as new expressions of the ludic sublime. Its Steam description concludes with the sentence \u201cThere is more than what you see,\u201d and it certainly delivers on that promise: fans of Animal Well speak of at least four distinct \u201clayers\u201d to the game, discovered as you journey further and further \u201cdown the well\u201d of secrets. These layers foreshadow each other by reminding you, to use Vella\u2019s term, of the partiality of your own experience: rooms you can\u2019t enter, glyphs you can\u2019t decipher, collectibles (especially the enigmatic bunnies that appear after difficult challenges) that at first seem to have no purpose. Once you realize how many barely-visible background objects form parts of complex puzzles three layers in, you might be overwhelmed with the possibilities. Does everything have significance? How many more secret rooms will open up to you if you just search hard enough?<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
A previously locked door gives way to a whole new ARG-like mystery \u2013 but only after you\u2019re already hours deep in the postgame.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vella\u2019s paper was published in 2015, before the widespread availability of tools to pick apart games and gain complete knowledge of their systems. As it turns out, secret-seekers on Reddit were able to plumb the entire depths of Animal Well<\/i>\u2019s source code\u2014a considerable feat, given that the developer actively tried to circumvent datamining<\/a>\u2014in about a week. Certainly, Vella\u2019s claim that players can only ever asymptotically approach the full truth of a game now seems outdated. But this doesn\u2019t mean that we should do away with the ludic sublime. It is still an insightful way to think about how games create mystery for their players. And knowledge of source code doesn\u2019t mean the mystery is gone: though dataminers had cracked Animal Well<\/i>\u2019s final puzzles, it took players much longer to discover the intended solutions. Despite the internet\u2019s collective knowledge, it is still, I think, possible to imagine\u2014through symbolism, backstory, and other textual mysteries\u2014new sublime depths to the well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Basic information:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong> Vella, D. (2015). No Mastery Without Mystery: Dark Souls and the Ludic Sublime. Game Studies<\/i>, 15<\/i>(1). https:\/\/gamestudies.org\/1501\/articles\/vella<\/a><\/p>\n

Photos:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Screenshots taken by the author from Dark Souls Remastered<\/i><\/a> (FromSoftware, Inc. 2018) and Animal Well<\/i><\/a> (Billy Basso 2024).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What makes a game world feel mysterious and unknowable? A ten-year-old game studies paper provides a compelling answer. #mystery #adventure<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":16657,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,237],"tags":[246,2178,911,345,1177],"class_list":["post-16637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-game-research-highlights","tag-adventure","tag-animal-well","tag-dark-souls","tag-game-research","tag-mystery","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16637"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16658,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16637\/revisions\/16658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}