This bibliography was originally compiled as part of my research for my first doctoral application, “Thinking Through Play: Toward a Reading of Dark Souls,” an examination of the game through Espen Aarseth’s Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. This application was ultimately unsuccessful, but I since went on to write several papers on Dark Souls and related games, and to continue exploring paratextual materials for the series.
Books
- Keza MacDonald and Jason Killingsworth, You Died: The Dark Souls Companion, 2016
- Damien Mecheri and Sylvain Romieu, Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave, vol. 1, 2018
- Damien Mecheri and Sylvain Romieu, Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave, vol. 2, 2018
Comics
- George Mann and Alan Quah, Dark Souls, vol. 1: The Breath of Andolus, 2016
- George Mann, Dark Souls: Tales of Ember, vol. 1, 2017
- George Mann, Dark Souls: Tales of Ember, vol. 2, 2017
- George Mann and Alan Quah, Dark Souls, vol. 2: Winter’s Spite, 2017
- George Mann and Dan Watters, Dark Souls, vol. 3: Legends of the Flame, 2017
- Ales Kot, Piotr Kowalski, and Brad Simpson, Bloodborne, vol. 1: The Death of Sleep, 2018
- Ales Kot and Piotr Kowalski, Bloodborne, vol. 2: The Healing Thirst, 2019
- O’Sullivan and Kokarev, Dark Souls, vol. 4: The Age of Fire, 2019
- Ales Kot and Piotr Kowalski, Bloodborne, vol. 3: A Song of Crows, 2019
- Kot, Bloodborne, vol. 4: The Veil Torn Asunder, 2020
Design Works
- Udon Entertainment, Dark Souls: Design Works, 2014
- Udon Entertainment, Dark Souls II: Design Works, 2016
- Udon Entertainment, Bloodborne Official Artworks, 2017
- Udon Entertainment, Dark Souls III: Design Works, 2018
Game Guides
- Future Press, Dark Souls: Collector’s Edition Guide, 2011
- Future Press, Dark Souls II: Collector’s Edition Guide, 2014
- Future Press, Bloodborne: Collector’s Edition Guide, 2015
- Future Press, Bloodborne The Old Hunters: Collector’s Edition Guide, 2015
- Prima Guides, Dark Souls III: Collector’s Edition Guide, 2016
- Future Press, Dark Souls Remastered: Collector’s Edition Guide, 2018
- Future Press, Dark Souls Trilogy: A Future Press Compendium, 2019
Physical Games
- CMON, Bloodborne: The Card Game, 2016
- Steamforged, Dark Souls: The Board Game, 2017
- Steamforged, Dark Souls: The Card Game, 2018
Souls Influences
- Kentaro Miura, Berserk, 1988-2021
- Studio 4°C, Berserk: The Golden Age Arc, 2012
- Liden Films, Berserk, 2016
Souls Scholarship
There is significantly more writing on Dark Souls than included below, but rather than being side-tracked to compile that writing now, I will only include what I saved in the original repository.
Blogs
- Pauline Martyn, “Dark Souls and Flow,” 2017
Conferences
- Meghan Blythe Adams, “You Cannot Conquer: Playing Subject to Time in Skyrim and Dark Souls”, 2014
- Kyle Allison, “Help or Hinder: Contingency and Cruelty in Dark Souls,” 2017
- David Rambo, “Sisyphean Software: Cycling Through the Absurd Joy of Dark Souls,” 2017
- Callum Spawforth and David E. Millard, “Multiplayer Games as a Template for Multiplayer Narratives: A Case Study With Dark Souls,” 2017
Journalism
- Erik Kain, “The Wonderful Archaeology of Dark Souls Lore,” 2012
- Alex Donaldson, “Dark Souls 3: Miyazaki Explains the Difference between ‘Difficult’ and ‘Unreasonable,’” 2016
- Matthew Gault, “Don’t Go Hollow: How Dark Souls Is Defeating Depression,” 2016
- Justin Reeve, “Sekiro’s Floating World,” 2022
Papers
- Matthew Weise, “Inhabiting Demon’s Souls - My Memories of a Haunted World,” 2010
- Franziska Ascher, “Narration of Things: Storytelling in Dark Souls via Item Descriptions,” 2014
- Jodi A. Byrd, “‘Do They Not Have Rational Souls?’: Consolidation and Sovereignty in Digital New Worlds,” 2015
- Tom van Nuenen, “Playing the Panopticon: Procedural Surveillance in Dark Souls,” 2015
- Daniel Vella, “No Mastery Without Mystery: Dark Souls and the Ludic Sublime,” 2015
- Matthew Kelly, “I Can’t Take This: Dark Souls, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Networks,” 2016
- M. Brandon Robbins, “Delving into Dark Souls III,” 2016
- Olle Sköld, “Getting-to-Know: Inquiries, Sources, Methods, and the Production of Knowledge on a Videogame Wiki,” 2017
- Sky LaRell Anderson, “Extraludic Narratives: Online Communities and Video Games,” 2018
- Enrico Gandolfi, “Enjoying Death Among Gamers, Viewers, and Users: A Network Visualization of Dark Souls 3’s Trends on Twitch.tv and Steam Platforms,” 2018
- Cameron Kunzelman, “How We Deal With Dark Souls: The Aesthetic Category as a Method,” 2020
- Timothy Welsh, “(Re)Mastering Dark Souls,” 2020
Theses
- Nicolas Castellon, “Dark Souls, Darker Heroes: How a Popular Video Game Subverts Campbell’s Monomyth to Create a Postmodern Hero’s Journey,” 2015
- Daniel Stamatov, “Murder and Masochism: Exploring Violence as a Mode of Engaging with Fiction in FromSoftware’s Dark Souls,” 2015
- Niels Schollaert, “Mapping Myth: An Analysis of the Hero Myth in FromSoftware’s Dark Souls Series,” 2016
- Paolo Xavier Machado Menuez, “The Downward Spiral: Postmodern Consciousness as Buddhist Metaphysics in the Dark Souls Video Game Series,” 2017
- Lukas Graff, “How Narrative Techniques Affect Players’ Engagement in Action RPG Dark Souls II,” 2018
- Thomas Fusdahl, “Vulnerability and Growth in Video Game Narratives: Approaches to Storytelling in Dark Souls 3 and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice,” 2019
- Rogerio Carlos Gonçalves Junior, “The Music Track in the Game Dark Souls” [Portuguese], 2019