Damn… Can't believe it's the 2-year anniversary of the very last time any human played through Dark Souls 1 in the expected order, instead of doing the fricking Master Key route for the zillionth time… The years really do just seep away, taking health and happiness with them…
Dark Souls, OFF, etc. are about institutional/civilisational stagnation. Start Again and Omori are about personal stagnation, i.e. depression. Undertale and Higurashi are interesting in that they are on face value about one kind, but, later, introduce the other as accompaniment.
Saw a streamer discuss how a lot of videogames, in particular indie games, have conflicts that boil down to "stagnation", of an unhealthy enduring status quo that the player serves as an agent to break. I realised this framing actually succinctly captures a lot of my tastes.
