Here is a handful of essays that I have produced, primrarily in the form of video-essays and mostly about videogames, but the ideas that I address in them go beyond just the games themselves and often include religious, philosophical, and linguistic topics, playfully presented through the medium of videogame theory-videos.

about Silent Hill 2
(2023)

This video essay presents various unusual things that Ihave noticed in the famous game Silent Hill 2 by looking at the game through a mostly Catholic lens. The result was a fairly unique theory which, while solidifying the common notion that the game takes place in purgatory, also uncovers the game's chiastic narrative structure, the complex identity of Pyramid Head and Laura, and how the game's four endings combine to a hopeful message of forgiveness and salvation.

I made this video essay while I was getting my PhD and needed an outlet to calm my mind, and this video essay was the result of it. After I had finished my PhD in 2022, I felt I owed this video essay that I should finish it as well — had it not been for this video essay, I might not have been able to keep up the spirit to finish my PhD.

For this video, I composed a whole two hours of background-music.

about Fran Bow
(2018)

Fran Bow is a charming yet eerie indie adventure game which captured my interest, and when I played it I noticed that one particular area in the game — Ithersta — breaks with the game's otherwise hellish imagery and instead presents some very well thought out heavenly symbolism. I decided to make a video essay about my thoughts, explaining some of the game's biblical symbolism in its heavenly Ithersta segment.

about Inherit the Earth
(2017)

A very niche essay topic for a fairly niche game: Re-playing one of my favorite childhood games, I noticed a certain kind of structural design, namely that the game contains a handful of mazes and labyrinths which, at first, increase in complexity, and then decrease in complexity. This pyramid-shaped structure is comparable to a narrative chiasm, and I think it is a very valuable lesson in game-design: Mazes can be annoying, but Inherit the Earth succeeds in chasing the player through multiple mazes and yet keep the flow of engaging gameplay, not only by offering a subtle variety of mazes, but also by soothing the player into it and then offering a twist of increased comfort rather than frustratingly increasing the difficulty curve unto the end. Regardless of whether one likes mazes in games, game-devlopers could learn a lesson from this design approach.