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My Top 100 Films of All Times that Ever will Be
Published:
You can find this supposedly funny thing I’ll never do again at my newsletter site here.
New Article Out: “Metroidvania Ecologies: Exploration and the Environmental Imagination in Hollow Knight and Rain World”, wrote with Marco Caracciolo
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In this new article, published on Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, a diamond open-access journal, me and Marco Caracciolo explore the ways in which the characteristics of metroidvania games - such as levels layouts, locking mechanics, power-ups, complicated lore and playable character’s vulnerability - foster environmental imagination in players.
New Article Out: “Enjoying the Uncertainty. How Dark Souls Performs Incompleteness Through Narrative, Gameplay and Level Design
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Abstract The application of the Information Theory to the works of art can show why incompleteness and ambiguity offer a more engaging experience to readers and users. But when ambiguity becomes a deliberate strategy of the work, it becomes difficult to understand how to interpret it: in this article I argue that the correct way to interpret a work that makes incompleteness the rule of its poetics is to analyze how that strategy is conveyed throughout its basic grammar, without trying to solve the puzzles and contradictions that incompleteness and ambiguity inevitably produce. This is a relevant issue in the videogame Dark Souls as the basic elements of its grammar, level design, gameplay mechanics and narrative, offer the player the experience of incompleteness in different ways. In this article, I explain how the strategy of incompleteness works in Dark Souls and propose a framework for a Zen-wise interpretation of the game mechanics.
portfolio
F For Frame
A YouTube Channel About Cinema
Yorick
A Newsletter about Media, Art and Culture 
publications
Enjoying the Uncertainty. How Dark Souls Performs Incompleteness Through Narrative, Gameplay and Level Design
Published in Games and Culture, 2025
This paper is about how Dark Souls encapsulates a form of agency based on the acceptance of limits.
Recommended citation: Andriano, A. M. (2025). "Enjoying the Uncertainty. How Dark Souls Performs Incompleteness Through Narrative, Gameplay and Level Design." Games and Culture. 20(7).
Metroidvania Ecologies: Exploration and the Environmental Imagination in Hollow Knight and Rain World
Published in Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 2025
This paper is about how metroidvania layouts and game mechanics foster environmental imagination and awareness.
Recommended citation: Andriano A. M. & Caracciolo, M. (2025). "Metroidvania Ecologies: Exploration and the Environmental Imagination in Hollow Knight and Rain World." Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture. 16(2).
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Five Color Rice. Irony and Deception in Soulslike Games
Published in Scholars Codex, 2026
This paper is about how soulslike games employ irony as a metacommunicative tool.
Recommended citation: Andriano A. M. (2026, forthcoming). "Bitter Laughter: Five Color Rice." In Vella, D.; Gualeni, S.; Van de Mosselaer, N.; Ford, D. (eds.). Scholars Codex. Tune and Fairweather
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talks
Metroidvania Ecologies
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Immersive Irony in Videogames
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The Aesthetics of Failure in Videogames
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teaching
Teaching experience 1
Undergraduate course, University 1, Department, 2014
This is a description of a teaching experience. You can use markdown like any other post.
Teaching experience 2
Workshop, University 1, Department, 2015
This is a description of a teaching experience. You can use markdown like any other post.