Scholar’s Codex: Academia explores the games of FromSoftware

by Dom Ford, Stefano Gualeni (Editor), Nele Van de Mosselaer (Editor)

230 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 30, 2026

Reviews

[Alexander Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up from Tune & Fairweather based entirely on the pitch (a bound book of academic essays about From Soft games) and the immaculate binding and printing. Leaving aside how striking it looks on the shelf, and how lovely the silver-on-black printing is, I want to talk a bit about the essays. I did appreciate how the introduction laid out a few “tracks”, sequences of essays that shared a common thread, though I did stubbornly insist on just reading them in order. Most of the essays were strong; thought-provoking, interesting, casting the games in a new light while also giving me the itch to dig deeper and read some of the texts they referenced. One or two of them were quite a bit thinner, which I imagine would always be the case with this many different authors involved. I will say that having not played all the games had almost zero impact on my understanding or enjoyment. The chapters centered on games I haven’t played had plenty of context and background, and the arguments being put forth were almost always more general than the specific case being used as the example. I’d recommend this book to people interested in games as art, fans of From Soft games, and anyone looking for an easy on-ramp into academic writing about games.

[Rebeca F. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating read for anyone interested in Fromsoft and the universe of their games.
It's a text that, as its title indicates aims to be a crossover between the academy and the gamers, reflecting on really diverse topics of the Fromsoftware universe, reviewing games like "Demon's Souls", "Dark Souls", "Dark Souls 2", "Bloodborne", "Dark Souls 3", "Sekiro" and "Elden Ring", which was pretty awesome, as it's really difficult to come upon theoretical texts about "Sekiro", in spite of how popular that game is.
It has a chapter dedicated to each of these games, and each chapter has 3 essays by different academics and each of these texts has a starting point the description of an item in the game. Thus, we have texts based on items like "Loretta's bone", "Bonfire ascetic", "Vermin", "Pearls slugs", and much more, reflecting on quite diverse themes like the Romantic archetype of the vagabond in Fromsoft's games; the ludic irony of the games that subverts expectations through items like 5 colored rice or rubbish; the choice of freedom, despite the price one might have to pay for it, in contraposition to stagnation and "safe" immobility; darkness as a refugee and an alternative mode to light from which new worlds and different options may arise; and many more. It quotes authors and thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty and more.
A delightful addition to the Tune & Fairweather catalogue.

[Alexander · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bloated and utterly useless. Do not believe the pitch, it is absolutely not accessible to non-academics. But this entire thing is basically people writing words for the sake of writing words; there is nothing here that is important, and you will take away literally nothing.