while doing a long series of runbacks to Manus (HE'S HARD, OKAY) twitch chat got me thinking about the myth of Dark Souls as a "maoschistic" game and apparently I spent like ten minutes thinking it through.
while I'm confident that Dark Souls is not it (it's more of a combination of slapstick and straightforward heroic action), it does make me wonder what the design space around a masochistic game would look like. specifically, it makes me think about the different dynamics you get between horror games and more triumphant action games, for instances, where you often have similar mechanics, but the tension is really different. a situation where you're barely hanging on for your life in a heroic action game makes you feel like you're hot shit, a sort of "this guy's almost as tough as I am! what a worthy adversary!" sort of feeling, whereas a situation in a horror game where you're barely hanging on for your life is "oh no, am I really gonna make it?" but I wonder what dynamics would lead you to the feeling of "I just gotta endure this for a little bit longer" in that situation. the fantasy would definitely have to be rewarding the player for their suffering, rather than rewarding the player for their self-improvement; which I think is the real reason why a game that gives you challenges to learn to overcome is touching on a different sort of feeling
on a related note, I do think the way that Metroid Dread sets up powerful monsters in the form of EMMI that you have to constantly run circles around and just barely escape the powerful grasp of through clever reflexes makes it a strong contender for an answer to what a bratty horror game would be