The souls mechanic in the Dark Souls (et al) games is very interesting to me. It's a built-in way to incentivize the player to face their fears a second time when they are more vulnerable than when they approached the fear the first time.

The player collects "souls" when they kill enemies. These souls are used as the sole currency (see what I did there?) of the game - purchasing items, upgrades, leveling up, etc. They're very important, and they're not easy to get.

When your player's avatar is killed, all of your souls are dropped on the ground where you were killed. Rather than immediately disappearing (like in the Sonic games), they stay on the ground for you to come back and pick up later. This is a fantastic boon, but creates the following interesting dynamic.

Inherently, the souls will drop at a very difficult location with difficult enemies - this is a given due to the fact that you were killed there. This means that the player is drawn back to the difficult area when they are at a higher risk state.

They are more vulnerable because the souls disappear forever if the player dies a second time before picking them up again.

In general, if something is too hard you in life, you typically don't come back until you're strong enough or practiced enough to actually win. This requires that you face those feares immediately after because the loss of the souls is greater than the fear of risking death via challenging task again.

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#toolong