Ludo-Iconological Analysis: A new method for reading visual symbolism in games, with a case study on Blasphemous

This article introduces Ludo-Iconological Analysis, a staged interpretive method for examining visual symbolism in digital games through an art historical perspective. Informed by Erwin Panofsky’s iconological framework, the method is adapted to the temporal and participatory conditions of games. While existing scholarship has demonstrated the value of analysing games through artistic sources and visual traditions, the present study develops a more explicitly structured framework for tracing how culturally coded imagery is activated and complicated within an interactive medium. The method is applied to Blasphemous (The Game Kitchen, 2019), a title distinguished by a dense religious visual language rooted in Spanish cultural history. Its symbolic vocabulary draws upon penitential garments, the crown of thorns, public devotional ritual, and historically situated works of sacred art without treating any single visual tradition as the privileged measure of symbolic complexity. This combination makes Blasphemous a particularly productive case for demonstrating Ludo-Iconological Analysis, revealing how historical, theological, and ideological meanings are reconfigured within the visual and interactive structures of the game. By introducing Ludo-Iconological Analysis, this study proposes a focused interpretive framework that integrates established principles of art historical research into the study of digital games. Rather than claiming universal applicability, the article demonstrates how the method can illuminate a game whose visual design is densely structured by historically and culturally coded motifs. The framework is intended as a basis for further comparative application to games in which symbolic imagery is meaningfully connected to narrative progression, player encounter, and interactive context.