the kind of tension that a creator of a game wants to evoke

I might just not have the right psychology for this, because the only tension Soulslike mechanics have invoked in me is a kind of weary "Ugh, if I lose this fight I'm going to have to do so much shit before I can try again." My brain just processes the whole thing as an unwelcome interruption of my attempt to beat the challenge in front of me. It doesn't matter how fun I normally find the core gameplay loop, in that context it feels like having to fill out and submit paperwork to get the approval to retry the challenge I just failed.

payer-character

I know this was a typo, but I'm going to pretend it was a pun about how Silksong constantly makes you spend ingame money to do routine tasks.