Not always. Dust: An Elysian Tail has a difficulty called "Hardcore", but it's not a permadeath mode; it's just the highest difficulty setting. (With that said, that game has one quest that's faster to complete on Hardcore, so a 100% speedrun actually switches to this difficulty at one point.)


But it still might be the optimal strategy for speedruns or high score runs, so such strategy will be required to compete in those categories, if one is of that type.

Quick load. Life is too short for that perma-death crap.

My favourite approach is the Planescape: Torment one: death is integrated in both the story and the gameplay, is not a hard failure state, and might even be used as a tool in some situations.

I'm thinking that something along the lines of that (or Rogue Legacy), but with regular save/load as well.

Hence, on death, the player can choose to reload (and not get the benefits of dying) or to continue on (lose some progress, but keep the benefits associated with death).

One other thing: I really dislike systems where a failure can cause loss of progress made before the current playing session. This is a problem with roguelike permadeath (except if the game is short enough to be finished in a single session), as well as games like Hollow Knight that auto-save the consequences when you die; I much prefer something like Dragon Quest where you at least have the option of reloading instead of losing half your gold.

Are we just talking of the death of the sole/main character, and possibly also party wipes? In that case, quickly display a menu allowing the player to load a save (or quit, if they so choose). If a limited respawn mechanic exists, have it be an option in the menu, not automatically used, so the player can choose whether to use one of their precious respawns or load a save (or quit). Most definitely no permadeath, but also no instant respawns, no respawns at the nearest designated respawn spot, no instant respawn with penalties (like loss of experience, items, money, whatever), and also no resetting of enemies or area on loading...
I do mainly think of RPGs or action games when I say this, or maybe other titles where you have such a main character, like the main leader in strategy or such. For stuff like puzzle games or platformers with short stages, meant to be cleared in one go and either by figuring out the one solution or chaining some correct moves, it may make sense to restart the stage, and saving during it may result in an unwinnable state if reloading. But it's still annoying.

On the other hand, there are cases where death is a mechanic. There's the above-mentioned PS:T example, and since I'm now playing Venetica I'm mentioning this too, death here being possibly very common if you're reckless and not just not a problem, but possibly even beneficial, since your maximum twilight energy increases by 100 when you activate certain places, essentially granting an extra "life" each time, and it charges easily by killing with your Moonblade, and when you die it just drops by 100 and you instantly respawn as a shade (can briefly become a shade at will without dying too, you normally will want to when starting fights, and not only), meaning you can just get behind the enemies in that form and then get back to the world of the living and hit them before they know you're there, and if you use the Moonblade for the kill you'll quickly regain the lost twilight energy too. There are even scripted deaths in this manner, where you're killed in a cutscene, so at the end of it you're the shade and can get the drop on your killers when you regain control. Makes for next to no challenge, but don't mind it, don't play for the challenge, especially not when it's action gameplay, and the mechanic itself works, especially since it's not just for deaths, considering how you can switch between worlds at will anyway.

Because of my platform and genre preferences I'm pretty used to saving anywhere, so a game over usually just means replaying a short bit to try again. I'm fine with this, I have limited time and not a ton of patience for redoing things I already completed. I know some like the punishment of doing things over, but it's just never been my thing at all.

Outside of death and saving though, I like when failing a quest or conversation or whatever brings about an in-game punishment. Something like naming the wrong murderer and then having a valuable NPC dying because of it (some game did this, I can't remember which). I always try and resist any urge to save scum and live with the consequences of my failures in situations like this. I wish more games encouraged it.

FPS: game from last quicksave or auto save point... but have a cycling rotation of 4 quick saves and 4 autosaves to backout of bad places if needed.

RPG: games some what ever mechanic works for the title, immortal needs to wake up reset things whatever. mystical maybe a fracture in dimensions and everything is reset.

Roguelike: live die repeate with no loss in abilites but full loss in gains for new ability levels... so loose the gains keep the achievements.

Racing: quick spawn at end of pack at speed or maybe 3 cars from position never beyond last place so even if you suck you have a chance.

Its so broad though there are many ways to handle death, i like others like state saves or quick saves so let me load and reload as much as i want in all genres but Rogue like and Racing, thats not fair IMO.

Answering your question: "How do you prefer videogames to handle death or failure?"
My personal preference is like in old games, where, if you fail, you had to restart the level.

Some games like "Black" in the PS2 era, had huge levels with distant checkpoints, and to me, it was a masterpiece, even with checkpoints.
Depending on how long a level is, it might be annoying to restart, though. The developer need to balance this well.

That's why I love roguelikes, but can also enjoy other genres.
Terraria is a good exemple of difficulty choice in this because you can create all kinds of characters. Because if you die, you will always return to the first spawn point. Depending on the difficulty you choose for your character, you will lose either money, items or everything and your character will be deleted (permadeath).

Another good exemple of a good combination of old & new is Monster Hunter series, where you have Hunts. If you fail, it's over. Take your equipament and restart the whole hunt. Love that.

Now, talking about Open World games, I rather have something like "If you die or fail, you lose your progress until this place/region/mission/checkpoint/last save game."

If it's an Open World RPG, I prefer it to have permanent consequences with good writing, after all, a good RPG is made of choices and consequences of choices. If there is no failure or victory consequences, story-wise, it's not an RPG, it's an action, adventure, shooter, whatever, etcetc
Mount & Blade series is a good exemple in this one. Your character won't die (permanetly) but taken prisoner, lose items, money, and such consequences affect your character progress in many ways, like exp gain/loss, renown, honor, you lose troops, many times you lose relations with lords and kings, etc. It's a good balance in my humble opinion. A "True RPG".

As this question is based in personal opinion, this is mine.

I understand that you might be joking, but, some people find much more fun in improving all they can so they won't die again than simply "restarting with everything in the last checkpoint." Which is not necesserily bad, it's just personal preference, as I said before. All based in fun.

Take Cyber Hook for exemple. That game is growing in the speed run community. Very fast paced. You die, restart from the beginning in less than 3 seconds. Level based, focused in improving all your tactics, etc.

I would argue that whether the game has permanent consequences with good writing (or writing at all) has no bearing on the genre.

In particular, I'd argue that a game that plays exactly like a turn-based RPG, but has nothing other than exploration and combat (no towns or dialog), is still an RPG. (In particular, said game wouldn't fit in any of the categories you listed.)


Well, there's "restart at the last checkpoint with the game state rolled back to that point", so that you lose everything since that checkpoint, but nothing from before it. That's the least forgiving save system that I'm comfortable with.

I find it fun to experiment in ways that use consumables or might result in death, but I like to be able to reload to before I did those experiments.

(An example: In Final Fantasy 3, dying at the final boss hurts (due to the lack of any place to save for too long), but you still don't lose anything that happened before you made the save.)

I agree with you. Not many games in my opinion are "True RPGs", but it's different when a game handles death as a real death. That way your only option is to load a save. Shadowrun was a good turn-based game, not a true RPG in my humble opinion, for exemple. I watched many Divinity Original Sin 2 gameplays, but never played, so I can't say, but it also looks like a good CRPG. In it, looks like you only need to restart when your whole party dies. I really like that too, because you had in game powers to bring them back to life.

Yup. It's really personal. RPGs/Sandbox tend to have this system, which I also like when I don't want anything way too hardcore. Just to relax. Play with the game mechanics is really fun.

Also agree. It can be a chore depending on how this is balanced.

If you die , game should write : LOSER!!!
then quit and uninstall the game

Lol. That would be awesome!

I disagree with this.

A game should strive to encourage its players to play more, not discourage them.

(This applies to nearly all games, including those that are designed to be punishing and unfair. The only games this doesn't apply to are those explicitly designed to not be fun, and for obvious reasons, such games are rare and aren't likely to be sold.)

No matter the failure state, I feel it should always be used as Fall Forward; kick me back to the previous checkpoint sure, but don't just clumsily clobber out the progress I made completely. The penalty is already within itself of having to return to where one previously was.

As for genre specific situations:

Rougelikes/lites/ish: You know how pinball games can give you a "One last chance" if you match a number? That'd be nice. Though I also just played Tome4 with permadeath turned off because there are many situations that come up in that game just to fuck the player over.

Brawler/Beat Em Up/Fighter: Mash to get up, stay down to say that you're throwing in the towel. That simple.

Shmup: Solve this one entirely by just having a shield to start with. I ain't got a roll of quarters to slam into my PC anyway.

Adventure: Retry from before mistake. No walking dead design. Slap designer and/or Roberta Williams if they suggest it on purpose.

Hit them where it hurts! Remove money? Resources? From the player. And/or handicap them, until they recover their corpse, or something along those lines. Diablo 2 LOD and Hollow Knight come to mind. I loved their death-systems a great deal.