A game's Final Death Mode could also have this, to make it even more difficult. Then there's the common Arcade Game, Endless Game, or Game Within a Game which are only about Scoring Points, so saving the high score at the end is the only thing that's saved, and you only need one version of that.Īlso, in regards to "stage-based nature", most games aren't like that anymore, so with continuity between "levels" comes possibly important changes each run, so there's a reason to allow the player to have multiple attempts at the same events, allowing player choice.Īs an Anti-Frustration Feature, there might be a warning about starting a new game when a save file already exists, likely, if an Autosave might be made so early as immediately overwrite progress if a new game were started. The Roguelike genre usually does this with only Suspend Save-type saving, to keep the risky nature going, disallowing the reversal of time.įor more of a utility consideration, this might occur when giving the player a representation of the save file is not useful, like in most Puzzle Games, Rhythm Games or some other game, where each individual puzzle / stage / song usually has no impact on any other, and there's no permanent loss state, so saving and reloading later would only be a loss of progress, so it's designed so such a negative event can't happen. This can be mitigated if there's a Replay Mode of some sort present, but that feature is unfortunately rare in games of this kind. Or not, to ramp up the horror of Survival Horror with Wide-Open Sandbox, where the sandbox usually means saving anywhere is possible, for the freedom.Īnother big inconvenience caused by having only one save file is the inability to dedicate specific save files to good parts of the playthrough that cannot be replayed afterwards unless the player restarts completely, like a Boss Battle, a memorable story cutscene, or a One-Time Dungeon. Multiple slots allows the functional reversal of time, so having only one means that the developer assumes that there's no Unintentionally Unwinnable states that can be reached, such as the "Merciful" type of game mentioned on Unwinnable by Design. Such as hindering Save Scumming as part of being Nintendo Hard, by making it harder to save favorable states if the wanted result has multiple points of slow failure, especially if the game only Autosaves so there's almost no player control over saving. Although, it is unlikely since a Start Screen has other uses beyond starting the game, such as being the earliest and fastest location to access the options menu.Īs a trope that isn't necessary now, if this is done in a modern game, there's likely designer intent behind it. Password Save can also overlap with this trope, since the two could often be found in the same game, using the player's resources as a form of information storage, in addition to the game storing it themselves.Īs these games don't have other saves to actually select, it is possible but unlikely that a Start Screen would not exist, and instead it just does an Automatic New Game and automatically jumps into the game whenever it's turned on, instead of asking if the player would like to delete their save or some such. The other way of "saving" state is a misnomer, because password-based saving, a.k.a Password Save, is regenerating a state based on user input, instead of restoring it from a preserved location. By the way, the name is talking about save files instead of sessions because it's both shorter and it's usually one file per play session. As one of the many possible dimensions of Save-Game Limits applicable to any game's save system, this is the "number of save slots" dimension at its harshest, since "zero" would be lacking that dimension entirely.
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