Death is very commonplace in video games. Most of them are violent, challenging affairs that are designed for the player character to die repeatedly in certain parts. As such, characters rarely die permanently in video games. It's either possible to revive them or respawn them at an earlier point if they fail.
Some games take a different approach. In some titles, death is a much more serious affair with permanent consequences. In games with larger casts, this means that the player loses one or more characters for the rest of the game. In games with only one character, permadeath often sees a player lose their entire profile.
10 XCOM: Enemy Unknown Is Notorious For Its Lethality
A common genre for permadeath is turn-based tactics games. The player takes responsibility for an army or a squad, and if they lose a unit through carelessness or bad luck, it's gone forever. One game particularly notorious for this is XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which gives the player full customization of their cast and puts them against vastly more powerful aliens.
A unit doesn't always die when they lose all of their hit points in Enemy Unknown, as some are critically injured and able to evacuate from the battlefield. If they die, however, they remain dead. This goes one step further in Ironman Mode, which even prevents a player from reloading old saves to keep their soldiers alive.
9 Minecraft Hardcore Mode Adds Permadeath To A Usually-Relaxing Game
Minecraft does have combat and death as core mechanics, but it isn't known for its difficulty. The focus of the game is more on exploration and creativity. Death simply respawns a player at their bed and lets them recover their stuff if they're quick. This all changes in Hardcore difficulty, which gives a player only one life.
This completely changes the tone of the game because there are plenty of things that can kill a player instantly in Minecraft. Unseen creepers and careless falls from high places are no longer amusing annoyances, as they become events that can ruin hours of hard work.
8 Any Of Darkest Dungeon's Heroes Can Die
Darkest Dungeon prides itself on its challenge and its stressfulness. It's set up so that small setbacks can spiral out of control, turning even a well-managed mission into a complete rout for the player's heroes. To make sure players feel the consequences of their mistakes and bad luck, heroes die permanently when they're killed in combat.
The game has no fixed cast members. Instead, the player is able to recruit an almost endless stream of heroes from the Stagecoach. However, this doesn't render the permadeath consequence-free, as players need to be able to keep characters alive and capable to stand a chance in the titular Darkest Dungeon.
7 Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup Has Typical Roguelike Permadeath
One of the hallmarks of the roguelike genre is high randomization and permadeath, something that Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup carries forward. A player creates their character at the beginning of the game and then sends them into the dungeon to face the threats within.
It's very common for that character to die. Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup has a steep learning curve and plenty of potential for sheer bad luck. When a character dies, the gamer can never play them again, even if they create somebody very similar. Furthermore, the dungeon they explored ceases to exist, and a random one is generated for the next game.
6 Fire Emblem Has Only Recently Let Players Turn Permadeath Off
Fire Emblem is an iconic turn-based tactics franchise that helps to codify the genre's association with permadeath. Ever since the first game in the series, player characters who fall in combat are gone forever. They get a short death scene and simply vanish from play, no matter how much the player has invested in them.
This is bent slightly in the case of some plot-critical characters. Some are rendered unusable in the game like other dead units but are said to be critically wounded. Also, the games' main characters cause a game over. In addition, later games in the franchise have added a 'Casual' mode where fallen characters are only gone until the end of the battle.
5 Wasteland 2 Is Unforgiving Towards Characters
Post-apocalyptic fiction tends to be harsher and grittier than many other genres, and this extends to classic video games as well. In Wasteland 2, the post-apocalyptic United States is a dangerous place to be, and player characters are not immune to this. If they fall in combat, the player has a very limited chance to give them medical help, even if they have the right equipment.
If the player doesn't have the right equipment, or can't apply it in time, the character passes away. Given the wide-open and very dangerous world of Wasteland 2, there is a good chance that the player is going to lose at least one character to bad luck before the end of the game.
4 Watch Dogs: Legion Lets The Player Recruit And Permanently Lose Almost Any NPC
Watch Dogs: Legion sets itself apart from its predecessors through its character mechanics. Rather than having a central protagonist, the player expands a roster of characters with randomly-generated abilities throughout the game by finding and recruiting almost any of the NPCs to their cause.
There is a flip side to this, however. Watch Dogs: Legion also comes with an optional permadeath mode where any of the player's characters who fall in combat remain dead permanently. The game is a pretty dangerous one, meaning that a worrying amount of London's population may end up dead because of the player before the game's end.
3 Don't Starve Gives Ways To Avoid Death, But Dead Is Dead
Don't Starve earns its notoriety by being harder than many other survival games. Players can die to monsters, bad weather, their own mistakes, or starvation. Unlike many survival games, it doesn't have an outright respawn mechanic when players die. If they die and have no way to prevent it, Don't Starve ends and the player has to start over again.
This is mitigated by a number of items and tools that players can use to escape death. Items like the Meat Effigy or the Life Giving Amulet can bring a player back, as can finding a Touch Stone in the world. However, these are all of limited use, and if the player dies without one, they're gone.
2 Valkyria Chronicles Gives A Short Time To Save Downed Teammates
Some games are slightly kinder than just having characters die instantly when they lose their health. One such game is Valkyria Chronicles, a turn-based squad shooter. If a character gets too badly wounded, they enter a critical state where a medic has to reach them within three turns.
This gives the player some time to save them, often disrupting their plans. If they manage to get a medic to the character, they can continue to use them throughout Valkyria Chronicles. If they don't, or if an enemy reaches the character first, they die forever. Their unique stats, quirks, storylines, and relationships with other characters are gone for that playthrough.
1 Until Dawn's Cast Can Die In Horrific Ways
Until Dawn is designed to emulate slasher movies, most of which don't include cast members coming back to life once their time is up. Consequently, when a character dies in Until Dawn, they stay dead and the story shapes itself around their absence. There are some fake-outs where a character is later revealed to be alive, but genuine deaths are long-lasting.
It is possible to have the main cast come out of the game alive, but it's by no means guaranteed. Until Dawn even has some fun with its permadeath, having several achievements that urge players to kill specific groups of survivors while leaving others alive.