Most games are willing to grant their players a little leeway if they make a mistake. That's what saving and save points are typically used for, to let the player go back and try again. However, some games are just not so kind.
While some will actively punish the player by making them restart their entire game, world, or sessions, others just permanently kill side characters due to player negligence. Sometimes that means that player will need to be replaced, and in others, that means that a full ending will become unobtainable.
9 Minecraft's Hardcore Mode Makes The World Even More Dangerous
Minecraft is a sandbox building and survival game that is one of the best-selling video games of all time. One of its modes is made with extremely enhanced mobs to fight, and darker, longer nights. Once the player dies in this hardcore mode, they can no longer interact with the world in any way.
It's there for players who want an extra level of difficulty beyond mobs sneaking up on them during a mining run and mindlessly respawning in bed every time the player gets a little too careless. The fact that such a mode exists in a game that also allows players to turn off all enemies and fully explore the world with unrestricted movement and unlimited resources just speaks to why Minecraft is so popular and has reached so many different kinds of players.
8 Don't Starve Erases The Entire World Upon Death
There are a few ways to get around Don't Starve's permadeath. One is to build a Meat Effigy, so when the player dies they respawn wherever it was placed for the price of some health. The other is to find a touchstone, which will respawn the player there with a bolt of lightning after death. After all of the activated touchstones and meat effigies are gone, the game will erase itself, grant out any experience, and return the player to the home screen.
Together also has the option to revive friends with a Telltale Heart. This costs a percentage of the maker's health, but it can be restored unlike making a Meat Effigy. Then the other player has to feed the heart to the ghost player. Alternatively, if the world is set on Endless, the player can simply go through the Florid Postern at the cost of their health until given a Booster Shot.
7 Letting Certain Characters Die In Suikoden Means That All Of The Stars Cannot Be Collected
Part of every Suikoden game is collecting all 108 Stars of Destiny and recording them on a tablet. If this feat is achieved, it typically unlocks a secret ending or some bonus scenes.
However, if key characters are killed either by the player during a scripted event or during a war, they are stricken out of the tablet and unable to be recovered. No other character can take their place under that star and in some of the games, prevents the return or revival of some of the people closest to the protagonist.
6 The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth Makes Sure It's Creepy About It
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is a collection of the original Binding of Isaac games coupled with new characters, new add-ons, and the Wrath of Lamb expansion. It smashes together top-down shooters with a roguelike style of play, forcing the player to repeat everything should they manage to lose all of their hearts during the course of the story.
This doesn't destroy its replayability either, as it is fast-paced and full of challenges for every one of their complex characters, each having just a little bit of a different feel to them.
5 Hades Makes Zagreus Restart Even If He Makes It To The End
Even if the player manages to make it all the way through all of the levels of Hades's realm and make it to the surface, Zagreus's soul is still connected to the underworld. He gets approximately five minutes on the surface of in-game time to have a conversation with his mother, getting answers his father was never going to tell him.
Additionally, like most roguelikes, death clears all progress throughout the dungeon, making it so the player has to start from the very beginning to claw their way up multiple times to get more of the story.
4 X-COM Permanently Kills Anyone Lost During A Mission
X-Com is a turn-based strategy game that is notorious for just how difficult it is. It's also wildly popular, having multiple installments even after it faced a seven-year hiatus from the developers.
The entire squad grows and develops throughout the game, and if one dies, that's the end for them. At that point, they have to be replaced with a new character that has not gotten all of the progress as the rest of the team, meaning the most painful are late-game losses where it is hard to get the newbies up to speed.
3 Final Fantasy Tactics Gives Only Three Turns To Save From Permadeath
When a character in Final Fantasy Tactics runs out of health, they are turned into a crystal. However, they are able to be saved if another character can get to them and sacrifice a round to revive them within three turns.
So in some particularly sticky battles, there may come the choice to lose one character and still finish the map, or lose everyone and need to restart. It can be a tough call, one that tends to force specific strategies out of players. It's a far cry from the mainline Final Fantasy games that allow characters felled in battle to pop right back to life at any time with the simple use of a Phoenix Down, an item that is both cheap and plentiful in most installments of the series.
2 FTL: Faster Than Light Is Not Fast Enough To Prevent Permadeath
The point of FTL: Faster Than Light is to get the player's ship with news about an oncoming attack from a group of violent rebels. The whole time they are fighting for their lives trying to make it back safely, and it gets more battle-heavy as the game gets closer to the end.
There is a lot of good exploring in the earlier parts of the game, giving reason to want to keep picking it up. Due to the nature of it as a roguelike, it will never be quite the same game twice. So it has a ton of replayability, a great perk for a game that ends up as difficult as FTL. It makes it all the more sweeter when the ship has finally made its way to the end.
1 Death Means Starting From Scratch In DayZ
DayZ is a unique game, as it is one of those that started out initially as a mod for ArmA 2 while also being a wildly popular multiplayer game. It's not even the zombies in this survival game that are going to be the most dangerous part about it, but instead other scavengers looking for equipment.
Once it's all over, the player is kicked back to the start. Any mistake shoves the player in the middle of rural nowhere with swarms of zombies trying to get to them. All of their equipment is gone and they just have to get up and try one more time to get through the game.