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Strak
1560
Strak
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CloseSo I've been hard at work on a kind-of rogue-like not really game, which focuses on a loot system that randomly generates unique equipment. This sparked the thought of moving loot between save files, which I figured out how to do (think storage in Diablo), which then prompted the necessity for a save system that creates accounts rather than files. In other words, a system that doesn't allow you to duplicate items by saving twice and moving gear from a disposable save file to your actual save file.
However, this prompted another issue. Dying. What happens if you find a wicked legendary weapon, forget to save, and die in the next encounter? The answer? Death doesn't mean game over. Simply respawning. But that begs the question that is the focus of this topic. What are some ideas for a respawning mechanic that makes canonical sense to a game world?
Pokemon had one of the best systems I've seen, where it's not actually YOU fighting and fainting, but creatures you control, and if they lose you run back to a health center which acts as a respawn point. Diablo has a respawn system that doesn't make a ton of sense, but is very functional. And Borderlands has New-U stations, which make sense for the player, but aren't the most sensible thing in the actual game world (especially when characters actually LEGIT die).
So yeah. Let's have a conversation. What are your thoughts on respawn systems, how they work with your game world, and whether or not it matters if they make sense?
However, this prompted another issue. Dying. What happens if you find a wicked legendary weapon, forget to save, and die in the next encounter? The answer? Death doesn't mean game over. Simply respawning. But that begs the question that is the focus of this topic. What are some ideas for a respawning mechanic that makes canonical sense to a game world?
Pokemon had one of the best systems I've seen, where it's not actually YOU fighting and fainting, but creatures you control, and if they lose you run back to a health center which acts as a respawn point. Diablo has a respawn system that doesn't make a ton of sense, but is very functional. And Borderlands has New-U stations, which make sense for the player, but aren't the most sensible thing in the actual game world (especially when characters actually LEGIT die).
So yeah. Let's have a conversation. What are your thoughts on respawn systems, how they work with your game world, and whether or not it matters if they make sense?
Some games whisk players to the nearest temple and deduct gold from the player for the service. I think Dragon Warrior games did this, to some degree? Sorry, I emulated a few of those games via emulator back on the day, and I remember exactly nothing about how they worked.
I can, however, say that respawning in Might and Magic 6, and it's immediate sequels (7 and 8), the cost for respawn was whatever gold the party had on hand. The games had banks scattered across the realm that players could use as a back-up for their funds if they were lost this way. However, since those games allowed players to save just about anywhere, it was likely less costly to just load your last save, rather than continue playing from that kind of game state.
However, loading your last save is likely not an option in a rouge-like. So, trying to get on track of the OP, I look towards Hades. Now, here's a rouge-like where the protagonist is certainly a supernatural being, the son of Hades, with the goal of escaping his father's realm to maybe meet his mother. Or something like that. So, the when the player dies (and it's always a "when" with rouge-likes), the respawn back into the hub area is because of the nature of the location of where he's attempting to escape from.
In other words, Hades uses the backdrop of Greek mythology to work with the game's systems. The protagonist respawns back to the realm of Hades because he just died, only to prepare for yet another attempt to escape from that realm.
*Edit: Hades also has resources that players can spend on a per-run basis, or a more permanent basis. However, the focus of this topic is on how to use the rules of the game-world (or to establish those rules in the first place) to allow players to more readily suspend their disbelief when a respawn occurs. The Hades example works because it's underlying rules (ie: where a soul goes when a person dies) are based on Greek mythology that's been passed down for a very, very long time.
I can, however, say that respawning in Might and Magic 6, and it's immediate sequels (7 and 8), the cost for respawn was whatever gold the party had on hand. The games had banks scattered across the realm that players could use as a back-up for their funds if they were lost this way. However, since those games allowed players to save just about anywhere, it was likely less costly to just load your last save, rather than continue playing from that kind of game state.
However, loading your last save is likely not an option in a rouge-like. So, trying to get on track of the OP, I look towards Hades. Now, here's a rouge-like where the protagonist is certainly a supernatural being, the son of Hades, with the goal of escaping his father's realm to maybe meet his mother. Or something like that. So, the when the player dies (and it's always a "when" with rouge-likes), the respawn back into the hub area is because of the nature of the location of where he's attempting to escape from.
In other words, Hades uses the backdrop of Greek mythology to work with the game's systems. The protagonist respawns back to the realm of Hades because he just died, only to prepare for yet another attempt to escape from that realm.
*Edit: Hades also has resources that players can spend on a per-run basis, or a more permanent basis. However, the focus of this topic is on how to use the rules of the game-world (or to establish those rules in the first place) to allow players to more readily suspend their disbelief when a respawn occurs. The Hades example works because it's underlying rules (ie: where a soul goes when a person dies) are based on Greek mythology that's been passed down for a very, very long time.
Darken
3952
Dark Souls is a pretty big one. You're undead so you cannot die and appear back at the bonfire when you "lose". You keep all your stuff aside from souls. Though I've never been clear on what exactly takes you to the bonfire, I guess you just turn into a zombie and slowly walk back to regain a bit of humanity. If you give up on the game you could argue that's what turns you hollowed losing all trace of humanity.
I've always liked Prince of Persia (2003) where the idea is that the protagonist is merely narrating and you hear the prince go "wait, that's not how that happened" whenever you die. It doesn't have the keep your stuff thing but I could imagine some interesting bits to insert like "oh yeah well it turns out I got this weapon earlier than I remembered" to emulate foggy memory.
My own game I had an idea to have you assume a nearby robot body, since you were a robot that could possess/hack drones and such I figured it would be cool to have a comeback mechanic. It's kind of hard to implement not for coding reasons exactly but just that the game isn't built around having robot corpses everywhere with different graphics. Generally I think the costs of immersion can be rather high unless it's built into the game from the start.
I've always liked Prince of Persia (2003) where the idea is that the protagonist is merely narrating and you hear the prince go "wait, that's not how that happened" whenever you die. It doesn't have the keep your stuff thing but I could imagine some interesting bits to insert like "oh yeah well it turns out I got this weapon earlier than I remembered" to emulate foggy memory.
My own game I had an idea to have you assume a nearby robot body, since you were a robot that could possess/hack drones and such I figured it would be cool to have a comeback mechanic. It's kind of hard to implement not for coding reasons exactly but just that the game isn't built around having robot corpses everywhere with different graphics. Generally I think the costs of immersion can be rather high unless it's built into the game from the start.
The Mummy Demastered handles this well. You're basically one of a number of agents that when you die, you're simply replaced. What's cooler? You actually have to defeat your zombified version with the equipment you had where you died.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Too Human, being rooted in Norse mythology, had a Valkyrie that would swoop down and lift you back up to your last spawn point if you died. Bioshock had facilities that were built to reconstruct your body should you die in Rapture. Fire Emblem Engage has respawns built into the story by use of a time crystal that lets you undo every action all the way up to the start of a battle. If you happen to use up all your crystal uses, you are given the option to restart the chapter with all the experience your units gained in that map.
You could also just not have characters canonically die and instead get seriously wounded enough to automatically retreat back to the closes checkpoint. Maybe dropping some loot or cash on the way back as punishment?
You could also just not have characters canonically die and instead get seriously wounded enough to automatically retreat back to the closes checkpoint. Maybe dropping some loot or cash on the way back as punishment?
Strak
1560
I was actually thinking about this more, and I realized that there is a calculus that comes into play with these types of systems. First being, how challenging is the game? Pokemon is very forgiving in the sense that death doesn't mean game over, simply losing a bit of money, but you don't have to fight every trainer all over again. That said, Pokemon isn't usually very challenging, and the likelihood of actually losing at any point in the game expect for maybe the elite four is very small. The downside is that grinding is extremely painful, since you weren't able to rematch against trainers until later installments of the game. If you hit a wall, you really had no choice but to grind.
Diablo 3 was almost TOO forgiving, in that you could respawn right where you died for practically no cost whatsoever. The difference there was that the game was actually challenging, and you were almost certain to die at some point in your journey. However, grinding was mitigated by being able to purchase new and better loot, or simply getting one really good drop that spiked your survivability.
Arguably one of the better respawn systems was in Minecraft. If you died, you started over. If you could manage to find where you died, you could retrieve the items you had and some EXP, but if you couldn't get back to your stuff and get out alive again, you lost it. You could stash things in chests to prevent them from getting lost, but you had to weigh the risk/reward of heading out without your best gear and possibly dying, or venturing out with it and possibly losing it. EXP wasn't hard to get, so that wasn't too bad of a punishment, but losing Netherite armor could be devastating. The only thing you'd get to keep on a new life is everything you'd built in the world up to that point.
Diablo 3 was almost TOO forgiving, in that you could respawn right where you died for practically no cost whatsoever. The difference there was that the game was actually challenging, and you were almost certain to die at some point in your journey. However, grinding was mitigated by being able to purchase new and better loot, or simply getting one really good drop that spiked your survivability.
Arguably one of the better respawn systems was in Minecraft. If you died, you started over. If you could manage to find where you died, you could retrieve the items you had and some EXP, but if you couldn't get back to your stuff and get out alive again, you lost it. You could stash things in chests to prevent them from getting lost, but you had to weigh the risk/reward of heading out without your best gear and possibly dying, or venturing out with it and possibly losing it. EXP wasn't hard to get, so that wasn't too bad of a punishment, but losing Netherite armor could be devastating. The only thing you'd get to keep on a new life is everything you'd built in the world up to that point.
Definitely think the mechanics are more important to consider first. Not because it doesn't matter narratively what the explanation is for respawning, but just because it's pretty easy. A simple "you barely dragged yourself somewhere safe" will work for most people. If you think of a lore explanation that's better, that's just icing!
Fear and Hunger has limited saves and aggressively hard fights. The game is like horror-themed so just dying makes sense despite the difficulty too. It invokes frustration and helplessness because it's supposed to do. Think of what feelings you want to invoke when players die. Jimmy and the pulsating mass have you carried out by the monsters who then loot you because it's a silly goofy game, and Omori is interesting because it's kind of good and bad at the gameplay and narrative working together
Fear and Hunger has limited saves and aggressively hard fights. The game is like horror-themed so just dying makes sense despite the difficulty too. It invokes frustration and helplessness because it's supposed to do. Think of what feelings you want to invoke when players die. Jimmy and the pulsating mass have you carried out by the monsters who then loot you because it's a silly goofy game, and
takes place in a dream so the stakes are actually very low and the gameplay reflects that.
throughout the game you can persist, letting you survive killing blows, but eventually you can be killed with enough hits. It's a bit odd bc it's a dream, but later on you face a boss where you can't die and it shows the resolve the character has grown.
Project Zomboid, where you can start over in the same world but your previous character is now a zombie that you have to kill to get your stuff back. You're essentially a different survivor but you can choose to stick with the same appearance and build. The YouTube series Let's Game It Out decided to see how many zombified characters you can have with hilarious results.
Nobody has mentioned it but I believe one of the Battlefield games had you respawn as a brand new soldier every time you died, to reinforce the "meat grinder" nature of war and how many people die in it.
I always thought that was an extremely good way to handle respawns and make the game more poignant.
I always thought that was an extremely good way to handle respawns and make the game more poignant.
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