Save Game Limits/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Limitations on a player's ability to save their progress in a Video Game.

  • Straight: The game Tropicanic Fantasy only allows the player to keep up to three save files at a time. In addition, they can only save at Save Points, which can be found in towns, villages, and deep within the various dungeons, towers, caves and other perils the hero must traverse.
  • Exaggerated: Tropon's Test only allows the player a single save file, which can only be saved in the Hub Level. On top of this, it doesn't save any of their progress in the dungeons, which are randomly generated. And it takes Skill Points that would probably be better spent making the hero stronger...
  • Justified: There's only so much memory available on the game cartridge (for older systems) or on the console (for newer ones), and a lot of it went to creating a nice story line and good graphics. Doing it this way (if not exaggerated) means multiple quests and approaches of the game can be played simultaneously without spoiling the plot.
  • Inverted: You have over fifty save slots in which you can save anywhere, anytime. Even during battles and cutscenes.
  • Subverted: The save screen looks like it accommodates three saves total, but saving in the first slot reveals a previously hidden fourth slot. Saving a second reveals a fifth slot, and so on.
  • Double Subverted: There is a hard cap of seven total saves available - after the fifth save is made no new ones appear.
  • Parodied: A limited-save system is implemented in the latest version of MicroSuck Doors OS for all of the files. Millions of users complain, especially in places prone to power outages.
  • Deconstructed: Bob buys Tropon's Test, only to become so frustrated with the overly restrictive saving system that he gives up on the game entirely.
  • Reconstructed: Tropon's Test has a saving system which, while restrictive, is well-designed so that Bob treats the saves like a resource to be managed, encouraging him to strategize and drawing him into the game further.
  • Zig Zagged:
  • Averted: There are fifty save files.
  • Enforced: See Justified.
  • Lampshaded: The lone save point between That One Level and That Other Level has a sign next to it that reads "OH THANK GOD."
  • Invoked: The final boss of Tropon's Test is seen deliberately removing all the save points from The Very Definitely Final Dungeon in a cinematic cutscene.
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: The first time you reach a savepoint, the player character pops up on your screen, sees the three save slots, and pulls out his trusty ROM emulator. For the rest of the game, you can save anywhere and have infinite slots to save in.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Played For Laughs: Bob, playing Tropicanic Fantasy, tells Alice that he needs just a little more time to get to where he can save. It's heavily implied he's exaggerating so he can keep playing.
  • Played For Drama: The limited number of save files and save points pisses off many players, to the point where all of them firebomb and shoot up the developer's building. Fifteen people die.

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