In many action, platformer, and adventure games, the threat of death and fail states are your primary impetus toward success and progress. Either you win the fight or find the goober, or you drop dead and get sent back to your last save or checkpoint.
There’s nothing wrong with this traditional framework, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only one any game is permitted to employ.
10 Cheap Video Game Deaths We All Suffered
Dying is one thing, but cheap deaths are on another level.
More than a few games either eschew the concept of death or remove it entirely. In some cases, death is more of a slap on the wrist than anything, bringing you back right where you are with a paltry penalty.
In other games, concepts like death and health bars aren’t even part of the equation. Not all games go about this with the best results, but I’d say these ones did the best job of it.
Have A Scar For Your Troubles
More than a few fantasy adventure games cast you in the role of some manner of legendary hero who will save the world from some nondescript evil. I say, if you’re a destined hero, the position should rightfully come with some perks, and I’m not just talking about fancy magic or a big sword.
InFable 2, your heroic disposition manifests as the complete inability to die. You have a health bar and can be defeated in battle, but whenever you are defeated, you almost immediately receive a “burst of strength” and leap right back to your feet to continue the fight.
There are only two real penalties for death: you lose some experience, and you get a random scar slapped on your body somewhere, which does increase your ugliness stat. Pretty small potatoes, especially if you think the scars look cool anyway.
Whether this was a good design choice is still a topic of debate for fans of the series. Personally, I wasn’t bothered by it, as I’d rather just keep playing than have to do a fight over. You’re supposed to be an indomitable hero, anyway.
8Lil Gator Game
We’re Not Doing Fall Damage
Lil Gator Game
What is death if not a “rule” in a video game? You run out of health, you die, that’s the rule. But the thing about games in general is that rules are flexible; if a rule isn’t serving the grander purpose of the game being fun, there’s no reason to have it. That is the in-universe justification why you can’t die in Lil Gator Game.
One of my favorite little conversations in this game is between the Gator and another kid who’s afraid of heights. When you ask him what he’s scared of, he says he’s afraid of fall damage, the kind you incur when falling from high spots in most games these days.
Gator responds that they haven’t played the latest games with fall damage, and just figured it’d be more fun to play their game without it. Instantly, the other kid’s fears are assuaged.
I think the lack of death mechanics in this game reflects its generally positive tone very well. Gator and their friends are putting this whole production together for everyone to have fun, and it wouldn’t be very fun to randomly die and get excluded for the rest of the afternoon.
7A Short Hike
Everyone Wins In Beachstickball
A Short Hike
Life is scary and confusing enough as it is without the constant fear of imminent death. Maybe we can’t avoid that in real life, but at least in games, the hooded specter doesn’t need to follow us through every innocuous interaction and expedition. That’s why I’m glad death isn’t a factor in A Short Hike.
Despite being a very vertical game, with a heavy emphasis on flying and gliding, there’s no fall damage or hazards to worry about in A Short Hike.
It’s supposed to be a story about small, personal triumphs; climbing a mountain because it’s there and confronting the things you’re afraid of to grow ever so slightly as a person. Maybe you could say a lack of death cheapens that, but I say it helps keep the message focused.
There are plenty of hiking and traversal games out there where you may fall to your death, but if I want to play something relaxing where I don’t have to worry about that, I’d say that’s my prerogative.
6Kirby’s Epic Yarn
How Do You Kill A Piece Of Yarn?
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
Despite being a terrifying cosmic entity of unfathomable strength, Kirby has remained susceptible to death at the hands of his foes in most of his games. Hey, you can’t make him too powerful, or he stops being cute.
One of the few exceptions to this wasKirby’s Epic Yarn, wherein Kirby was able to showcase his true power while still maintaininghis friendly vibe.
You don’t have any health meter to speak of in Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Getting attacked by enemies, stumbling into hazards, or falling down pits simply costs you a few gems, which you can recoup easily enough. You could definitely write this off as this game being designed with a younger audience in mind, but I don’t think that’s the only reason for this design choice.
Kirby games have always had a heavy puzzle-exploration element, hiding collectibles and items throughout their levels. Epic Yarn just moves that from a secondary element to the primary one, encouraging you to fully explore levels and see all that they have to offer.
A game doesn’t need to kill you to keep you engaged with its presentation and mechanics, after all.
5LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
Pull Yourself Together
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
One of the big appeals to playing with LEGOs is that they’re easy to put back together after your sibling pitches your castle down the stairs. Obviously, it’s annoying to build it again, but it’s not nearly as bad as it could be.
This is the philosophy that’s carried over into many of the LEGO tie-in video games, my personal favorite of which isLEGO Marvel Super Heroes.
In LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, every character does have a health bar, which drains when you’re attacked or stumble into hazards. If you run out, your little minifig will blow up into parts, costing you some studs. Immediately afterward, they’re reconstructed, no worse for wear.
The Skywalker Saga Was Great, But It’s Time For Lego Tie-in Games To Evolve
What more can be done with this series that started a long, long time time in a galaxy far, far away?
Obviously, these games are intended primarily for children, though the lack of tangible death penalties also made it fun for me to hurl myself off of ledges over and over.
The game even has achievements related to death, specificallycharacters with healing factors like Wolverine. If you let him die, he just gets back up as a disembodied adamantium skeleton and regenerates his health, which you get an achievement for. Fun!
4Monkey Island 2
Guybrush’s Short-Term Memory
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
Back in the late 80s, early 90s, the two giants of point-and-click adventure games were Sierra and LucasArts. Where Sierra’s bread and butter were games in which you were never more than a few steps froma sudden, violent death, LucasArts’ missive was that you shouldn’t have to put up with that.
Just about any of LucasArts’ adventure games fit the no-death bill, but one I’d particularly like to highlight isMonkey Island 2.
The majority of this game’s story is told in the form of a flashback that Guybrush is narrating to Elaine while he hangs perilously over a bottomless pit. There are a couple of instances throughout the game where you can die, but if you do, we just smash-cut back to the bottomless pit where Elaine points out that if Guybrush had died, he obviously wouldn’t be there, telling the story.
Besides being a generally funny gag, this was a fun riff on the norms of adventure game designs of the time. Speaking as someone who dragged himself across the finish line in multiple King’s Quest games, it was nice to play something where death wasn’t a factor.
Roll It Back
Braid, Anniversary Edition
Games withtime-manipulation mechanics, rewinding especially, can have an unusual relationship with the concept of death and fail states. So long as you can catch yourself at the critical moment and roll it back, death holds no meaning. This is particularly nice inBraid, where I’m already racking my brain on puzzles and don’t need instant death on top of that.
Personal time rewinding is your primary ability in Braid, both for puzzle solving and general traversal. If you get bumped by an enemy or fall into a bed of spikes, the game just stops cold, prompting you to roll back the clock as far as you think you need to.
Braid isn’t an action game, it’s a puzzle game, and an occasionally complicated one at that. Being able to freely rewind instead of dying helps to keep you on task while you’re trying to logic out a puzzle solution.
I particularly appreciated free rewinding when I was attempting to brute force a particular puzzle with multiple rapid-fire solutions. If I had to go through a death-induced loading screen with every attempt, I’d tear my hair out.
2Spiritfarer
You’re Already There
Spiritfarer
While simulator and building games are generally more laid-back in nature, there are some examples in which you’re able to die. As long as there’s a health mechanic, there is a way for the game to penalize you with lost progress.Spiritfarer, however, is not one of those games, and there’s a very good in-universe reason for that: you’re already in the afterlife.
What, are you gonna double-die? Even if you could die, where are you going to go? Stella’s the Spiritfarer, ferryperson of the dead, you’d just end up right back on your boat anyway.
Riffing aside, it also generally makes sense for this game not to have dying mechanics, in spite of its setting, because its tone is one meant to be a celebration of life. The whole point of the game is that, even if you’re at death’s door, there’s no reason to give up on life’s little pleasures, and being able to randomly die would muddle that.
The only thing even resembling a fail state in this game is mucking up one of theresource collection minigameslike mining a dragon. Even then, just do it again.
1Wario Land 2
Wario Doesn’t Feel Like Dying
Wario Land 2
In all things, Wario is Mario’s polar opposite. Where Mario is kind and selfless, Wario is a greedy jerk. Where Mario can be defeated by being bumped by a Goomba,Wario merely adapts to the situation, as he does in Wario Land 2.
In Wario Land 2, Wario is virtually untouchable, at least in the traditional sense. Unlike his counterpart, Wario can’t be tangibly injured by enemy contact; he just stumbles a bit and loses some coins.
However, certain specific types of enemies and hazards cause Wario to undergo bizarre transformations and conditional shifts, such as turning into a zombie, getting squashed into a bouncy spring, or having his butt lit on fire. He’ll bounce back soon enough, though, and while he’s in these altered states, he can get into spots he wouldn’t normally be able to.
I remember the first time I played Wario Land 2 on a friend’s Game Boy, I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of a game where enemies didn’t kill you. Eventually, I realized it’s just a different kind of game, one that rewards exploration and experimentation.
8 Most Satisfying Anime Deaths
Some anime deaths hit differently, not with sadness, but with pure satisfaction. Here are 8 characters that got exactly what they deserved.
