There’s something reassuring about knowing you can pick up some extra lives in a video game, ever since the days of Super Mario Bros. and Pac-Man. When your character dies, the action resumes right where you left off — or pretty close to it. You don’t lose much progress.
Things can continue largely as they were. Some games don’t offer that safety net. The best of them are better for it, building on the limitation to produce a truly unique experience.
They’re often challenging, but it goes beyond that. With the difficulty comes the sense that the stakes are real. If the thought of permadeath gets your heart racing in all the right ways, here are 10 games with that mechanic that you should seek out as soon as you can.
Available on: Switch, PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X In the original Rogue Legacy, players assume the role of a whole line of heroes, all of them exploring a dark castle in search of a cure for an ailing king. Each time a family member dies, their child takes up the hero’s mantle. That child has advantages that might allow them to finally succeed where their ancestors failed, but they may also suffer from unexpected new limitations that make the task more difficult.
Every new run builds the family fortune, which grants new resources that should eventually lead to success. But you have to wonder: by the time you reach the end of the game, what will success even look like, and how many innocent lives will have been lost? 2022’s Rogue Legacy 2 revisits the concept with additional polish and a much deeper narrative to make it all practically irresistible. Available on: 3DS, Switch, Wii U, PS4, Vita, PC, Xbox One Released in 2011, The Binding of Isaac is a game from Edmund McMillen (Mewgenics) and Florian Himsl about a little boy named Isaac who flees to the basement after his God-fearing mother turns homicidal and goes after him with a kitchen knife.
Fearing for his life, he battles all sorts of nightmares while negotiating a seemingly endless series of mini-dungeons populated by nightmarish creatures determined to put an end to him. He gathers loot and resources along the way to survive showdowns with powerful foes. It all makes for a dark but strangely compelling experience.
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