History Main / InventoryManagementPuzzle

* The [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 PS2]] game ''VideoGame/DisasterReport'' and its sequel, ''Raw Danger'', had a backpack that carried all your stuff. Since the game was designed as a survival game where speed was more important that carrying everything you could find, you had to make hard choices about what you wanted to carry, as what seemed useful could be useless later. As the game progressed you can get better backpacks with more space, starting with an emergency field aid bag and ending up with a massive camping bag that ''still'' couldn't hold everything you wanted.

* Ever click the buttons at the side of the screens on a UsefulNotes/{{Wii}}? You see all the little "screens" on each page? Every VC game or other application takes up one screen. If you're one of those people who bought everything Nintendo put on them, you'll be hurting for screens pretty fast.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' series had a pretty small GridInventory with very few stackable items, and ''VideoGame/DiabloII'' adding a small trunk and [[HyperspaceArsenal Hypercube]], which meant lots of trekking back and forth to sell ur lewtz (use somebody else's town portal and save scrolls!). One trick to get around this in a solo or less jerky server is to just drop things on the ground back at base (although you need to stuff everything away before logging out,) which also defangs the only real bite that the game's DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist had.
** In the original ''Diablo'', money took space in your inventory. Sure it stacked, but the richer you were, the less room you had left in your inventory, leading many veteran Diablo players to drop off the gold they had in Tristram's town square on solo runs. Even worse, due to a glitch it became impossible to buy the best armor in the game because carrying enough gold to pay for it meant there wasn't enough room for the item itself!

** Another updated added one extra slot, the off-hand slot, which allows a player to hold two different items at once (the off-hand can only right-click). Since the off-hand, unlike the dominant hand, is its own slot, this technically raises the number of slots in the player inventory to 37 slots total, as any object can be held in the off-hand slot (only in Java Edition).

* Unusually for being an all-action FPS with no RPG features at all, ''{{VideoGame/Chrome}}'' and the sequel ''Chrome Specforce'' feature an ''extremely'' restrictive Tetris inventory. Not only do you get a square-based grid where to fit your guns, but the grid is split in several small spaces and ammo takes some of it too. This makes any weapon loadout different than a rifle plus a shotgun greatly impractical - simply carrying a rocket launcher and its ammo, for example, restricts the only other weapon you can possibly carry to something small like a pistol.

* ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeon'', true to its roguelike roots, has limited inventory space. Provisioning is vitally important to surviving a dungeon run, but the more room you devote to provisioning, the less room you have for gold, treasures and trinkets which are needed to both improve the Hamlet, de-stress and improve your characters, and afford further provisions for future runs. As a result, many are the times when you will need to decide whether to drop an item of provision or loot to make room for what you've just picked up in the dungeon.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'' also had an inventory limit, and considering (unlike most console [=RPG=]s) each individual healing item counts as "one," your two-page limit got filled awfully fast.

* Directly as a puzzle. The classic Inventory Management Puzzle is [[FoxChickenGrainPuzzle the brain-teaser in which you must transport a fox, a hen, and some grain across a bridge that will only bear the weight of one item at a time.]]
* As an attempt to impose difficulty and complexity on a player. It forces the player to manage inventory as a resource, just as they have to manage [[HitPoints HP]], [[{{Mana}} MP]], and so forth.
* To punish players by making them backtrack through a substantial portion of the game if the player made a poor choice to leave a PlotCoupon behind to carry more guns and ammo.
* To achieve greater realism, even if it damages [[ScrappyMechanic the gameplay and/or annoys players]]. Even if a person in the situation would ''find'' a place for that green herb if it meant the difference between life and death.
* To ''encourage'' players to actually use items, rather than hoarding them [[TooAwesomeToUse forever]] for whenever they might come in handy.
* To make sure the player cannot rely on items for things that can be done by other means. Why ever use a healing spell if you can carry 99 of each of three types of healing potions and two types of party-healing ones?
* Lack of memory space. On the early platforms, memory was at a premium for both in-play and save data. This is probably the case for any arbitrary inventory limit on a NES game.

* Sierra's ''VideoGame/QuestForGlory'' series, being part adventure game and part RPG, effectively hybridizes the "bottomless pockets" philosophy of Sierra's other games with an RPG-style inventory capacity limit. In this case, the key factor is weight; your character can carry any number of items of any size, as long as their combined weight stays beneath your character's upper limit (determined by their strength). However, this is not a ''hard'' limit - you can, in fact, carry items above and beyond this amount. Doing so, however, physically strains your character, depleting your stamina much faster than normal (which kills you if it runs out). That being said, at no point will you ever come across enough stuff to weigh you down unless you do it on purpose (picking up far too many throwing rocks, for example). By the time you reach the hard limit for strength for the game, you can carry everything with ease. Wizards and thieves don't even need to get to the hard limit (unless the thief insists on carrying dozens of throwing daggers), and fighters and paladins have heavier equipment with swords and heavy armor and shields, but since they're expected to develop their strength, it's not a concern.

* ''VideoGame/{{Shivers}}'', by Creator/{{Sierra}}, limited inventory to ''one'' item. The only takeable items were a set of canopic jars used to contain evil spirits, so the general pattern of the game was "Find a jar. Find the matching lid (A jar and lid counted as a single item). Find the matching evil spirit." Not bad given the setup, but, since the jars and lids were randomly distributed, and approaching an evil spirit with the wrong jar led to them being re-shuffled, the game involved a lot of wandering around to find a matching set.

* ''VideoGame/{{Shivers}}'' tasked you to capture ten evil spirits haunting an abandoned museum, which required you to have the appropriate urn and matching lid for that spirit. However you could only carry one urn, lid or urn-and-matching-lid at a time; trying to pick up a new one would drop the old item in its place, so you usually had to make notes of where you left stuff. What's more, after you recaptured a spirit, the urn would be moved to a separate place on your task bar, implying that you could carry as many "completed" urns as you liked.

* The [=PS2=] game ''VideoGame/DisasterReport'' and its sequel, ''Raw Danger'', had a backpack that carried all your stuff. Since the game was designed as a survival game where speed was more important that carrying everything you could find, you had to make hard choices about what you wanted to carry, as what seemed useful could be useless later. As the game progressed you can get better backpacks with more space, starting with an emergency field aid bag and ending up with a massive camping bag that ''still'' couldn't hold everything you wanted.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda''

** Jade's Fetch Modi are instead based on various popular board games, such as Jenga, Memory, and ''TabletopGame/{{Pictionary}}''. She deserves special mention since she figures out how to use the ''Pictionary'' Modus to trick the system into giving her free items -- by drawing something that she doesn't have, she creates a sort of "ghost" item that can't be used but which retains the captcha codes all filled storage cards have, which she can then use to create real items.

** Jade's Fetch Modi are instead based on various popular board games, such as Jenga, Memory, and Pictionary. She deserves special mention since she figures out how to use the Pictionary Modus to trick the system into giving her free items -- by drawing something that she doesn't have, she creates a sort of "ghost" item that can't be used but which retains the captcha codes all filled storage cards have, which she can then use to create real items.

* ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'', unlike its SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', had a weight limit on the amount of items you can carry, and you are not allowed to go over the limit. If you want to free up some encumberance, you can store items in the stockpile. This brings up a minor case of FakeBalance: consumable items have an item weight, but their weight is small enough that you can carry dozens of each type of healing grass and others with no problems. As a result, weight limit only ends up being a nuisance as you casually play through the game and pick up items and gear along the way.