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1%%This page's examples section is sorted alphabetically. It would be lovely if you'd maintain this, thanks.
2%%
3[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/DiabloIII https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/death2_2.jpg]]]]
4[[caption-width-right:350:Who cares about your charred, horribly disfigured remains? Your sword just got slightly ''rustier''!]]
5
6->[sigh] ''"How many times must this fool die?"''
7-->-- '''Morte''' after the player has died repeatedly, ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment''
8
9In most video games, when you die, there is a penalty. However, this trope is about how in some games death is nothing more than a minor obstacle, a slap on the wrist, and not something to ever worry about, even for the worst of players.
10
11Death may be there just for formality's sake. For example, the makers of ''Videogame/Prey2006'' and ''VideoGame/BioShock1'' both said they didn't want to interrupt the narrative by forcing players to redo sections of the game they are poor at, so they gave you unlimited lives with no requirement to retry what you failed at. Some cooperative games, online or otherwise, use unlimited lives to keep the party going. For example, the offline mode of ''VideoGame/SeriousSam'' has a "come back to life where you last saved" system like most {{First Person Shooter}}s. However, if you're playing online cooperative mode, you come back to life on the spot when you die, and can do this infinite times, essentially transforming the game from a challenge into a party.
12
13There's been a noticeable progression of this trope in the {{MMORPG}} genre, starting with the first {{Multi User Dungeon}}s. Early [=MUDs=] and [=MMOs=] tended to carry a steep death penalty in terms of lost ExperiencePoints, {{Character Level}}s, or even most or all of your character's gear. Later games have gradually reduced or eliminated the penalties in order to appeal to more casual gamers, although some still offer a "hardcore" mode that preserves some or all of them, up to and including a FinalDeathMode.
14
15Dying without penalty is very common in games today [[AntiFrustrationFeatures in order to ease frustration]] of players that may repeatedly die and is also present in games where dying is very common due to [[NintendoHard the game being brutally difficult]]. Dying in a game nowadays tends to be quick and the player can return in a just as quick manner without the flow of the game being bogged down by restarting from the last {{checkpoint}} or the start of the level.
16
17A notable consequence of small or nonexistent death penalties is that there may be occasions where dying becomes ''beneficial''. If you're playing a game where the only penalty for death is going back to your last checkpoint and your next objective requires you to [[{{Backtracking}} go back there]], the quickest way to get there is often in a body bag. Intentional death is often used by [[SpeedRun speedrunners]] to gain an advantage in these situations. Some games may also restore your health when you die, leading dying players to succumb on purpose so that they can get a fresh start.
18
19This tends to happen if the player is playing an arcade game and is emulating it and the game doesn't send them back upon death, as the player can just insert one of their imaginary coins with the push of a button and easily get as many credits as the game will allow. Lives system and no penalty also became more common in platformers on flash and other indie games since the early 2000s where it spread to mainstream games.
20
21A sister trope to MeaninglessLives, where the player theoretically has a limited number of lives, but there's enough that running out is nearly impossible, or/and you don't lose much at all if you do. Contrast ContinuingIsPainful, where you lose a ''lot'' more than expected should you decide to keep going after you lose. Contrast CheckPointStarvation, where lack of {{check point}}s results in going back really far after dying. Contrast {{Permadeath}}, where dead characters stay dead (although in the case of party members, they may be easily replaced). Compare DeathIsNotPermanent and DeathIsCheap, which are non-gameplay equivalents to the same trope. See also NewbieImmunity for when this happens only in the beginning section in order to ease the player into the game without fear of penalty for losing. When this applies in the afterlife, as in the myth of Valhalla, see WarriorHeaven or HellIsWar.
22----
23!!Examples:
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25[[foldercontrol]]
26
27[[folder:Action Adventure]]
28* In ''VideoGame/AliceMadnessReturns'', if you fall off a platform, you simply reform on another platform. (Dying in a fight sends you to the last checkpoint, though.)
29* ''VideoGame/{{Badland}}'' had checkpoints placed after every two obstacles or so and loading to a checkpoint took a second or less, and was done in subtle FadeToBlack fashion. However, this checkpoint placement made the game harder if you wanted to also save your character’s clones alongside it. If you missed one, passed an obstacle, and died, you would be respawned past it with the clone out of reach.
30* ''VideoGame/BinaryBoy'' had checkpoints after every obstacle and dying resulted in your character being blown off the screen and to the last checkpoint in a beautiful falling-leaf effect. Thus, it’s almost shocking when it’s subverted during the giant squid attack: dying sent you to the very beginning, when the “battle” (he never attacks you directly, only lethal due to the water displacement) had several different and relatively difficult stages.
31* In ''VideoGame/TheBreach'', the number of lives is unlimited. Each death sends Sergei back to the beginning of the level, but he retains all the gained experience, all his upgrades, and any key he found. The enemies are all back, but it isn't specific to the player's death: the monsters systematically reappear when leaving an area.
32* Creator/{{Konami}}'s ''VideoGame/CyGirls'' contained huge maps that give you a checkpoint practically every time you go through a door. If you should die or fail the mission, you can choose to continue. Doing so will place you at the last checkpoint (which will most likely set you back all of two seconds) with no other difference other than you're now at full health. Using health items is pointless if you can just die to get it all back. To be fair, this certainly is a big help when conserving for [[ThatOneBoss certain bosses]] in the game.
33* In ''Exile'' (the Platform/BBCMicro game), dying simply returns you to your last teleport position and applies a score penalty.
34* In ''VideoGame/{{Geist}}'', if the host Raimi is currently possessing has the life meter depleted, and is an expendable host, Raimi's soul simply leaves the body so he can look for another one. But if the deceased host is key for the mission, or no more hosts remain, ''or'' Raimi spends too much time as a ghost while looking for another host (even a single plant or an object), then it's a definitive Game Over.
35* ''VideoGame/IslandSaver'': Fall into a body of water or lava or fall off one of the floating islands of Fantasy Island? No worries, you just go back to where you where when you fell!
36* Dying in ''VideoGame/IttleDew'' merely restarts the current (generally small) room.
37* In ''VideoGame/Killer7'', dying as Dan, Kaede, Kevin, Coyote, Con or Mask simply transports you back to the last Harman's Room you visited. You can then switch to Garcian and make your way back to the place where the persona got killed, retrieve it, get transported back to Harman's Room and resurrect it by [[PressXToNotDie repeatedly pressing X]]. You even get to keep all the blood you've collected. ''However'', this means playing through the same stretch of level ''at least three times'': 1) the original run before dying, 2) as Garcian up to the spot where you died, 3) a third run with the restored persona. Considering that the enemies respawn constantly, and Garcian is the weaker member of [=Killer7=], dying isn't the walk in the park it's supposed to be. And if Garcian himself dies, it's a definitive Game Over.
38* In ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKainSoulReaver'', Raziel is immortal, and the plot dictates he physically can't die since he serves the [[EldritchAbomination Elder God]]. If his health runs out, he just shifts to the spectral plane, where he can simply suck a few stray souls to restore his health, then find a portal and go back to the material realm. The sequel averts this, as Raziel fights {{demon|icSpiders}}s that will follow you the spectral plane to kill you.
39* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' series:
40** If you die in a dungeon in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', rather than being booted back to the entrance like in previous games, you restart in the room where you died. Unless you quit and reload.
41** If you die in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaFourSwords'', you come back to life on the spot from a preset number of rupees. The only problem is that rupees are so common in the game that this mechanic is barely a punishment in single player (On the Platform/DSi version anyways) and makes it extremely unlikely you'll ever actually get a game over outside the Hero's Trial.
42** In nearly every ''Zelda'' game, acts that you would expect to kill you instantly such as falling into endless pits or pools of lava will just cause you to lose a small amount of health and return to the beginning of the room.
43** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'', falling into deep water without Zora's flippers returns you to shore instantly with no penalty, and on top of that you get temporary invincibility!
44** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'', dying just respawns you at the beginning of the area you came through or the beginning of the dungeon. The only way to actually get a GameOver and lose progress is if time runs out and [[ColonyDrop the moon crashes into Termina]].
45** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsOfTheKingdom'' make dying relatively painless. Because the games autosave frequently, your last autosave is loaded after dying, so you don't respawn too far from where you died. The state of your inventory is also reset to what it was from your last autosave, so you don't have to worry about losing any items you used. Dying during a boss fight will have the battle reset from the beginning, however.
46* The VideoGame/{{Lego Adaptation Game}}s give you infinite lives, and you respawn on the spot with no progress lost, except in the first game's vehicle levels, which return you to checkpoints. The only penalty is that you drop some Lego studs (the game's currency), and you can just pick them back up when you respawn, unless you fall into a bottomless pit. There's also an in-universe example in the ''Goblet of Fire'' portion of ''Harry Potter:'' [[spoiler:Cedric falls apart when killed with Avada Kedavra. When Harry gets back to Hogwarts with Cedric's body, Dumbledore hands Cedric's father instructions to put him back together.]] It gets lampshaded directly in ''Lego Batman 3'':
47-->'''Kevin Smith:''' Seriously since when did videogames have to be so punishing? I mean, the best ones just let you die over and over with very little consequence other than losing studs, or you know...whatever.
48* ''VideoGame/NobodySavesTheWorld'': Running out of HP unceremoniously dumps Nobody back to the last save point or region transfer with full health and mana, retaining all quest progress and currency earned. This means very little is lost upon dying on the world map. Dying in dungeons is worse, as it means starting the dungeon over unless you've reached the checkpoint placed just before the dungeon's last battle, but even then, everything else is retained, and no GameOver message appears.
49* ''VideoGame/{{Solatorobo}}'' takes this approach to death. Even if you fall off a floating mini-island in a level like Sealyham you'll simply reappear back at the point where you died, same health level and all.
50* In ''VideoGame/{{Sundered}}'', dying just sends you back to the Sanctuary, where your health elixirs and ammunition will be replenished and where you can immediately spend all the [[ExperiencePoints Shards]] you collected on your last run. The layout of the map ''will'' change slightly every time you die and you will need to backtrack, but otherwise all the progress you’ve made is kept.
51* In ''VideoGame/TitanSouls'', after death, the player character instantly respawns at the last checkpoint. There are no penalties whatsoever (apart from an increasing death counter).
52* Appears in the later ''Franchise/TombRaider'' games. In ''Legend'', ''Anniversary'', and ''Underworld'', death just sends you back to the last checkpoint with full health, making the games quite a bit easier. Since checkpoints are plentiful in the game, it's easier to simply off yourself to regain health for free instead of using any health packs.
53* In ''VideoGame/YokusIslandExpress'', "dying" (as in losing your ball in a pinball-table zone) only results in the loss of a few pieces of fruit, the in-game currency that's more than plentiful. Justified in that this prevents the pinball sections from becoming incredibly frustrating. In fact, you ''need'' to "die" a certain number of times to unlock a particular sidequest.
54 [[/folder]]
55
56[[folder:Action Game]]
57* In ''VideoGame/{{Overcooked}},'' even if you fall into a BottomlessPit, or out of a moving truck, or into burning lava, all you have to is wait five seconds to respawn. It doesn't even affect your end-of-level rank directly, though the loss of time spent cooking may hurt your score.
58* In the FMVGame ''VideoGame/BrainDead13'', since you have infinite lives unlike in previous interactive games (like ''VideoGame/DragonsLair''), you'll always start where you last left off when you die.
59* In ''[[VideoGame/NicktoonsUnite Nicktoons: Attack Of The Toybots]]'' if you die, then you generally get sent back to the start of whatever part of the DeathCourse you were trying to cross. [[SurpriseDifficulty Note that this will probably happen quite a few times.]]
60* In ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheForceUnleashed'', dying makes you go back a few feet and the enemies are still all dead. Bosses don't even regain health. This does not seem to apply for the DS version.
61* Dying in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil6'' just places you back at the checkpoint with a minor penalty (as in, you'd need to die about 5 times to really affect it) to your end-of-level [[RankInflation rank]]. In fact, sometimes it's even beneficial to die as doing so will refill all your health.
62* Dying in ''VideoGame/{{Ghostrunner}}'' just sets you back to right before the current encounter, with no chance of starting the whole level over or running out of VideoGameLives. You can even respawn the second you die, letting you get right back into the gameplay without having to watch a death animation or go to a game over screen.
63* In ''VideoGame/TheWonderful101'', you can immediately respawn upon death an unlimited number of times. Not at a checkpoint, ''right there.'' The only penalty is that your rank will take a big hit, so if you don't care about that you're basically immortal.
64[[/folder]]
65
66[[folder:Adventure Game]]
67* In ''VideoGame/ChicoryAColorfulTale'', you can only take two hits from bosses by default before getting knocked out, but you merely restart from the phase when you "died". You can even adjust the number of hits you can take or be completely invincible if you die several times.
68* ''VideoGame/CurseOfEnchantia'' takes this to an extreme - death is not even possible. Anything that would kill the player character in any other game is a mere hindrance that at worst causes AmusingInjuries that Brad instantly recovers from.
69* In ''VideoGame/{{Dragonsphere}}'' death is a common occurrence, but of little hindrance to the player; the game simply gives a [[HaveANiceDeath short message]] (sometimes with a clue) and then resets the player to where they were before making a fatal error.
70* ''VideoGame/EasternMindTheLostSoulsOfTongNou'' is based deeply in eastern philosophy and its themes; in fact, reincarnation plays a major role in the story, as you're supposed to die and reincarnate nine times; if you die, you can chose to return to that life or try another, with your inventory intact to boot (which makes dying a pretty useful tool so you can travel less distance!). And when you complete the objective the character you're playing as "quietly breathes his last". In fact, the only way to actually losing the game is [[spoiler: By drinking the moon water in the room of Immortality and becoming immortal, which locks the game in an neverending cutscene until you quit.]]
71* In ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry6ShapeUpOrSlipOut'', Larry can die just like characters in older Creator/{{Sierra}} games (including the first three ''Larry'' games), but in ''6'' a player is given the option to "Try Again" which resets Larry to exactly where he was just before the player did whatever caused Larry's death.
72* In the DOS adventure-survival game ''VideoGame/{{Wilderness}}'', if you die, you have the option of being resurrected. Don't know how many times you can do this.
73* ''VideoGame/TofuTowerNaka'': Death just means being sent back to the town outside the tower, losing all loot collected, except experience.
74[[/folder]]
75
76[[folder:Beat Em Up]]
77* In ''VideoGame/GriefSyndrome'' not only do you revive on the spot if you're killed, but you have RegeneratingHealth as well. However, to balance this out, there's also a Soul Limit counter, which starts at each level in the tens of thousands and slowly ticks down, but drains more whenever the player regenerates health, and drains a massive amount whenever you have to revive. If the Soul Limit counter reaches zero, that character is DeaderThanDead and unavailable for the rest of the game.
78* ''VideoGame/TheSimpsons'' arcade game on XBLA can have one life per person, 10 quarters/continues for every person, everyone sharing a pool of 40, or unlimited.
79* The XBLA version of ''VideoGame/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesTheArcadeGame'' has unlimited lives when playing offline. Online, there is a lives limit.
80* The Platform/PlaystationNetwork / Platform/XBoxLiveArcade rerelease of ''VideoGame/XMen'' lets you come back to life on the spot simply by hitting X every time you run out of lives. That's because it's an arcade game, except now you have unlimited "quarters". As a result, no matter how bad you are, you can progress just fine.
81[[/folder]]
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83[[folder:Dating Sim]]
84* Quite an unusual example for the genre, but in ''VisualNovel/{{Save the Date|PaperDino}}'', not only is your date's death a relatively trivial occurrence, it's integral to making progress in the game.
85[[/folder]]
86
87[[folder:Driving Game]]
88* In ''VideoGame/{{Roundabout}}'', there's no penalty for death, besides a second to respawn and getting sent back to your last checkpoint, and checkpoints are extremely frequent during missions, never setting you back more than a few seconds. Overworld checkpoints can be a bit more spread out, but you're still never very far from where you died.
89[[/folder]]
90
91[[folder:First Person Shooter]]
92* If you die on Normal difficulty in ''VideoGame/BattlefieldBadCompany'', you get reset to the last checkpoint, but any objectives you've done/enemies you've killed stay the same.
93* ''VideoGame/{{BioShock|1}}'' keeps your progress when you die. You get physically sent back to a revival chamber, but all enemies killed, items collected, etc. stay the same. There was a switch to toggle the Vita-Chambers on or off, though and on the 360 a reward for completing the game on Hard without using any of them in the form of a 100 point achievement titled, appropriately, "Brass Balls". In the [[VideoGame/{{Bioshock2}} sequel]], the option to disable Vita-Chambers is available from the beginning.
94** Partly a carryover from the ''VideoGame/SystemShock'' series (though there were conditions).
95** ''VideoGame/{{BioShock|1}}'' also includes an interesting variation in the final level. [[spoiler:It's an EscortMission where you put on a Big Daddy suit and guide a Little Sister past obstacles and protect her from hostile Splicers and other dangers. Mitigating the frustration factor is the fact that, if your Little Sister dies, you can just get another one by hitting the nearest vent with your wrench. In that way, the vents serve as checkpoints; when you pass one, a light above it changes from red to green. But more to the point, the variation is that death of the Little Sister is a slap on the wrist.]]
96** The use of Vita-Chambers are lampshaded in ''VideoGame/BioShock2'', where BigBad Sofia Lamb realizes that she can only merely slow you down rather than truly kill you. [[spoiler:Instead she uses this opportunity to capture Delta by first [[MoralEventHorizon smothering Eleanor]] to stop your heart due to your symbiotic bond. She then uses the opportunity to capture and strap you down the next time you respawn.]]
97** ''VideoGame/BioshockInfinite'' changed the respawning in a way that can be this or ContinuingIsPainful depending on the circumstances: you lose some money and come back with half your health while your vigor and current ammo are brought up to a minimum level if below. Enemies stay dead but get back health if they didn't die, while all items in the area remain used up. This makes death against standard {{mooks}} trivial but losing to a boss or [[BossInMookClothing a Handyman]] several times in a row can make defeating them nearly or ''literally'' impossible without loading a previous save because you have no way to do enough damage to them.
98* The ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' series:
99** ''VideoGame/Borderlands1'' zips you back to the last "New-U" station with no penalty other than a small monetary fine. If you're playing with other people, the enemies that you died fighting don't even regain any health (unless you're facing a raid boss, as the game disallows players from re-entering the fight until it's either over, or all players have died). At least until you gain enough levels for the game to start seriously chunking your money, as payments for regeneration are based on a percentage.
100*** Just getting dropped to 0HP isn't instant death -- you have a short time where you lay prone, unable to aim down the sights and with the screen getting darker, but if you can score a kill while in this state you receive a "second wind" and get back up with about 40% HP.
101** ''VideoGame/Borderlands2'': Although you are fighting against the company that makes the New-U stations, They are still perfectly happy to resurrect you, since they take some of your money each time.
102--->'''New-U:''' Hyperion thanks you for using our New-U station. Your personal quest for vengeance has netted us millions of dollars.\
103'''New-U:''' The Hyperion corporation would like to clarify that the bright light you saw was our [=DigiStruct=] technology, and not a higher power. Not higher than Hyperion, anyway.\
104'''New-U:''' Don't think of your death as failure, think of it as fun! Don't think of Hyperion's respawn charges as war profiteering, think of them as war... fun!\
105'''New-U:''' Hyperion would like to take this opportunity to say: cha-ching!
106** In fact, a late-game sidequest has Handsome Jack offering to pay you with a large stack of Eridium (GreenRocks that can be used to buy character upgrades) if you jump off a cliff for the sole reason of humiliating you.
107** Although, if one were to go the Anarchy route with Gaige, she loses all of her Anarchy stacks upon death, which may take a long time to grind back up.
108* In ''VideoGame/{{Descent}} 3'', death scatters your items where you died, and the level remains in the same state, as in the first two games, but this time you have unlimited lives, and restart from a checkpoint instead of the beginning. The number of deaths does affect your score, though.
109* ''VideoGame/DirgeOfCerberus'': You go back to the last autosave checkpoint, and you even get EXP from the enemies you killed before you died, meaning it's possible to level up by dying repeatedly.
110* In ''VideoGame/EYEDivineCybermancy'', players will RespawnOnTheSpot a few seconds after death, and can do so til they run out of resurrector charges; after that, it's back to the dream world where they can begin the level again but retain all their equipment and experience. At worse, players with bad karma can incur "fatal wounds" on death that apply permanent negative modifiers on one's stats, but these can be removed via an expensive [[TechnologyTree research item]].
111* ''VideoGame/GenerationZero:'' When you die, you respawn at the safe house of your choice, with 100% health and all of your gear. How hard the slap is depends on how far away the nearest safe house is: you may need to walk for a few real-time minutes to get back to where you died.
112* The ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' series's co-op campaign mode accommodates two to four players in cooperative missions. As long as at least one team member is well out of the way of any scuffles and isn't moving fast on a vehicle, any other team-mate can respawn nearby with default equips after a matter of seconds. In some cases, this is beneficial, and can be abused at times by repeatedly team-killing to max out some equipment and grenades. However, if you've activated the Iron Skull the entire team restarts at the last checkpoint if anyone dies.
113* In Creator/HudsonSoft's Platform/WiiWare FirstPersonShooter ''VideoGame/{{Onslaught}}'', dying in the multiplayer cooperative/competitive (you have to work together, but compete for score) mode simply means being dead for 10 seconds... then coming back to life on the spot with 1/4 your score gone. Considering the game's main thrust is really cooperation with score as a secondary concern, that's hardly a penalty.
114* After about the fourth level, ''VideoGame/Prey2006'' allows you to appear in the "SpiritWorld" when you die. You have to shoot down spirits to earn life and magic, which is given to you when you come back to life... at the exact spot you died. You can die as many times as you like, and other than the "spirit world" detour, you lose no progress. Even bosses keep the damage done to them.
115** A small amount of life and magic is restored even if the player does not shoot down any spirits. The effective playable area of the spirit world shrinks around the central hole-in-the-ground portal to the living world, effectively sucking you in. These two aspects conspire in ''forcing you back to life no matter how desperately you attempt to stay dead.''
116
117[[/folder]]
118
119[[folder:Hack And Slash]]
120* ''VideoGame/DiabloII'' -- Ah, good old "You have died. Press 'ESC' to continue." Yes, you lose some experience points and money, but they are relatively easy to get back. Hell, when you are playing on normal difficulty level, you do not even get the experience penalty.
121** There was always the hardcore mode, which made the game a bit more similar to its roguelike ancestors and made death permanent.
122** ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' makes death even more of a slap on the wrist. "You have died. Your items have lost 10% durability." You don't even lose any experience points or leave your body behind unlike the previous game. The console version makes it even more a slap on the wrist, giving you the option to resurrect right at your corpse if you want.
123* In the Flash game ''VideoGame/GinormoSword'', you just end up back on the map screen if you die. You don't lose any gold, but since it can take a very long time to kill a boss, dying will sometimes cost you a lot of time.
124* Death in ''VideoGame/TorchlightII'' gives the option to respawn in the current act's town for free, at the entrance you arrived from for the current area, or, if the area allows it, immediately where you died for a percentage of your gold with the latter two. None of these options cost you experience, fame, or drop equipment. If you already have a waypoint portal open, which are indefinite until you open a new one, then the first option only costs you a short amount of time to walk back to the scene of your death. This is, of course, averted in hardcore, and the GUTS SDK means you can readily make a GameMod that either removes these penalties altogether or make it so that ContinuingIsPainful instead.
125* In ''VideoGame/VictorVran'', dying will just teleport you to the latest checkpoint while emptying the overdrive meter. It doesn't cost XP, gold, items, and doesn't break the uncompleted challenges of the map (unless they're incompatible with the acts of dying or suffering damages, of course). Dead enemies don't respawn and injuried enemies aren't healed. This is downplayed during big scripted bossfights, as the boss and his followers are healed and resurrected (just the boss' own clique, not all the mooks of the level) if Victor is killed before being able to slay the boss.
126[[/folder]]
127
128[[folder:Interactive Fiction]]
129* In ''VideoGame/AMindForeverVoyaging'', you are an AI entering a series of simulations of a town dying as American society collapses into totalitarianism and anarchy. Later simulations become very deadly, but you can simply re-enter them when you die, and you actually need to record your deaths to show how badly society is failing.
130[[/folder]]
131
132[[folder:MMORPG]]
133* Played for laughs in ''VideoGame/AdventureQuest''. TheGrimReaper tells you he's filled his quota of souls for the day and [[DontFearTheReaper sends you back saying you owe him one]]. You wind up in town, having lost the progress you made on any quest you were doing and at about 40% health, but you can regain the rest of your health for free by talking to an NPC on the same screen. Death in ''AQ's'' [[Creator/ArtixEntertainment various sister games]] works about the same.
134* ''VideoGame/AgeOfConan'': The death penalty lasted for 10 minutes and was a 2 point deduction to your attack stat, which did very little to melee classes and absolutely nothing to casters.
135* At one point ''VideoGame/AnarchyOnline'' used to have all unsaved experience and equipment (with save points reasonably frequent throughout the game world) lost. Thus, if youdidn't save your character's state, got some supremely expensive item, and then was killed in pvp, you killer would likely ''loot that item''. All the game progressed, you now lose nothing: even the lost experience winds up in a pool that you can regain over time.
136** This is actually lampshaded in the manual - the Omni-Tek corporation was only able to get religious protests against their new resurrection technology (cause death can't just be a slap on the wrist, right?) to stop when they ''scientifically proved the existence of souls.''
137* ''VideoGame/AsheronsCall2'' had a lenient death penalty. You restart at the last point you binded yourself to with a temporary 5% reduction in your maximum health and stamina (called Vitae). The penalty can be removed with a restorative spell, or by gaining experience (which you would normally do anyway). The Vitae penalty stacks until the player is at 60% of their maximum health and stamina. This can make it harder to restore, but there are Vitae-heal-bots in town who are willing to heal anyone who requests it.
138* ''VideoGame/BattlestarGalacticaOnline'' has no real penalty for death. You merely get sent back to the nearest friendly Outpost, although it could be quite far from where you were if you've been going far behind enemy lines.
139* In ''VideoGame/BillyVsSnakeman'', failing a mission can be described as anything from mild embarrassment to gruesome death. Yet you'll inexplicably spring back up with no complications whatsoever and the only drawback being that you expended ten stamina without getting anything for it. [[spoiler:This is actually the true power of The Loop, allowing ninja to do anything simply by turning back time eleven seconds if they fail.]] When fighting Phases, you can also have multiple lives and only suffer if you lose them all. Even then, the resultant Corruption only block certain activities until dealt with, and can be removed by spending stamina. Also, getting bingo'd (assassinated) by another player only means that you're barred from certain activities for a few hours, and can also be cured with ease.
140* ''VideoGame/BladeAndSoul'': If a player character dies, they have eighty seconds to[[CombatResuscitation slowly crawl away from mobs that can kill them]]. If they take a hit again and die, they can return to the nearest spawn point with no consequence other than losing 2 points in weapon durability.
141* ''VideoGame/CabalOnline'': If a player dies, they only lose a certain percentage of health and mana points. Players must gain EXP indicated by the red bar on the EXP gauge to remove the penalty, and one quest will usually be enough to fill the gauge to the required EXP.
142* In ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline'':
143** You lose nothing from dying except one of your hero stars, which each give you a 15% damage and healing bonus. In instanced dungeons, the enemies you've already defeated don't even respawn, only those who had survived your attacks receive full health again. If you're in a team, they might not even do that unless [[TotalPartyKill the whole team is defeated near-simultaneously]]. This has led to a 'strategy' for defeating some [[ThatOneBoss particularly difficult bosses]] that the developers have referred to as [[ZergRush 'zerging']], where everyone just bolts back to the boss fight room as quickly as they can after death. They claim to be working on ways to prevent this.
144** Since Spring 2010, most of the new bosses have had special doors used to lock out re-entries when players are killed in mid-battle, which only open after the boss is dead or has been reset by a team wipe.
145** You also have the option of spending some of your character's money to repurchase your stars. Seeing as you [[MoneyForNothing spend your money on nearly nothing but this and costume changes]], [[DeathIsCheap death literally is cheap]].
146* In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'':
147** There's no penalty for dying until level 10, save that you return to the nearest hospital if you don't have another way to revive yourself. After level 10, your character receives experience debt for dying; half the experience you earn goes toward "paying off" the debt. In fact, this can have benefits: you level slower, allowing you to gain more influence (the game's currency).
148** Prior to the implementation of the time travel system, some completionist players would intentionally incur debt in order to slow leveling and help prevent outleveling story arcs.
149** After Issue 13, debt simply eats a chunk out of the player's Patrol XP (read: rested XP), turning what was a slap into a light tap. Debt means so little that the developers included the option to turn XP gain off to help the aforementioned completionists.
150** Death and paying off debt had [[AchievementSystem their own set of badges]], which led to a long-standing motto among ''City'' players: "Debt is just another badge."
151* Warned in a ''VideoGame/DigimonMastersOnline'' loading screen tip, if your partner digimon dies (If your tamer's level is higher than 5 and/or your digimon's level is higher than 11), you will be sent to the closest town with a 2%~5% EXP penalty, and you both will be nearly at 15%~20% health and digisoul. Kind of stubborn when you're high levelled.
152* In ''VideoGame/DungeonsAndDragonsOnline: Eberron Unlimited'', dying means a small loss of durability for your equipped items, the loss of any magic buffs, a 1-minute debuff, and the bother of running to a resurrection shrine, which are plentiful enough on most quests. Around level 10, divine casters also start picking up their first resurrection-type spells, too. Singular deaths (not party wipes) are only a big deal if you're dying in rapid succession (the debuff stacks, and your equipment will become unusable), or in certain raids that will send you to a "penalty box"..
153* Death in ''VideoGame/EveOnline'' is a slap on the wrist to your character.
154** Being a capsuleer, you have access to death-defying cloning technology, and getting shot down is a mere inconvenience. This quickly becomes a FateWorseThanDeath, however, if you fail to keep your clone up to date with your skills. If you don't, you can lose literally years of game play by dying.
155** If your capsule is destroyed, your body is killed, and you awaken in a new body. This means that you lose any implants and hardwirings you may have had inserted into your brain. And considering the value of some of those implants, that can easily amount to several hundred million ISK!
156* Dying in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' is mostly painless. If you are defeated, you can either wait for a player to revive you or return to your home point/the dungeon entrance (you can't return during an 8 man trial or raid however). Being revived does come with a penalty to your stats and said penalty stacks upon being revived a second time or more if the weakness hasn't worn off yet, but for the most part, you can get back up and resume the fight to help your team.
157* The death penalty in ''VideoGame/GuildWars'' is so slight it makes some rather frustrating GamePlayAndStorySegregation when a major NPC is killed in the Prophecies campaign. Characters take -15% penalty to their HP and Energy for each death, to a maximum of 60%. This penalty decreases as the character earns XP and is completely erased the moment he sets foot in a town or outpost (which are typically every 1-3 zones). The only annoying thing is that a dead character has to be resurrected manually by a living party member using a resurrection spell--but even that is ignored if the entire party dies, at which point they'll be resurrected and teleported to the nearest "resurrection shrine" they passed (typically at the entrance to the zone or just outside a major checkpoint). There is no gold cost or damage to the progress in the current instance in any case. But in Hard Mode, if every party member reaches the 60% penalty during a wipe, the party is considered defeated and forced to return to their starting outpost. For certain activities like vanquishing, this can mean losing entire ''hours'' of work.
158* In ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'', you don't even immediately get "really" dead when your health drops to zero. First, you enter a "downed state", which has a separate health bar that decreases on its own, and you can still try to slowly heal yourself over time or attack in the hope of killing an enemy, which revives you if you manage to do it before your downed health bar is depleted to. If you do manage to fully die ("defeated state" in game terminology), you can still immediately revive at any waypoint for a small monetary cost. And in the personal story, death is even more of a slap on the wrist: you just get thrown back to the instance entrance and can run back and continue fighting. The enemies don't even heal.
159* ''VideoGame/HoboWars'' - a player can use the hospital to fully heal themselves. Losing to other players does decrease the win rate, but the win rate has no benefits other than allowing the player to enter Bernard's Mansion at no cost.
160* No one ever dies in ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'', they only get 'Beaten Up', which is four rounds of -50% reduction to stats, effectively only three rounds because the round of getting Beaten Up is counted. There are easily obtainable cures and skills that remove even this effect, and an update to the game in early 2013 allowed you to remove Beaten Up by simply resting at your campsite.
161* ''VideoGame/TheLordOfTheRingsOnline'', another Turbine game, allows certain classes to resurrect dead party members. Otherwise, you can opt to return to the resurrection point (usually a circle of stones, or at the start of an instance) nearest (for some value of "nearest") to where you died. Once every couple of hours you can resurrect on the spot for free, or you can pay some "mithril coins" (purchased with real-life money) to do so more often, though this is possibly less than useful, since whatever killed you may still be hanging around. (It also doesn't apply in instances or if you died due to "misadventure", like falling off a cliff, since falling off a cliff could put your body in a spot you can't normally get to or more importantly get out of).
162* ''VideoGame/MafiaWars'' diligently follows this trope, especially when healing using the New York City currency.
163* Respawn costs in ''[[VideoGame/NexusWar Nexus Clash]]'' scale with character level, so for new players, death is this trope and coming back from the dead costs only one regular action. Low-level characters respawn randomly in the mortal world, so you may actually get to where you were trying to go faster by dying and reincarnating.
164* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline'' is a bit like this. When killed, your character appears in the medical room, completely healed for free (not that it was expensive to start with). It's simply a matter of finding your way back to where you were, which is tedious but by no means difficult, or shouting at another member to lay down a pipe as a shortcut. It does, however, reduce your limit break bar to zero, which can be irritating.
165* In ''VideoGame/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanOnline'', being knocked out and sent to jail in combat results in the player gaining the "Groggy" status, which reduces your maximum health and voodoo to about 80% for about 10 minutes, and... that's it. No gold penalty, no loss of weapons. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]], however, if your ship sinks in the middle of the ocean - in that case, in addition to being Groggy, you'll lose all your loot from that run and you'll have to pay a fee to restore your ship.
166* In ''VideoGame/RemnantsOfSkystone'', dying just means you go back to the nearest checkpoint, without loss. The game's explanation is that you're actually just injured, and the "Rooks" (the army) rescued you. [[ItsUpToYou This is as much as they help you in the levels.]] At least they installed those checkpoints.
167* Justified in ''VideoGame/{{Rift}}'': You're an Ascended. [[BackFromTheDead You died once already. It didn't take]]. However, death is ''still'' a slap on the wrist, doing damage to your Soul Vitality; run out, and you're severely weakened.
168* Players who do "3-iteming" in ''VideoGame/RuneScape'' usually don't have a lot to worry about, as you keep three items upon death unless you initiated [=PvP=] against someone.
169** For the longest time, the Old School version of the game had [=PvE=] death outside of a few instanced locations (who have an item collector that charges in exchange for returning your items) do little beyond drop your items on the floor...for an hour. The worst place to die, General Kree’arra’s boss room, took maybe twenty minutes at most to arrive at and reach the required kill count to enter, meaning any deaths were functionally irrelevant. This changed slightly upon the introduction of gravestones, where items are safe even if the grave expires, but costs a little money if you collect something valuable from your grave, and a little more if you collect them from [[TheGrimReaper Harold]].
170** Zig-zagged with players with the Hardcore Ironman status. If you die while having this, nothing happens that isn’t the case for all accounts other than Ultimate Ironmen (who have the old death system for balance purposes)...but you lose your Hardcore status and get demoted to being a normal Ironman and get your name crossed out on the Hardcore hiscores. While this doesn’t impact the game at all, a lot of players who have these accounts consider the account “dead” and stop using them.
171* Most of the time, ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' has no penalty for death at all, you just have to wait a few seconds to respawn. While playing specific "Elite" multiplayer missions, you will get injuries when you die, which you must heal using items or by visiting an NPC. You can also activate an optional higher difficulty setting that does the same in story missions. Even then it's still largely in the slap on the wrist territory. The injuries will only noticeably affect gameplay if you have many stacked on at once, the healing items are not expensive and the NPC will heal them for free.
172* In ''Richard Garriott's VideoGame/TabulaRasa'', the death that Receptives (that is, player characters) experience on the battlefield is more like clinical death (the heart stops beating) rather than biological death (the brain ceases functioning), which helps explain why it's a slap on the wrist. Receptives can either get an emergency teleport off the battlefield to their last spawn point or get revived by squadmates. ''Tabula Rasa'' specifically refers to this as Resuscitation (keeping in line with death being merely clinical death), but players don't get away ''entirely'' scot-free as they have to deal with Resuscitation Trauma: 10% equipment damage and all attributes reduced by 20% for 5 minutes. This condition gets worse with subsequent deaths, reducing stats by 60% for 15 minutes. One of the joke announcements at Foreas Base made reference to this:
173-->"Attention all personnel: No matter how many times you die, it is always disconcerting. Open counseling is now available with Dr. Williams for those who are suffering from Post Death Nervous Disorder. That is all."
174* ''VideoGame/TreeOfSavior'' doesn't punish players too hard for death--they're given the option of waiting for a resurrection or respawning at their last spawn point (or, revive right where they died [[{{Microtransactions}} for one iCoin]] as of the closed betas). However, dying does dramatically drop the durability of equipped gear, and certain items carried in a player's inventory (such as gemstones) will be destroyed or dropped upon death.
175* ''VideoGame/UrbanDead'' is one big humans vs zombies fight, and nobody dies forever. Humans who die can stand right back up again as zombies and start attacking other humans. Zombies who hit 0HP are only temporarily dead, and can stand right back up and continue their reign of terror. And zombies who are sick of being undead and smelly can get themselves cured of their condition and restored to humanity by human scientists who inject them with a special drug cocktail. If you die in Monroeville, though, you're a zombie forever.
176* In ''VideoGame/Wizard101'', death takes you back to the hub of the particular world you're in, with only one hp. However, your health restores steadily in the hub, or you can go back out to the dangerous areas and grab some red wisps, which restore a quarter of your health. You don't lose gold, experience, or anything else when you die, either. The only real downside is the time it takes to get back to wherever you were when you died.
177* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'':
178** Should you die, you take a 10% equipment durability penalty and have to reclaim your corpse with your spirit, starting from that zone's graveyard. (If you die from a player killing you, only the latter.) Under optimal conditions, neither penalty sets a player back more than a few minutes (unless players from the opposing faction start camping your corpse). But sometimes the graveyard is far, far away from your corpse (e.g. in the Badlands) and/or the durability penalty makes a huge hit on your virtual wallet. Nevertheless, unlike other [=MMORPGs=], you ''never'' lose experience points or levels and you ''never'' lose any equipment.
179** It is possible, albeit rare, to die in such a way that you are unable to reach your corpse, in which case you are forced to resurrect ''at'' the graveyard for an additional 25% durability penalty to all gear in your inventory as well as 75% reduced damage and stats for 10 minutes, which hurts a bit more. It's still trivial compared to older [=MMOs=], however.
180** Death is such a minor penalty that in some situations it is a viable strategy to die in the middle of enemies, run back from the graveyard as a ghost, reclaim your corpse as close to your goal as possible and then get killed again, repeatedly until you're where you want to be. This is called a "corpse run". If you do this naked, your gear takes no damage. It's rarely worth the effort, but there are a few places, such as the capital cities of the opposing faction or a cave required for a level 60 quest chain, where shortcuts aren't possible and a corpse run is quicker than fighting your way through. Some classes also have abilities (as well as some items) that can actually be used for suicide. Killing yourself doesn't cause durability damage to your gear so in raids, some players might kill themselves rather than die in a clearly losing fight. There are also resurrection spells, which effectively leave the durability damage as the only penalty. However, this still requires a friendly not-dead character of a class with the appropriate spell nearby, and most resurrection spells cannot be cast when the caster is in combat (druids being a rare exception, and even their combat resurrection spell has limits). Unless, that is, you’re a Shaman, who ''can'' resurrect themselves.
181** Though rarely useful, death can be used offensively. When encountering a [[http://www.wowpedia.org/Shadow_Labyrinth particularly dense]] group of enemies, the main party stands back. A priest takes off all his clothes (to negate the durability loss) and {{Mind Control}}s one enemy. The other enemies kill it, then kill the priest, then walk back to their spawn points. A party member resurrects the priest, who repeats the process until there are few enough enemies left that they can be attacked directly.
182** There is another death penalty, although it's not tied to death specifically: when everyone in combat with a certain NPC leaves combat, whether due to death or any other reason like using class abilities to hide or teleporting back home, that NPC generally returns to its original place and regains all HitPoints and loses and buffs and debuffs on it. This is the really relevant death penalty in raiding or other high-end content. If your group manages to get the BigBad boss down to a quarter of his health but then your entire group dies, when you come back, he will have healed fully and you'll have to try again and hopefully do it right this time.
183* Played with in ''[[Website/GaiaOnline zOMG!]]'': When defeated, you [[ControllableHelplessness become Dazed]] and your main option is to return to the Null Chamber, where you are revived with very little health and no access to your abilities. You regain both fairly quickly, so the main downside is that you need to navigate your way from the Null Chamber to wherever you were. This is not a problem at all if you were doing something in a location which is easy to return to (to the point that players fighting [[ZergRush hordes of enemies]] in standard areas have been known to say "brb going to null" ''every couple of minutes''), but it's absolutely ''devastating'' if you were most of the way through a MarathonLevel. This is why such things are usually tackled by groups of players who [[CombatResuscitation have the ability to revive one another on the spot]] so that nobody gets booted from the instance - getting hurt isn't a problem in and of itself, but being sent back to the Null Chamber can be, depending on what you were doing.
184[[/folder]]
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186[[folder:Platform Game]]
187* Very quick and painless in ''[[VideoGame/OneThousandAndOneSpikes 1001 Spikes]]'' - Your time between death and your next life is never more than 3 seconds, and you start with 1001 lives.
188* Dying in ''VideoGame/AzureStrikerGunvolt'' does little more than send you back to a checkpoint and reset your Kudos chain to 0. There's no lives, and there isn't even a penalty to your score or time. Unfortunately, if you died before reaching a checkpoint [[spoiler: with the level's jewel]], you not only have to repeat that section but also [[spoiler: get the jewel again, which in the Biochem Plant can be a bit of a challenge.]] There's even a chance to be revived on the spot if you die, even during the boss battle!
189* In ''VideoGame/BananaNababa'', if Harry Flowerpower dies during the various boss fights, he's able to continue the game. Other than having to fight the boss over again, he doesn't really suffer any consequences for dying during the game.
190* In ''VideoGame/BangOnBallsChronicles'', dying doesn't do much. All it does is deduct half of your money and send you to the previous checkpoint. Most enemies, bosses or minibosses don't regain health, and you can recover your money by smashing the InstantGravestone you left upon dying.
191* ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'':
192** In its Platform/Nintendo64 incarnation, ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'' had a death consequence in the form of having to start from zero when collecting Notes (which could become a rather large pain in the arse on some of the more tricky levels). ''VideoGame/BanjoTooie'' did away with this with unlimited lives, Notes becoming permanent collectibles, and dying will simply send you back to the entrance of a room (rather than the beginning area as saving and quitting does). The XBLA incarnation of ''B-K'' follows suit turning death into a slap on the wrist at best.
193** VideoGame/BanjoKazooieNutsAndBolts'' literally doesn't allow you to die - running out of health just makes Banjo stay on the ground, until Kazooie pops out and slaps him a couple of times to wake him back up and restore his health to full. However, losing your health during a mission makes you fail it. This can be avoided if your vehicle is sufficiently armored, plus you rarely have to get out of a vehicle to traverse the worlds anyway.
194* ''VideoGame/BugsBunnyLostInTime'' on the Platform/PlayStation. You have unlimited lives, and your only penalty for dying is being sent back to the last checkpoint you touched, with all of the Clocks and Golden Carrots you've picked up. Even if you die at a boss, the boss will still have the damage you gave him beforehand.
195* ''VideoGame/{{Celeste}}'' will just send you back to the beginning of the screen you're on no matter how many times you die... fortunately, because it's [[NintendoHard brutally difficult]].
196* In ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot4ItsAboutTime'' the game defaults to a "Modern Mode" where you have unlimited lives (though you'll earn a gem for completing levels with less than three deaths). However, you can also switch to "Retro Mode" to bring back the lives system from the previous games.
197* In ''VideoGame/DontLookBack'', each death simply restarts the same screen (in some cases even finishing the jump you missed for you).
198* In ''VideoGame/{{Dustforce}}'', Frequent checkpoints mean you aren't sent back far. However, dying will break your combo and thus lower your finesse rank.
199* [[CollisionDamage Touch anything]] in ''VideoGame/ElectronicSuperJoy'' and you just get sent back to the last checkpoint. You have to complete the boss battles without dying, though.
200* In ''VideoGame/EverybodyEdits'', death just causes a small two second wait while the player's character returns to the most recent {{checkpoint}}, as well as {{Status Ailment}}s on a timer being removed. How punishing this is depends on the world. Some worlds are rather cruel, giving the player [[CheckpointStarvation no checkpoints over long stretches of challenges]]. Others--especially linear worlds focused on individual challenges--will place a checkpoint after each challenge, allowing the checkpoints to player to return to a spot in just a few seconds.
201* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Frogger}} Frogger: The Great Quest]]'', there are infinite lives, and when you die, you are just sent back to your last checkpoint with all of your current progress unchanged apart from your location. This means you retain all of your items, and any damage you did to enemies and bosses will still be kept. This is one of the complaints of the game, as the fact that you retain all of your items and any damage you did to bosses means that there's no real penalty for dying at all apart from having to work your way back to your prior location. This is justified though, as the Fairy Frogmother gifted Froger with her magic so he couldn't truly die while on his quest.
202* Zigzagged in ''VideoGame/GeometryDash'': this game treats every single level as separate, and their completions all sum up like Gamerscore in Xbox, thus total progress in GD can span thousands of hours and can not be lost unless player forgot to save. On the levels, however, dying even on 99% gets you back all the way to start. Luckily, you can practice it in practice mode where you can place endless checkpoints. And your attempts are always endless. And, normally Classic mode levels only last 1.5-2 minutes.
203** Update 2.2 added platformer mode. Here, checkpoints can be placed by creators that work in normal mode. But if you quit a level, you're gonna lose all your progress on it, even if it lasts hours. And platformer mode does not have any mid-level rewards unlike classic mode: you either beat the level and get all orbs, or you quit and get nothing but increased attempts count. Some levels might even not have any checkpoints, or theoretically even have [[VideoGameLives lives]] just like old arcades. Thus, it's still possible in some minigames to lose all progress after a long playthrough just like in old games. At the end of the day, it's all up to creators and the level's difficulty.
204*** Though, practice mode was still added to platformer mode by popular demands, it might be useless because of RNG or custom mechanics.
205* ''VideoGame/GrappleDog'': Upon dying, Pablo simply respawns at the last checkpoint and loses all the berries and gems he collected after reaching said checkpoint.
206* There's no finite lives system in ''VideoGame/HeavenlyBodies'' and the game has enough checkpoints that you won't have to redo any goals upon dying.
207* ''VideoGame/KeepOut'': Whenever [[PlayerCharacter Mr. M]] dies, he respawns a few feet back from where he kicked the bucket.
208* ''VideoGame/KeroBlaster'': Simply dying merely puts you back at the beginning of the screen you were on, losing almost no progress. Running out of lives does put you all the way back to the beginning of the level, but you get to keep all your coins and upgrades, and any minibosses you've beaten will stay dead when going back through the level, thus essentially {{Invert|ed}}ing UnstableEquilibrium and ContinuingIsPainful. However, there is an achievement for beating the entire game without ever running out of lives.
209* Dying (or even continuing) in ''VideoGame/{{Mega Man X5}}'' and ''[[VideoGame/MegaManX6 X6]]'' just takes you back to the last checkpoint you reached in the level. Thankfully, at least in the case of the latter, because of its [[NintendoHard pretty unforgiving]] difficulty.
210* ''VideoGame/KirbyAndTheForgottenLand'' only incurs a 100-Star Coin penalty if Kirby gets whacked. Granted, services in Waddle Dee Town require Star Coins, so it is a setback, but it can't be that harsh.
211* In ''VideoGame/TheMessenger2018'', whenever The Ninja dies, a tiny demon name Quarble appears and sends The Ninja back to the latest checkpoint while collecting any time shards as payment for his service. Later, when The Ninja becomes a shopkeeper for the next messenger, it turns out that the deaths had to be manually prevented by the shopkeepers, but due to the negligence of the previous shopkeeper to inform The Ninja about this, the new messenger ended up dying for good.
212* ''Munin'' has no lives or death penalty. All levels are a single screen, so dying just means you lose any feathers you've picked up.
213* ''VideoGame/{{N}}'' plays this straight during normal gameplay, where dying simply resets the level and timer. If you're playing in Arcade Mode, however, the timer does ''not'' reset on death, so you need to make every second count. The ninja's "inexplicable ability to reincarnate" is lampshaded in the game's lore.
214* Played with in ''VideoGame/{{Nidhogg}}''. If a fencer dies, they will respawn in front of the other fencer in a few seconds unless they reach a check point. The more deaths in a row, the longer the respawn time will take.
215* Die in ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2008'' and Elika will will use her magic to return you to the last place you were on solid ground or the start of the current battle as appropriate. She saves you even ''[[GameplayAndStorySegregation when she's completely helpless due to a boss' spell]]''.
216* In ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'', you have health. ''And'' lives (well, "astral projections"). When you run out of health, you respawn with one life lost. When you run out of lives and you're in someone's mind, you just get kicked out of their mind, and you can go right back in without having to backtrack. For some odd reason, the whole astral projections thing carries over to the ''real world''. If you get mauled painfully by a psychic bear, then you'll simply reappear. And if you lose all your lives in the real world, you'll just reappear again. Even more so in the case of drowning as, when grabbed and dragged under, you reappear nearby with no loss of health, lives, not even a loading screen. Except for in the final level - going back to the checkpoint is seriously painful because of how NintendoHard the level is.
217* This is [[RuleOfFun the entire point]] of ''VideoGame/RunmanRaceAroundTheWorld''. Dying is no different than pressing the suicide button and even then, colliding with a boss is the only way to die. There isn't even any death counter (like in Matt Thorson's other games) to punish your stupidity.
218* If you die in ''VideoGame/{{Scaler}}'', then you'll just reappear, usually not that far away from where you died. There is absolutely no penalty ''at all''.
219* In ''VideoGame/ShovelKnight'', you have infinite lives, and death causes you to lose a chunk of money and respawns you at the latest checkpoint. You can recover your lost money by getting it back once you reach the spot where you died, but this trope really comes into play to a greater extent much later in the game once you've powered yourself up and have more money than you need, at which point losing it means nothing. Furthermore, money lost at a boss fight can be recovered easily in most cases simply by revisiting the boss fight.
220* ''VideoGame/TheSimpsonsGame'' plays this one straight. If you fall into a pit, you'll be returned back to the edge. If you run out of health, you'll automatically switch to the other character. The dead character will soon revive with full health, but you can also revive them instantly with a push of a button if you're right next to them. If both of your characters are dead, you will be taken to the latest chackpoint.
221* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'':
222** In ''VideoGame/SonicForces'', dying simply brings you back to the last checkpoint. To compensate for this, your final RankInflation will be affected by your retries, and taking damage will make you lose all your rings without being able to reclaim them.
223** The ''Sonic Origins'' CompilationRerelease of ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1 Sonic 1]]'', ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogCD CD]]'', ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2 2]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles 3 & Knuckles]]'' has an "Anniversary Mode" available for each game. Among other conveniences, it abolishes the lives mechanic, although dying will still send you back to a checkpoint. Any time you would've gotten a OneUp or a continue, you'll instead earn coins that can be used to instantly retry Special Stages or purchase Museum items.
224* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioOdyssey'' is the first main series ''Mario'' game to get rid of lives entirely. Instead, dying sends you back to the nearest checkpoint, at the cost of 10 coins. Coins are very easy to come by, making running out unlikely. (People who've tried find that you STILL respawn at the last checkpoint.)
225* ''VideoGame/{{Venineth}}'' places you at your last checkpoint if you die or reset, which usually isn't far from where you died.
226* It's a saving grace in otherwise hard game ''VideoGame/{{VVVVVV}}'' where checkpoints are almost everywhere.
227* ''VideoGame/WarioLandII'' and ''VideoGame/WarioLand3'' take this to its logical extreme; you can't die at all. Anything that would hurt Wario merely knocks him back or transforms him, with the third game not even having you lose any money in the process. There is a NonStandardGameOver which results in death in ''Wario Land 3'' (getting caught by the final boss), but even that merely knocks Wario back to the map screen with no progress lost.
228* In ''VideoGame/WarioWorld'', if you die, you can continue [[RespawnOnTheSpot right where you left off]] as long as you have enough coins. Not having enough coins to continue is unlikely, since coins are everywhere.
229* ''VideoGame/WizardsAndWarriors'' allows you to die and come back to life right at the spot where you left off. It's enough to make one wonder if the Boots of Lava Walk are worth getting. Who cares if they protect you from getting hurt by lava, if you can respawn on the spot indefinitely? Exception to the rule, however, is on boss fights. If you die on a boss fight, the boss's life gets refilled, thus causing lost progress at that point.
230* In ''Videogame/Gamer2'', the maps are littered with checkpoints, and dying simply respawns you at the furthest one you've reached. Any enemies you killed or objectives you completed don't even reset. [[spoiler:Except in the final boss fight, where the boss has destroyed your checkpoint, forcing a full level restart if you die.]]
231* In the Platform/GameBoyAdvance version of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'', if you lose all your lives and choose to continue, any progress you've made on the current world won't be reset to any degree, unlike the NES and SNES versions. The only effect continuing has at all is resetting the score counter back to zero.
232* In the Platform/TurboGrafx16 CD port of ''VideoGame/WonderBoyIIIMonsterLair'', entering "68k" as your initials on the ranking screen gives you unlimited continues, and since you RespawnOnTheSpot even after continuing, this effectively makes death a slap on the wrist.
233 [[/folder]]
234
235[[folder:Puzzle Game]]
236* In ''VideoGame/BackToBed'', Bob dying just instantly sends him back to the beginning of the level with no interruptions to the flow of gameplay. Thus, it's often beneficial to let him stumble around a couple of times so that you can take the whole level in, before using that knowledge to finish it properly.
237* ''VideoGame/BendyAndTheInkMachine'' introduced this with an update that fixed its CheckPointStarvation. There, dying sends Henry into an inky tunnel that he can walk out of and end up in front of the nearest Bendy statue.
238* In ''VideoGame/BookwormAdventures'', dying in combat only sends Lex back to the beginning of the chapter he died in with no experience or potions lost (other than the ones he used up during the fight). In fact, if Lex dies in a late chapter of a book, he can replay Moxie's minigames to get more potions and gem tiles. The only reason to be concerned about dying is that it lowers your final score.
239* Thanks to Sissel's TimeTravel powers, failing to save someone in ''VideoGame/GhostTrick'' just means you have to rewind time and try again. Amusingly enough, the ''characters themselves'' start to take this view as well, much to Sissel's exasperation.
240* ''VideoGame/GodOfThunder'', an old DOS game, simply restarted you to the point where you entered the area that you died in. This was mostly because it was a puzzle game. In fact, you can press D to commit suicide should you ever find yourself stuck (as mentioned in one of the [[NoFourthWall fourth-wall-breaking]] hints).
241* In ''VideoGame/HardspaceShipbreaker'', [[MegaCorp LYNX]] responds to workplace fatalities by cloning the deceased worker and tacking another $150,000 to their [[WorkOffTheDebt debt]]. Salvaging a single low-class reactor will pay for two clones.
242* In ''VideoGame/ImmortalSouls'', if John dies in a battle, you just simply have to fight the battle over. You even keep any XP and Money you earned in the last battle before dying. Despite the game's title and vampire theme, John actually could theoretically die permanently in the story; the game just doesn't punish you with the fact.
243* Dying at any point in ''VideoGame/Lit2009'' will only bring you back to the beginning of the room you're in, and you have unlimited lives on top of that.
244* ''VideoGame/{{Osmos}}'' had death quickly send you back to the start of the level. Since no level lasts longer than 5 minutes once done right, it’s not much of an obstacle.
245* ''VideoGame/PonyIsland'': As levels aren't terribly long, death isn't much of a punishment. [[spoiler:Dying in a boss fight causes the boss to heal a small amount of health, but otherwise no progress is lost.]]
246[[/folder]]
247
248[[folder:Puzzle Platformer]]
249* In ''VideoGame/{{Braid}}'', death is hardly consequential. Land on burning [[SpikesOfDoom spikes]]? Rewind. Mauled by a meowing KillerRabbit? Rewind. Consumed by a [[ManEatingPlant Carnivorous Plant]]? Rewind. In fact, if you are attempting to get everything, dying is sometimes ''required''. Jonathan Blow has stated that he specifically designed the game this way to deconstruct platformers that are NintendoHard. Of course, ''VideoGame/{{Braid}}'' is itself NintendoHard -- its challenges merely come in the form of puzzles, rather than tests of skill.
250* In ''VideoGame/ElectroMan'', getting killed lets you keep all your disks and respawns you at the last checkpoint marked. Absolutely necessary in level 5, where death is the only way out of a certain pit containing a disk.
251* In ''VideoGame/{{Fez}}'', after death, you respawn on the last solid platform you stood on.
252* If you fall into a BottomlessPit or hit SpikesOfDoom in ''VideoGame/TheFloorIsJelly'', you'll immediately return to the room's entrance unless you triggered a {{Checkpoint}} in certain rooms, such as changing the room's orientation or obtaining a [[LiveItem living key]].
253* Checkpoints in ''VideoGame/{{Limbo}}'' and ''VideoGame/Inside2016'' are everywhere and lives are infinite. [[NintendoHard Good thing too.]]
254* In ''VideoGame/LittleNightmares'' and ''VideoGame/LittleNightmaresII'', dying is fairly inconsequential. The games autosave frequently, and if you die you will just go back to where the game last saved.
255* ''VideoGame/MrRobot'' plays this straight with relay waystations, explained in-universe as having your mental data being backed up in the ship's network. This version is a bit more justified than others, as you're playing as a robot instead of a human. And they also double as save points.
256* Dying in ''VideoGame/ThePedestrian2020'' merely resets the puzzle you were currently in. [[spoiler:And even then, it does not affect any objects on signs that are painted yellow in one late-game area.]]
257* In the ''VideoGame/PretentiousGame'' series, falling into an abyss or running into fire results in the playable square(s) going back to the place where they started the puzzle.
258* In ''VideoGame/TheTalosPrinciple'', death just resets whichever puzzle you were doing, which is (usually) more annoying than anything. It ''does'' get annoying particularly if you're setting things up for the star puzzles, which usually involve setting up pieces from two or more separate puzzle areas. Justified as [[spoiler:you are an AI in a computer simulation.]]
259* ''Videogame/TeslaTheWeatherMan'' gives Tesla unlimited lives and occasional mid-level checkpoints.
260* Getting killed in ''VideoGame/TimeFcuk'' simply forces you to reset the current level. The deadly nature of the levels is acknowledged by your many alternate selves, and sometimes one of them may find a room full of your own corpses.
261 [[/folder]]
262
263[[folder:Real Time Strategy]]
264* In the RTS/RPG hybrid, ''VideoGame/{{Sacrifice}}'', this applies twice over, and even extends InUniverse. Wizards who ally themselves with one of the five gods can erect mystical altars to those gods. Through these altars, their souls are sustained directly by divine power. Thusly, when a wizard is slain, they merely become an ethereal ghost for a short time before they spontaneously resurrect again at full health. The only way to put a wizard down for good is to mystically defile their altar, and then kill them. Even then, the destruction of their altar merely means they can't resurrect ''at that place''; they will instead be resurrected at the next nearest altar of their god. The culture of wizards in the setting has developed to take advantage of that fact. The only way a wizard can permanently die is if their soul is somehow banished in a place beyond the vision of their patron god, or if they are banished whilst their patron god's primary altar is destroyed, something that also kills the god in question.
265* When one of your characters dies in the RPG-like Orc campaign in ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} III: The Frozen Throne'', they instantly reappear at the last activated Resurrection Stone with full health (backtracking to the place they died may be long and boring or long and dangerous if the enemies respawned, however). Almost all resources you need to complete a quest are replenished indefinitely; you can waste as many batriders as you like to sink battleships threatening the troll islands - replacement ones will appear soon.
266[[/folder]]
267
268[[folder:Rhythm Game]]
269* In the Casual mode of ''VideoGame/{{Audiosurf}}'', overfilling a column will simply knock a few points off your score. Pro and Elite modes up the ante a bit by making you have to wait a few seconds to respawn, but nothing that is likely to ruin your day. Putting Ironmode on, however, causes you to have to restart the song from the very beginning and not posting your high score if you overfill any column. Forgetting that this mode is on and trying a difficult song can lead to some frustrating situations.
270* The penalty for hitting an object or falling down a pit in ''VideoGame/BitTrip Runner'' is just your score being reset and your status going back to Hyper Mode. In fact, the only way to get a GameOver is to deliberately ''not'' use the spring that will help you give the FinalBoss the well-deserved GoombaStomp that ends the game.
271* Your critters in ''VideoGame/{{Patapon}}''. They can die. And again. And again. But as long as you retrieve their caps before they dissapear, you can revive them ''for free'' once the level is finished ''without any penalty at all''. In the sequel, the only drawback of getting your hero unit killed is 20 seconds 'till respawn. However, certain boss battle attacks, like Dodonga's Om Nom Nom, are an one-hit kill which ''not only'' destroys the Patapon, it also destroys his cap, so your little guy will be [[KilledOffForReal gone forever.]] ''Hatapon'' is another exception: If he dies you fail the mission, similarly to what happens when all your army gets destroyed. However this is unlikely, given his ridiculously high HP.
272* In the arcade versions of ''VideoGame/GrooveCoaster'', failing a stage does not result in a GameOver; you'll always get a full set of stages. Instead, pass/fail status is used to determine whether you get the 50,000-point Clear Bonus, which can and will greatly impact your grade, especially if you're trying for the coveted S++ rank (990,000 points or more; you won't even have enough points for an S+ if you fail).
273* ''VideoGame/{{crossbeats}} REV.'' won't kill your current credit if you fail a stage with stages remaining after it, even if you use the Survival or Ultimate {{Life Meter}}s. This only applies to Music Play (the standard mode); Challenge Mode will end your credit early if you hit 0% life at any point. Also, failing a song under any circumstances nullifies any Clear Rate percentage you would've otherwise gotten from it, which also prevents you from earning any Rank Points (since Rank Points are equal to chart level * Clear Rate * gauge-type bonus).
274* ''VideoGame/{{maimai}}'' always grants you a full set of stages, even if you fail every single one of them.
275* ''VideoGame/SoundVoltex''[='=]s Standard Start mode guarantees a full set of stages, unlike the cheaper Light Start mode which will end your credit early if you fail any non-final stage unless the chart is below a particular rating threshold. Additionally, in Standard Start, the Excessive Rate LifeMeter, which normally ends the stage instantly if it's allowed to reach 0%, will instead be swapped out for the easier Effective Rate meter, ensuring that you'll not only get all of your stages, you'll play every track in its entirety too. As such, there's pretty much no reason not to use Excessive Rate in Standard Start.
276* Draining your life in ''Neon FM'' will simply disable gameplay for a few measures and, if the setting for it is enabled, [[MercyMode you'll be dropped down to an easier chart]]. However, if you play on Pro Mode, the song terminates if your life hits 0.
277* In ''VideoGame/BangDreamGirlsBandParty'', if you're in single-player and your lifebar empties out, you fail the song instantly, unsurprisingly. However, in multiplayer, you'll keep going to the end, albeit with a 90% penalty to all points earned onward. Heck, in many cases, it's entirely possible for one player to carry four failed-out teammates to a clear, though obviously the rewards won't be as great compared to everyone staying alive.
278* ''VideoGame/FridayNightFunkin'': One click of the screen after failing a song is all you need to try again from the top. The game over screen doesn't even have a visible quit option, just a retry button. [[https://youtu.be/OsSDYf5yMOE It even has music]] that's just as groovy as the other tracks.
279[[/folder]]
280
281[[folder:Roguelike]]
282* In ''VideoGame/AzureDreams'', if you "die" in the Tower, you simply reawaken back at home too, which you would do anyway even if you hadn't die and returned normally. However, if in case of "death", you awake ''sans'' everything else you had with you ''except'' for home-hatched familiars.
283* Dying in ''VideoGame/{{Elona}}'' will cause you to lose a small percentage of your money, and the potential (i.e. the speed at which it levels) for some skills may degrade after level 6. You may also drop some of your items, which will be there when you return.
284* In ''VideoGame/{{Hades}}'', dying resets your progress through Hades and forces you to start a new run, but also lets you keep certain items you found on the way out that can grant you permanent bonuses for your next run. The trope is also integral to the story: The protagonist, Zagreus, is the son of Hades and prince of the underworld, and cannot die permanently, and all the bosses he faces are employees of his father who similarly cannot die. Dying to, or killing, a boss on your way out will have both sides remark on it the next time you meet them as though you did little but temporarily inconvenience them, and in many ways you ''need'' to die -- repeatedly -- to obtain the power needed to complete the game.
285* Also justified in ''VideoGame/{{Have A Nice Death|2022}}'' -- you are TheGrimReaper, and even if your greedy and rebellious employees manage to take you out, all that does is dump you back in your office. It's also justified for pretty much everyone working in Death Inc, up to and including the Sorrows that you have to take down.
286-->'''Mr. Hector Krank:''' ARGH, NO! A defeat, a failure -- it's still not enough...!\
287'''Death:''' Enough for what!? I CANNOT DIE. I am Death! D-E-A-T-H.
288* In ''VideoGame/ZettaiHeroProject'', death boots you from the dungeon, but you also [[CameBackStrong gain permanent statistic boosts]] for every level you gained on the way to it, making frequent and repeated deaths an integral part of the gameplay.
289[[/folder]]
290
291[[folder:Role Playing Game]]
292* A couple of ''VideoGame/AtelierSeries'' games are lenient with death penalties:
293** In ''VideoGame/AtelierEschaAndLogyAlchemistsOfTheDuskSky'', losing a battle loses one day of time and nothing else. Which, given how many days the game gives you, is practically nothing. SaveScumming is possible most of the time, but really not even worth bothering with.
294** In ''VideoGame/AtelierSophieTheAlchemistOfTheMysteriousBook'', party members who fall in battle come back with one hit point afterwards. If the whole party falls, they respawn back at base, minus some collected items.
295* Any character who dies in battle in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' will be revived with 1 HP once the battle is finished (unless all of your characters die, then it's game over).
296* Dying on a mission in ''VideoGame/CrisisCore'' is actually a great way to heal your HP, MP, and AP to the max. The only "penalty" incurred is that your DMW emotion is set to normal, which may not even be a penalty depending on how much you want the DMW to interrupt the fight.
297* ''VideoGame/DemonHunterTheReturnOfTheWings'': Dying lets you resurrect at the cost of 20% of current EXP and gold, as well as reducing your physical attack and defense to almost nothing for 5 minutes. It doesn't affect magic attacks and teleporting to the base removes the debuff, if you don't mind getting back. Spending PremiumCurrency lets you resurrect with no penalty. Dying to bosses kicks you out of the room though.
298* The ''Soulsborne'' games (''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'', the ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' trilogy, and ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'') are known for being [[NintendoHard brutally difficult games]] where you will die a ''lot''. Mercifully, dying is not too much of a punishment.
299** Though each game has its own special punishment for dying, the main punishment in all of them is that you drop all of your currently held souls/Blood Echoes (which function as both ExperiencePoints and currency) where you died. If you make it back to that spot without dying again, you get to pick them back up. If you do die again, then they're lost forever, but no big deal, you can always get more by beating up more enemies. If you don't have very many souls/Echoes on you to begin with, then dying on purpose can actually be a very convenient way to quickly get back to the Archstone/bonfire/lamp, or you can make a suicide run to [[DiscOneNuke grab a powerful item early]] before being clobbered by a BeefGate that's 30+ levels above you.
300** In ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'', dying in Body Form causes you to come back in Soul Form, which halves your max health. However, the game is balanced around being in Soul Form most of the time anyway, as the only way to regain Body Form is to beat a boss, help another player beat a boss, invade and kill another player, or use a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes which are rare and expensive. It's more accurate to say that Body Form doubles your max health rather than saying Soul Form halves it. There's also a ring you can find in the very first area of the game (outside of the tutorial and hub world) that increases your max health while in Soul Form to 75% of that of your Body Form, somewhat mitigating the penalty. Lastly, being in Soul Form means you can't be invaded by other players, which can be considered a huge benefit depending on whether you want to be invaded or not. However, it also means you can't summon other players for help either. Of course, neither of those matter anymore since the online servers for the game were shut down in 2018 (though private servers for emulated copies of the game exist).
301** In ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsI'', dying also causes you to drop your "soft" Humanity (the Humanity stat; "hard" Humanity being the item) along with your souls, which is also retrieved when picking up your dropped souls. If you end up losing it forever, it's easy to regain as there are several locations in the game where easily farmable enemies drop hard Humanity. Dying also turns you into a Hollow if you were human when you died. The only disadvantages to being a Hollow are the inability to summon friendly players for help or kindle bonfires to increase the number of Estus Flask charges they give you, and also ruining all your hard work in the character creator by making you look like a zombie (if you haven't [[ConcealedCustomization already ruined it yourself by putting a helmet over it]]). However, being Hollow means you can't be invaded either, so it's a fair tradeoff. To become a human again, you only need to spend one soft Humanity to Reverse Hollowing at a bonfire.
302** ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'' brings back the ''Demon's Souls'' style punishment of halving your max health, but does so by lowering it gradually with each death as you gradually become more and more Hollow. Unlike ''Demon's Souls'', however, the Human Effigies that turn you human again are far more plentiful and easier to obtain than Stones of Ephemeral Eyes were. Also, just like in ''Demon's Souls'', there's a ring you can obtain very early in the game that caps the penalty at 75% of your max health rather than half. Also, you still can't summon help while Hollow, but unlike the previous game you ''can'' be invaded. However, you can burn a Human Effigy in a bonfire to block all invasions in the surrounding area for half an hour.
303** ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII'' goes back to only having two states like ''Demon's Souls'' and the first ''Dark Souls'', this time "embered" and "unembered". Being embered enables summoning/invasions and gives you an extra 30% max health, but the unembered health is treated as the default. You can regain your embered state when unembered by beating a boss, helping someone else beat a boss, invading someone and killing them, or simply using an Ember which are fairly commonly dropped by some enemies. There is no Hollowing at all at the start of the game (due to your character being an Unkindled and not a true Undead), but you can enable it as part of a sidequest. However, it's purely cosmetic for the most part, and the one effect it does provide is entirely beneficial (using a "Hollow" weapon while Hollow increases your Luck stat, which Hollow weapons scale off of). Hollowing can be either temporarily treated, pemanently cured, or simply hidden by wearing a ring that makes you look human.
304** ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'' is the kindest game in the franchise, as its only unique punishment for dying is that sometimes your dropped Blood Echoes will be held by an enemy in the general vicinity of where you died instead of lying on the ground, forcing you to kill it to get them back, which is only really a problem if it happens to be the same enemy that killed you the last time. Of course, it makes up for this kindness by also being arguably the ''hardest'' game in the franchise.
305* Losing a fight in ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'' only results in being punted back to the last town you were in with half your gold. The worst that can happen in addition to this is you also lose some (non equipment) items and often not enough for you to notice. This penalty is lessened by the bank mechanic in the games. You can store gold with an NPC Banker (in units of 1,000), and it will not be touched even if your party dies. In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'', Stella the ExpositionFairy will encourage you to use it if she thinks you're carrying around too much money.
306* ''VideoGame/EarthBound1994'' does this in a similar way to ''Dragon Quest IX'', with the addition of having your PP set to zero. In fact, in ''[=EarthBound=]'', the money you receive from battles is automatically put into storage, so you're not even likely to be carrying any money to lose. In ''VideoGame/Mother3'', not only is money a literal non-issue in the first three chapters, but you don't even lose any PP.
307* ''VideoGame/EternalTwilight'': Dying only costs a small percentage of gold, and that's if you want to immediately start at a certain location or the beginning of a boss battle without reloading a save.
308* In ''VideoGame/FableII'', the consequences of death are losing what few experience orbs were lying on the ground at the time (they tend to decay pretty quickly even while you live) and... a permanent scar on your character. While the designers intended this to be a deterrent, in practice this can become a worthwhile objective as it adds a more badass touch to your character.
309* In ''VideoGame/FableIII'', you do lose all fractional experience toward your next Guild Seal when you die, but getting 50 of these at a time from story missions is fairly common, and you can't lose ones that are fully complete. Not only that, but you respawn immediately every time, meaning that you can't possibly lose any real progress in story missions even if you go make a sandwich while bosses beat on you.
310* In ''VideoGame/{{Faria}}'', if you die, you get brought back to life where you last saved with half your gold. This isn't too painful, as getting killed can often be blamed on missing an item you should have already bought or losing your way in a GuideDangIt [[TheMaze maze]].
311* Losing a battle in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIIRevenantWings'' gives you the option to restart the fight or run off to the world map. It also gives you pity experience.
312* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyMysticQuest'' enables players to restart battles if they lose. And if the fight started with the player being ambushed, it'll just be a normal fight next time.
313* If you die in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'', you can retry from just before entering the battle, allowing you to retry the fight as much as you want, or just run away. Death is even beneficial, nearly mandatory, in some plot fights. The game just loves to throw you into a boss fight right after a cutscene where your party members change. LeakedExperience prevents it from being Unwinnable, but you haven't had an opportunity to spend that LeakedExperience yet, and it starts your new party out with random paradigms (combinations of class roles) so it's entirely possible that you will lack the class roles necessary to beat the boss. If you retry one of these fights, it puts you directly into the options menu so you can take care of this.
314* In ''VideoGame/LightningReturnsFinalFantasyXIII'', if you die and run out of other options, you can always escape for the low, low cost of 0 EP. The only catch is that you lose an hour of the world's time, which really isn't generally too big a deal given you can basically just abuse Chronostasis and the game gives you more than enough time to get done what you need if you play it right. On the Final Day, there is no ticking clock, so this is played 100% straight. If you die, or even if you just don't like how things are going, you can run right out of any battle at no penalty whatsoever.
315* In ''VideoGame/Haven2020'', being both KO'ed in battle sends Yu and Kay back to the Nest, with your progress up to that point still intact. And if you've befriended [[WarpWhistle Birble]], you can fast travel to the nearest rust-free islet to where you fell. Having the protagonists both knocked out or paralyzed by the Apiary's [[KillerRobot Hornets]] results in a NonStandardGameOver, though you still have the option to respawn at the entrance to the islet you were on. An achievement is awarded for completing the game without being KO'ed or captured more than three times.
316* In ''VideoGame/JadeCocoon'', if you "die" in the Forests, you simply reawaken back at home.
317* An interesting juxtaposition happens in ''VideoGame/MuramasaTheDemonBlade'' considering the optional HarderThanHard difficulty and scaling enemy level: while it's extremely easy to die, doing so outside of a boss battle just causes you to respawn in the same screen you were killed with full health and swords at full strength, retain all experience points earned, regain any health items you used during the fight, ''and'' you might not even run into the same battle that killed you previously. On the other hand, you can't cook stat-boosting meals within battles, so the items remain consumed unless you reload a save. On Shigurui/Fury difficulty, you really want to make use of those stat-boosts, especially against some of the bosses, but you die--and die a lot--so it's a matter of deciding if it's worth cooking a meal and being prepared for the tedium of resetting the game if you run out of ingredients.
318* ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI'' lets you continue from the last room you were in anytime you die with everything you had when you died. The only time this ever really matters is on boss fights, as the enemies in the room you died in respawn with full health.
319* ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'': Dying places Sora/Riku in the room before the one where the player died, with no real penalty applied.
320* ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'': Dying during the story mode places the player right before the fight that killed them with full health and Limit gauge, magic and items get restocked to the level they were prior to entering the room, and mission progress/Heart Points from the point of death are preserved.
321* In ''VideoGame/KingdomOfDrakkar'', all you need to do is run back to get whatever item(s) were in your hand and purchase a point of constitution. However, when you die to certain lair monsters (such as dragons, griffons, and the like), your character will lose experience, skill, and ''permanent hit points'', which may not be able to be recovered ''at all''. Even worse is that dying in some areas will cause monsters to remove your gear and destroy it.
322* ''VideoGame/LegendOfMana'': If you die, and you have a companion animal (or RobotBuddy) and/or NPC, you can come back to life if they can manage to stay alive while you respawn. And even if your entire party gets wiped out, you just restart in the screen you started in with maxed out super meters. (Of course, if you fall during [[MarathonBoss Tropicallo]]...)
323* In ''VideoGame/LostDimension'', if you fail a mission, you can either retry it with no penalty or return to the Lobby to reassess, get new equipment or try a different mission to level up, again with no penalty. Also, regardless of damage taken, skills expended or [=KOs=] during battle, all characters are returned to full status following a mission, win or lose.
324* ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey'' has immortal characters that function this way in battle. Even when knocked out, they'll self-revive after a few turns as long as at least one party member is standing at all time.
325* ''VideoGame/MageKnight Apocalypse'' revives you at the nearest magestone crystal when your character dies, without penalty. Letting your allies die is a bit more serious, they respawn, but a glitch resets their AI, so they'll use physical attacks instead of skills.
326* Unless it involves the storyline, if the player loses a battle in ''VideoGame/ManaKhemiaAlchemistsOfAlrevis'', instead of a GameOver screen, the player characters will be automatically teleported to the school infirmary.
327* If you get a GameOver in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'', you can just restart the battle from turn one -- no loss of coins, items, EXP, or progress (unless you choose to return to the title screen). You can even restart it in easy mode if you so choose. Hard mode? ...not so much.
328* The ''VideoGame/MegamanBattleNetwork'' series has an interesting relationship with this trope. If a character's [=NetNavi=] is deleted by a virus attack, they can be restored from a backup - they are just programs after all, even if most of them are highly customized and develop unique personalities after a while. This happens several times to the Navis os supporting characters (whose Navis are unique characters in their own right). Yet is the player's Navi Megaman is deleted, GameOver, back to the title screen with you. [[spoiler:Justified because [=MegaMan.EXE=] is the protagonist's twin brother, who underwent experimental BrainUploading before dying as an infant. The resulting incredibly complex program is constantly in flux and cannot be backed up.]]
329* Upon losing a fight in ''VideoGame/MyWorldMyWay'', you can choose to have your XP gain for the (game) day cut in half, have your gold supply cut in half, or expend 20 Pout Points to nullify both penalties and revive on the spot (albeit with only one HP)
330* In ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'', dying only returns you to the start of the level in which you died. Which is fortunate, considering [[NintendoHard how often it happens]]. This is more prevalent in the original than in the remake since the combat in ''Leifthrasir'' is more balanced and makes killing enemies easier.
331* The ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'' series:
332** In ''VideoGame/Persona3'', if one of your allies is KO'ed in Tartarus, they'll just lie unconcious where they were and will have to be revived. If you leave the floor they're on without reviving them, they'll be sent back to the first floor and revived, but you won't be able to get them back until you return to the first floor as well. If the main character dies, however, it's a game over of the WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou variety.
333** ''VideoGame/Persona4'':
334*** Downplayed in that if a character goes under and you don't revive them, they come back to life with 1 HP after the fight. This is handy, but you can still be forced to call it a day if you run out of items or SP to heal them.
335*** In ''Golden'' with [[EasierThanEasy Very Easy]] mode, should you lose a battle, you can immediately continue with your party's health and SP ''fully restored'', meaning that you can only get a GameOver by refusing to continue.
336* In ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'' the main character is cursed with immortality, so "death" only means that he falls unconscious for a while before [[WakingUpAtTheMorgue waking inside the nearest morgue]]. Getting a NonStandardGameOver by dying permanently usually requires you to go out of your way to do something stupid.
337** Also, the fact that the player character is under this curse and his attempts to lift it is the critical path the game is not the only way the game messes with this trope. There are also several puzzles that require you to die in certain places, so you can be resurrected somewhere else.
338* If you lose a fight in ''VideoGame/RivieraThePromisedLand'' you can immediately restart that fight from the beginning, but with the enemies having slightly less HP. The HP penalty stacks with repeated losses.
339* In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'', this trope is played with. Should you die, Charon will be waiting at the shores of the River Styx. However, he's massively overworked and sick of the damn process, so he's willing to offer you the chance to go back... [[EveryManHasHisPrice for a modest fee]]. If you don't have the cash on hand to pay him, you can elect to pay in Play Coins (which players can get for free just by walking) or put your debt on a tab (Charon appears just as you collect the necessary money and helps himself). However, if you die without paying your tab, Charon won't give you another chance, killing you for real.
340* The followup ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse'' plays it straighter with Dagda reviving you for free, no strings attached, and allows you to continue from where you left off. Justified, in that he's made you into his [[PeoplePuppet personal]] [[PersonOfMassDestruction living WMD]], so he ''wants'' you alive as part of his plans. And as a [[{{Psychopomp}} God of Death]], he can simply revive you. Often times committing suicide is actually the better option to winning a particularly grueling fight. [[spoiler:In a late-game dungeon, however, Dagda is unable to revive you due to a seal on the dungeon blocking his powers; until you defeat the boss that created the seal, a death means having to restart from your last save.]]
341* Losing a battle in UsefulNotes/RPGMaker game ''VideoGame/StandstillGirl'' only makes you return to the [[HubLevel Land of Time]], with all your items and experience intact. You do have to walk back to whatever level you were on, though.
342* ''VideoGame/{{Suikoden}}'' games also employ this, giving the player a choice of whether to give up or try again; trying again means you start the current battle over again, making for only minor lost progress. On the other hand, when your army goes to battle, your generals can die, causing [[MultipleEndings story-disrupting consequences]]. In ''VideoGame/SuikodenV'', this system is still in use; however, losing important battles can trigger [[NonStandardGameOver alternate endings]] that force you to start over from your last save without any carryover benefits.
343* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'' punts you to the last save block you used before your defeat (which can be painful if you went without saving for a long time). All progress is lost, but any EXP and level ups you gained are retained. The remake makes it even better with the new autosave feature, meaning that you can just return to the point before the battle happens,
344* ''VideoGame/TokyoMirageSessionsFE'': If you die on Easy or Friendly mode, you have a choice; go back to the title screen or just be placed a few steps away from the place where the Mirage that killed you spawned. Same thing for boss battles, except you'll be placed outside the room they're in. You get no penalty for dying. (Dying on higher difficulties automatically boots you back to the title screen. Hope you saved.)
345* ''VideoGame/TooHuman'' respawns the player on-the-spot infinitely. The only penalty is a small reduction of HitPoints on your equipment. Which doesn't break at zero, only stops giving stat bonuses, and can be repaired at any time. The long, unskippable cutscene of a valkyrie coming to pick up your corpse, however, will get very annoying after a while.
346* ''VideoGame/TwoWorlds'': As long as the game's difficulty is not set to Hard, all that happens when you die is being teleported to the nearest shrine. No penalty of any kind involved.
347* Scarlett, the protagonist of ''VideoGame/{{Venetica}}'', is the daughter of Death, and so she returns back to life quickly with no need for checkpoints because of it. You can still tempt fate too often and force Death to permanently claim his daughter, however.
348* On losing a battle in ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' after a certain point, you get three of four choices: restart the battle at your current difficulty level, restart the battle on Easy difficulty (giving up the harder difficulty pin drops in exchange for a simpler fight), go back to the title screen, and unless it's a boss or Taboo Noise battle you can just run.
349* Did you just die in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1''? That's fine, you're just back to the latest checkpoint and even keep all the Exp and items you got. Even if a boss kills you: just go back to where's he patiently waiting for you. It can lead to an amusing situation where dying on the second fight against [[spoiler:Gadolt]] puts you next to the warp gate you were going to take when he attacked, but trying to take it earns the player a "[[ButThouMust You must defeat (boss name) first]]" message. Some bosses even have snarky lines when the party shows up for the rematch.
350[[/folder]]
351
352[[folder:Shoot Em Up]]
353* Many shoot-'em-ups give you a mega powerup if you lose your last life and continue. On the other hand, many of them also drop your current score to zero -- the most vicious doing so without giving you an opportunity to add it to the high score table. This is to prevent people who die constantly from simply being able to waltz their way to high scores without regard for survivability. And the nastiest also give you the universally-underwhelming Bad Ending if you continue. Which, depending on what you're playing for, moves it over to ContinuingIsPainful.
354* In ''VideoGame/AzurLane'', a shipgirl's HP being reduced to zero results in a small reduction of Morale and no other penalty. [[LighterAndSofter This contrasts]] ''VideoGame/KanColle'', where they can be KilledOffForReal in this event. In ''AL'', shipgirls tend to only die in story and event missions - such as the prologue, which sees [[CurbStompBattle Bismarck one-shot Hood]] [[ImportedAlienPhlebotinum with an alien]] WaveMotionGun.
355* Losing a life in ''VideoGame/BattleGaregga'' lowers the game's DynamicDifficulty. In fact, it's ''[[FakeDifficulty required]]'' to keep the game easy enough to complete on one credit. Of course, you still need to have a positive number of lives in stock left when you die, but some players have mastered the art of [[TakingYouWithMe using the death shrapnel on their last life to push themselves to the next]] [[Every10000Points point-based extra life]].
356* Dying in ''VideoGame/BlueRevolver'', aside from the obvious deduction from life stock, has surprisingly few detrimental effects. It doesn't break your chain or end flourish mode, your special attack meter gets recharged, and instead of your bomb stock getting reset (thus wasting unused bombs) like in many shmups, you get bombs added to it (unless you're already at the bomb {{Cap}}). In fact, [[ViolationOfCommonSense intentionally dying]] can give you the necessary bombs and special meter to set up a big scoring opportunity if you're low on resources, especially on [[HardModePerks Parallel mode, where there's no limit to how many extra lives you can get]] (you get one every 15 million points, unlike the lower two difficulty levels that offer only up to four from scoring).
357* The NES version of ''VideoGame/GuerrillaWar'' could be one of the more infamous examples. Losing all your lives and choosing to continue means, at worst, losing all your points... and absolutely nothing else, ''not even your exact progress'' in the current stage. It also happens that the continues are unlimited!
358* ''VideoGame/GunsOfIcarus'': If you fall off your zeppelin, you respawn, but it does waste precious time. And if you fail a mission, you have unlimited tries.
359* In ''VideoGame/KingAndBalloon'', you only lose a life when your king gets captured, so getting your cannon destroyed by the enemy balloons or one of their bullets simply causes you to be unable to do anything momentarily.
360* ''VideoGame/{{Meritous}}'': On Wuss Mode, losing all of Merit's HitPoints just means going back to the nearest PortalNetwork tile Checkpoint tile. But that mode doesn't have the true ending.
361* ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'' incurs no direct scoring penalty for using a continue, other than adding 1 to the ones digit if it's not already at 9. On the other hand, dying resets your hostage rescue count, and if you had a Slug it's already gone, so dying causes you to lose a LOT of points.
362* Sidestepping the legendary difficulty of the rest of the series by several miles, the [[DifficultyByRegion World version]] of ''VideoGame/RType Leo'' features instant continues instead of checkpoints, throws powerups around like confetti and actually has you drop one when you die. The Japanese verson still uses checkpoints, however.
363* Die in ''VideoGame/TouhouKanjudenLegacyOfLunaticKingdom'' while playing in Pointdevice Mode, you'll simply be set back to the last checkpoint minus 0.01 power (cumulative) with no lives or score reduction to worry about. And checkpoints are ''very'' common. Of course, this is to offset the game being [[NintendoHard obscenely difficult]].
364
365[[/folder]]
366
367[[folder:Stealth Based Game]]
368* If one does not care about the [[BraggingRightsReward just-for-fun]] play ranking at the end of the game, the ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' games would qualify. Dying (or otherwise failing the mission) simply takes you back to the beginning of the room/area you're in, with little to no progress lost. The exception is during [[spoiler:the torture scene]] in the first game:
369--> '''Ocelot''': There are no continues, my friend.
370[[/folder]]
371
372[[folder:Survival Horror]]
373* ''VideoGame/AWalkInTheWoods'': If your character dies, you respawn.
374* ''VideoGame/MrHoppsPlayhouse1'': If you get caught, you'll just be sent back to the progress from the last major item you found.
375* Rather unusual for a horror game, ''VideoGame/NeverendingNightmares'' has a very forgiving death mechanic. Every time you die, you just wake up in the last bedroom that you passed, of which there's always at least one before any dangerous section, and there's no loading screen between dying and waking back up.[[note]]Somewhat offset by how vulnerable the player character is, of course.[[/note]]
376[[/folder]]
377
378[[folder:Third Person Shooter]]
379* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar3'' has the campaign playable in Cinematic and Arcade mode. Cinematic is the standard "death = restart from last checkpoint," but Arcade has a respawn timer as long as at least one human-controlled player is alive. Considering it allows up to 4 human players, dying becomes much less of an issue. Players respawn with their character's standard weaponry, and some of them have weapons far superior to the standard rig (Clayton Carmine, for example, spawns with a Torque Bow, arguably the best weapon in the game), and always respawn with a fixed ammo count, meaning that suicide can be an attractive proposition for a player who is out of ammo.
380* ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'': Getting "splatted" during a multiplayer match merely sends you back to spawn, which isn't much of a problem when you can get back to the center of even large stages in ten seconds. Even faster, if you use the Super Jump to travel to a teammate's (hopefully safe) location. It is an inconvenience in that it gives your opponents a few seconds of free reign to cover territory or accomplish the objective, but for the most part, it isn't that big of an issue unless your team is losing badly or became victim to a TotalPartyKill.
381* ''VideoGame/StarFoxAdventures'' has this... partially. Anytime you're in an Arwing, including the final battle with [[spoiler:Andross]], you can be destroyed without losing lives. In fact, if you know you missed too many Gold Rings to open the forcefield, actively wrecking your craft is faster than waiting until you arrive at the end of the course and are told you didn't get enough. (In ground mode, losing more lives than you have [=BaFomDads=] to counteract it is at least theoretically possible.)
382* ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'' is pretty darn generous with deaths. If your teammates somehow fail to pick you up before the bleedout timer runs out, you still get four revives per mission before you're forced to abort, and the only penalty for using them is giving up a fraction of the affinity you earned during the mission. [[spoiler:Dying as your Operator is even less punishing, since you just get forced back into your Warframe with a temporary debuff. During quests where you're forced into Operator combat, even that doesn't happen; instead, you just respawn instantly at the start of the room, with all the damage you dealt staying on the enemies.]]
383** [[SubvertedTrope That being said]], there does exist two modes where the penalties are much more severe: [[BrutalBonusLevel Arbitrations]] and [[spoiler:{{Superboss}} Archon Hunts]]. Dying and not getting revived in time forces your teammates to pick up five tokens from drones supporting your enemies to revive you, and in the latter you don’t even get that chance. Thus CharacterSelectForcing is prevalent, as playing without healers like [[TheRedMage Trinity]] or [[SupportPartyMember Wisp]] or a method to nullify damage like [[ExtraOreDinary Rhino]] or [[UnstoppableRage Valkyr]] is going to lead to a very swift death.
384[[/folder]]
385
386[[folder:Tower Defense]]
387* ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombies2ItsAboutTime'': If you don't mind watching ads, when you lose in an endless zone, you may watch an ad to continue your run instead of starting over. You do get penalized by losing all your plant foods, but if you have gone far and even unlocked every single plant you have for the endless zone, such a cost is relatively negligible compared to having to slog through a hundred levels or so to regain all your plants. Also, if you just cannot afford to lose any lawnmower, resetting your run this way also resets all your lawnmowers, so that you don't have to spend the next few levels trying to roll for them.
388[[/folder]]
389
390[[folder:Turn Based Strategy]]
391* A major plot point in ''VideoGame/FutureTacticsTheUprising'' is trying to steal a device from the aliens that lets them AutoRevive some time after death. Until you do, if a party member dies you get a GameOver. Once you have the device, you only need to have one character survive a battle to claim victory. [[spoiler:[[PlotLineDeath Except Pepper, who dies during a cutscene despite having used the device]]. She sort of but maybe not really comes back, but the game is ''really'' vague about it...]]
392* In all of the ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}} titles prior to ''[[VideoGame/DisgaeaD2ABrighterDarkness D2]]'' (excluding the VisualNovel ''VisualNovel/DisgaeaInfinite''), death results in a game over, forcing you to restart from your last save which, since the games didn't autosave until ''D2'', means if you didn't manually save, you may set yourself back ''hours''. In ''Disgaea D2'', apparently the designers felt this was frustrating as well, as death now puts you back at the HQ with absolutely no penalty whatsoever. The only time this isn't true is when dying to a boss. Such death nets an alternate ending, which you can either save over for a second cycle, or ignore entirely and reload your last save. Even when you lose to the final boss, you're treated to the bad ending and are given the option for a New Game+.
393* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'' playing on Phoenix Mode causes your units that had been defeated to respawn the next Player Phase with full HP.
394* Your allies death in the [[VideoGame/TelepathRPG Telepath RPG series]] [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou though the trope doesn't apply to the protagonists.]]
395** In chapter 2 you can just pay a bit of gold so someone will ask the shadowling queen to revive them. It can be pretty bad during battles themselves however, since people cannot be resurrected in-battle, and it reduces the amount of gold you gain after a battle.
396** In [[VideoGame/TelepathRPGServantsOfGod Servants of God (chapter 3)]] Luca can resurect any death allies as long as she have soul charges which she can easilly farm by killing ennemies with her soul suck attack. Luca herself and an other teammate named Rajav will always be resurected at the end of a fight if they die since they are spirits thus already dead.
397
398[[/folder]]
399
400[[folder:Visual Novel]]
401* ''Franchise/AceAttorney'':
402** ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyDualDestinies''. Oh, did the LifeMeter run out, resulting in a [[GameOver Guilty verdict]]? No problem! In a first for the series, the game will allow you to try again from where you lost your last bit of meter with a full bar.
403** Losing all your lives in ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonVsAceAttorney'' also allows you to restart from an earlier point in the trial with all your lives restored. However, in this game you gain bonus Picarats (points) at the end of a trial for each life you have left, which means that deliberately losing can actually improve your score in addition to not being a major impediment.
404[[/folder]]
405
406[[folder:Wide Open Sandbox]]
407* All of the possible ways to "die" in ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'' (getting caught by a tarantula or scorpion, or being unlucky enough to be stung by bees a second time before getting medicine for the first sting) doesn't set you back any save some distance and the chance to catch the insects that tagged you.
408* In ''VideoGame/{{Astroneer}}'', dying simply sends you to the nearest shelter/shuttle and drops your items on your death location, plus a convenient marker on said location.
409* In ''VideoGame/{{Crackdown}}'', the only ''possible'' penalty for dying is losing any gang weapons you may have picked up but hadn't yet stored at a supply point, which is pretty rare an occasion. Since you get full ammo reload and get to choose where to respawn, killing yourself is actually pretty useful at times as a rapid transit method. This is even acknowledged by the developers, as there is a suicide option in the main menu. It gets even more useful in the sequel, where you no longer have to unlock the respawn locations and also get a vehicle of your choice delivered every time you respawn.
410* ''VideoGame/CubeWorld'' has you keep all items, experience, and money when you die. You respawn at a slightly random checkpoint, which can get annoying since you tend to respawn quite a distance from where you died. However, respawning a distance away from your death spot is intentional in order to prevent the player from being repeatedly killed by enemies that could camp at a spawn point.
411* In ''VideoGame/TheGodfather: The Game'' (at least the Wii version), death is pretty laughable. For example: Let's say you're at the point of the game where you need to go start bombing the armories of other families to take control of various parts of the city. You shoot your way inside, inevitably triggering a mob war on your way in, you plant the bomb, and you, unfortunately, don't make it outside within the 10 second time limit. No worries; you're dead. You get transported to the nearest hospital, you don't lose any money, experience, health, skills, anything. On top of that, the bombing still counts, and you're declared the winner of the mob war you triggered. It is literally more advantageous to sit there and get blown up on purpose than to try to escape. The sequel expands this to enemy made men, who won't stay dead until a particular execution style is used on them.
412* In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' the player would normally lose his weapons when he dies, but the penalty can eventually be negated by dating a nurse, after which death only means respawning at the nearest hospital minus a trifling fee. In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' the penalty is removed completely, no dating required. In both games, though, if you die during a mission you have to restart it from the beginning.
413* In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'', you don't lose your weapons or ammo when you die - just a fraction of your money, up to $5,000 dollars[[note]]and no, it can never exceed that, even if your character has millions[[/note]]. After picking certain endings of the game (namely [[spoiler: endings A or C, in which case Franklin and Michael split ~20 million dollars between each other on top of the ~20 mil they each earned, or all three playable characters earn about 20 million dollars, respectively]]) or with careful investments in the BAWSAQ stock market or property, this is not a big deal at all. In fact, it's worse to get arrested, in which case you DO lose all your ammo and have to go restock, which can be horrifically expensive. And with the cops [[PoliceBrutality more trigger happy than ever]], it's possible to complete the entire game without getting busted.
414* Dying in ''VideoGame/InFAMOUS'' bears virtually no penalty. At worst, you will have to start at an area rather far from the location where you died, or redo a small section of a mission you may have found particularly difficult. However, there is almost no load time between death and getting right back into the action, keeping any experience points you may have racked up.
415* ''[[VideoGame/JustCause Just Cause 2]]'' is another textbook example, unless you're on a mission (in which case you restart with what you had at the mission outset), you can continue with everything just as it was when you died (ammo, collectables and sabotage) , only you'll be sent to the nearest friendly base and thanks to the Black Market man [[spoiler: AKA Sheldon]] you can head right back to where you left off.
416* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' normally makes you lose all of your items and experience points when you die, dropping them on your death spot, and a significant amount of experience points is permanently lost. However, all of that can be turned off with one single setting (the aptly named ''keepInventory'' game rule). Changing that setting normally requires operator access, but from 1.16 onwards it can also be set when creating a world.
417* ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2'', in contrast to its rival franchise VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto has almost ''no'' consequences for dying. You only lose a little bit of money, and there's ''no'' way to lose your weapons in the whole game (all weapons you acquire are permanently stored in your crib). It also allows players who die during missions to start again immediately without any in-game consequences, and some longer missions even have checkpoints that allow you to restart at a later point ''in the same mission''.
418* ''VideoGame/ScrapLand''. Thanks to The Great Database, anyone who dies will immediately be revived (provided their matrix is still listed in The Great Database, that is). That said, if you don't have any extra lives, you will respawn in jail.
419* ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}''. Death isn't even a slap on the wrist. Hell, it's even beneficial sometimes. Need to get back to your home planet quickly because it's under attack? Just commit suicide. Almost makes the Shaman type civilization's ability unnecessary. On the other hand, [[ContinuingIsPainful losing a lot of your colonies to an enemy attack when you forgot to save a while ago...]]
420* ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}''[='=]s "core" setting lets you adjust how much of a slap death is: Softcore only makes you lose some of your currency (and you can store your currency in chests back at your home, minimizing the effect even more), Mediumcore makes you drop your items but at least you can go back to pick them up provided they didn't fall into lava, and Hardcore [[FinalDeathMode outright deletes your character upon death]].
421* ''Tom Clancy's VideoGame/GhostReconWildlands'': If you're just exploring the open world and die, the camera will Iris Out with the logo to a "Killed in Action" screen. One short loading time later, and you're put within walking distance of your death spot with a full ammo refill to boot! Though if the same happens during a mission, all your progress for said mission will be lost. (You still get to keep any XP earned during the failed attempt, however.
422* ''VideoGame/{{Valheim}}'': Due to being set in a Norse equivalent of purgatory (the player character is trying to earn entry to Valhalla), death is a core mechanic, and as such, the penalties are quite steeper. When you die, you respawn at the latest bed you slept in/the center of the map (both of which might be miles away, in/through hostile territory, or both), without food (so you have the absolute minimum of HP and stamina), without ''any'' of your items (some of which are necessary to traverse the terrain to get your stuff back, and worst of all, your skills take a massive hit. One update thankfully added sliders to customize the difficulty (from keeping to ''losing'' all items on death, minor to major skill loss, etc.).
423* Dying in ''VideoGame/WatchDogs'' carries virtually no penalty whatsoever; at the very worst, you’ll have to restart the current mission. More often you’ll just be sent back to a recent checkpoint, or in the case of dying outside of a mission, respawn somewhere close by absolutely no worse for wear.
424 [[/folder]]
425
426!!Non-video game examples:
427
428[[folder:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]
429* In ''Manga/{{Ajin}}'', one of the powers of the ajins is to come back from death. It really just incapacitates them for a couple of seconds.
430* In ''Anime/AngelBeats'', being mutilated beyond recognition is roughly equal to being knocked unconscious until the bizarre universe pulls you back together. This makes sense, though, because they are ''already dead''.
431* In ''Manga/DeliciousInDungeon'', anyone who ventures into the dungeon has their soul automatically tethered to their body until they exit again. This means they're able to be brought back from the dead with healing magic fairly easily as long as their body is relatively intact. The main characters mention their previous deaths in a very casual way, and a character who gets killed and resurrected is more annoyed by the circumstances than anything else. Ultimately said character, Namari, cautions against this belief though. She cites that having a part of the body missing, even if it's just one thirteenth of total mass, makes resurrection more likely to fail. Supplementary material mentions that healing magic, resurrection included, are CastFromCalories on the part of the person being healed, so the process consumes fat and muscle, and someone who's too thin may be unable to be revived. A body with a great deal of missing mass or that is particularly deteriorated has fewer, weaker tethers to its soul, tethers that may be broken by something as simple as moving them, and in this case fresh meat and blood are required to form new flesh and bring the body to life. [[spoiler: The main party is able to find the bones of their cleric after she was eaten by a dragon, and since moving them to the surface is so risky they instead use the body of the dragon to bring her back - however, that leaves the dragon's soul mingled with hers, and leaves ''her'' subject to control by the dragon's master.]]
432* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'': Characters who die can wait (and train) while others can collect the Dragonballs and bring them back. By the end of the series, the majority of major characters have died at least twice. Apparently you can even take stuff with you on the way up.
433* Kyubey, of ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' [[spoiler: has a massive number of spare bodies, which makes killing him essentially impossible. Homura even admits that it's just a waste of energy to try. It's implied that Sayaka Miki can also theoretically be killed and come back just fine thanks to her healing factor as long as her soul gem is intact (in the original anime and movie she survives being completely eviscerated and having her heart ripped out respectively), though this is not focused on]].
434* Also used in ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'', in an episode where Jaden/Judai duels Kaibaman, and loses. Kaibaman reveals that nothing bad will happen, as it's just a game. This is in contrast to many other duels in the series.
435 [[/folder]]
436
437[[folder:Comic Books]]
438* ''ComicBook/BlackMoonChronicles'':
439** Justified in that Haazheel Thorn is a stupidly-high level mage in an RPGVerse. To quote the man himself just before he resurrects [[spoiler:Wismerhill]]: "Dead again? It's starting to become a habit...". In fact, the only time he gets angry about this is because Wis goes on a dungeon crawl through an undead prince's palace ''without'' having him along.
440** Zigzagged after [[spoiler:Parsifal and Gredinald have their climactic duel. Gredinald later reappears as if getting a sword buried in your helmet is no big deal, but Parsifal's decapitated head being replaced on his body and brought back to life by a massive prayer is treated like a miracle.]]
441[[/folder]]
442
443[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
444* ''Film/HappyDeathDay'': Used as a plot point towards the end. [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] as every time Tree dies she wakes up she wakes up weaker and weaker and she feels the after effects of whatever killed her last. If the cycle goes on too long she won't even be strong enough to wake up at all.
445[[/folder]]
446
447[[folder:Literature]]
448* ''Literature/HalfPrince'': Most of the story takes place in a game world and dying is just penalized with the loss of a level (where previous games in the series would force you to start over from level 1 if you died.) It gets worse in the final arc when [[spoiler:the [=NPCs=] rebel]] and dying will delete your character completely.
449* Downplayed in ''Literature/{{Konosuba}}''; Aqua, due to being a goddess, is capable of casting Resurrection, but she's not ''supposed'' to, and certainly not multiple times on the same being; she gets away with repeatedly raising Kazuma after his many, ''many'', deaths, due to the fact that Eris, the goddess who has to let Kazuma return each time, is her [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem subordinate]], [[spoiler:and also moonlights as Chris the Thief, Kazuma's friend, and ally, who doesn't want him to stay dead any more than Aqua does]]. Presumably, they'd all be in a lot of trouble if any of the higher-ranked deities found out about this. It's also stated that the spell wouldn't work if the corpse doesn't remain intact (ex. digested by a monster). Kazuma actually begins using it to his advantage, becoming a master of the ThanatosGambit, which is no small part of the reason for their party's success.
450* ''[[https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/48951/a-not-so-simple-fetch-quest A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest]]'': The protagonist wished for an adventure where her life wasn't in danger, so the goddess' blessing causes her to respawn, without apparent penalty except for the fact that it's rather painful to be eaten by giant wolves or dissolved by the digestive enzymes of a giant spider. The pool of paralytic tree sap that rapidly dissolves all organic material placed in it becomes, in her mind, the "full heal pool", since it has a potent numbing effect and is therefore an efficient and painless way to deal with serious injuries. She actually worries about increasing her poison resistance, since that would make the pool [[ImmunityDisability slower and more unpleasant to use]].
451* In ''Literature/PostHighSchoolRealityQuest'', the TextParser in Buffy's head has a handful of save slots that she can restore to if she dies. Restoring is so easy that she often commits suicide in order to undo bad decisions.
452* ''Literature/ReZero'': Subaru has the ability to travel back to a moment in the past to avert a potential threat. Though this ability only activates ''when'' he dies, and he retains all memory of the pain he felt before his deaths that takes a psychological toll on his mental state.
453* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'': If the humans manage to kill a Fused, Odium can just sacrifice a civilian singer (of which he has plenty) to bring it back. As such, many Fused are remarkably cavalier about their safety.
454[[/folder]]
455
456[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
457* The Cylons in ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'', simply download to the nearest Resurrection ship when killed, get a new body and then get right back at trying to kill humans. This also applies to the Raiders and the Mechanical Centurion's and as a result (as Athena points out) "Death is a learning experience."Averted for most of the back half of season two as the Colonials have shot down the local Resurrection ship and so the Cylons get much more cautious due to fear of dying.\
458\
459Averted for good after mid season four when the technology is destroyed completely after half the Cylons switch sides and can't use it anyway without Cavil killing them an instant after Resurrection. For the rest of the show the Cavil faction Cylon's are obsessed with rebuilding or replacing it.
460
461[[/folder]]
462
463[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
464* In ''TabletopGame/ArkhamHorror'', being reduced to zero stamina or sanity is a trip to the hospital/sanitarium instead of the morgue. You will lose half of your items but you get to choose and you round down. Being ''devoured'' on the other hand is the end for your investigator.
465* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' has a "raise dead" spell that clerics can eventually learn. Once you reach high enough level, coming back from the dead is just a matter of having enough gold pieces' worth of diamonds. At higher levels, clerics learn the "Resurrection" spell, which can bring a character back from the dead with ''full hit points'', ready to wade right back into battle, even if the only piece of him remaining intact before the resurrection was a single toe. For even higher level clerics, there is True Resurrection. Which brings you back to life even if your enemies killed you, burned your body, then divided your ashes into four urns and scattered them all in seperate continents, possibly over twenty years ago. ''Well'' over in fact; the rules for True Resurrection is that it can either revive anyone killed up to two hundred years ago. True Resurrection also has absolutely no drawbacks for the character being brought back, unlike Resurrection and Raise Dead which cause the loss of one level. It got so crazy, that spells like [[SoulJar Soul Bind]] and [[FateWorseThanDeath Imprisonment]] were created specifically so people had some way of keeping their targets [[DeaderThanDead permanently gone]]. Death of old age, though, is AllDeathsFinal in the game; if you die of old age, you're gone for good.
466** Fifth Edition added the Revivify spell, which works as long as the target's body is complete enough to function and the spell is cast within one minute of the target's death. While the target comes back with [[HPTo1 only one hit point]], at least there's an option for bringing someone back in the middle of a fight.
467** Zealot Barbarians, also from Fifth Edition, get a perk that makes it so that whoever is reviving them doesn't actually need material components, or indeed any money spent at all. For them, death is as punishing as a spent spell slot.
468* In ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'', characters have cortical stacks and backups that can be downloaded into a new morph after death-- though there's no guarantee your new body will be anything like your old one (unless you have good enough insurance), and if restored from backup, you lose all memory and [[ExperiencePoints rez]] gained since you last checked in.
469* ''TabletopGame/GoblinQuest'' has character death as an inevitability, what with goblins being BornUnlucky, so each player controls a clutch of five mostly-interchangeable goblins, switching control between them either whenever they wish or whenever the one they're controlling dies.
470* ''TabletopGame/LEGOGames'': In ''Heroica'', after losing all of you health pieces, you simply roll the die every turn, and replenish your HP for the rolled number. It means that death, on average, sets you back for two turns.
471* Not always the case, but dying can be harmless or even beneficial in ''TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}}''. Dying makes you lose all items and all cards in your hands, which is very bad if you've been building up a huge stockpile. However, on your next turn after death, you get a new hand of cards. If you had nothing, there's a chance you'll finally get some bonuses.
472* ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' has characters cloned in packs of six, with the opportunity to create more. [[EverythingTryingToKillYou It's necessary]] in Alpha Complex.
473* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' managed to make coming back from the dead have an even lighter penalty. While a character resurrected in ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' would lose an actual character level (and thus all class features that came with it), Pathfinder replaced this drawback with "negative levels". They don't ''lose'' any abilities, but their abilities are weakened until the negative levels have been removed, which can be done with certain healing spells. The main downside is that resurrection magic and spells to remove negative levels all require expensive materials to cast, but after a certain point the price is minor compared to how much money the character would have available.
474* The Madolche archetype's main ability in the ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' is to return to your deck when destroyed by the opponent. Also, certain cards can take advance of the death of the monsters.
475** Hootcake: Banish a monster from the graveyard, special summon a Madolche (other than Hoot) from the deck.
476** Madolche Lesson: Get a Madolche from the graveyard, all Madolches you control gain a 800 ATK and DEF boost.
477** Madolche Ticket: When a Madolche returns to deck or hand, get a Madolche from the deck to your hand and if you control a Madolche royal, special summon it.
478* ''TabletopGame/ATouchOfEvil'': Being defeated in combat results in the hero being sent to the Town Hall space, losing a die roll of Investigation tokens, Allies, and/or Items in any combination. During the Mystery Phase, the hero in question is healed of all wounds.
479[[/folder]]
480
481[[folder:Web Animation]]
482* No matter how gory and gruesome demise do the protagonist of ''WebAnimation/{{Indigen}}'' meet, they [[UnexplainedRecovery inexplicably appear alive and kicking]] in the next scene.
483* ''WebAnimation/Plan3'': Hosuh, Stephen, and Hart’s immortality in ''Somewhat Squidgame'' means that dying during a challenge is more of a painful temporary inconvenience rather than a dramatic end of the line for their characters.
484[[/folder]]
485
486[[folder:Webcomics]]
487* ''Webcomic/BobAndGeorge'': The cameo character Ran, a [[DirtyCommunists communist]] GlassCannon robot made from cheap parts who [[RunningGag dies at the poke of a finger]]. It's so cheap to build another one of him, however, that a new copy will teleport in as soon as soon as the previous one dies, with the memories transferred perfectly.
488* ''Webcomic/BrawlInTheFamily'': "[[http://brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/comic/577-afterlife/ Afterlife]]" lampshades the use of this trope in various Nintendo games by asking various characters what happens after death. Mario just comes back as long as he made enough money beforehand, Pokémon simply change their type resistances, and Kirby and the Villager don't even know what "death" is. Subverted for the ''Fire Emblem'' characters, where death sticks... unless you're important, in which case it doesn't.
489* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', death is usually treated as a reasonably big deal, since the ''resurrection'' spell requires diamonds (and also a body and a cleric, which aren't always available either). In the strip "[[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1149.html Enough Diamonds Already]]", however, [[spoiler: Hildya rezzes Durkon, then almost immediately kills him again to make a point, then rezzes him again]].
490* ''Webcomic/MageAndDemonQueen'': If you die in the Demon Tower, your body appears in a casket at the local temple. Although they'll throw you out instead of reviving you if you have no money left.
491* ''Webcomic/ProblemSleuth'': A character can be revived by playing a game with Death. If they win, they get to leave through a door. Some (like the Big Bad Mobster Kingpin), just leave when Death is preoccupied. Fed up with this behaviour, Death jams a contrabass between the doors of life and death.
492* ''Webcomic/{{Supermegatopia}}'': In ''Crushed: The Doomed Kitty Adventures'' subcomic the main characters were a team of inept adventurers who died on almost every quest and were always brought back to life at a temple in town. Played into the site's rampant fanservice, as they [[NakedOnRevival would come back totally naked]].
493[[/folder]]
494
495[[folder:Web Original]]
496* In ''WebAnimation/BattleForDreamIsland'', someone dying usually happens OncePerEpisode. And when someone dies, all you need to do is just head on over to a recovery center and bring them back to life. BFDIA and IDFB usually parody the use of recovery centers and how characters are overly dependent on them, while in BFB there are no recovery centers and Four (and later X) is used for this purpose.
497* ''WebAnimation/CultOfPersonality'' [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration uses [=TF2's=] respawn in-story.]] Characters who die respawn, feeling the pain of what killed them, but shake that off eventually.
498* ''WebAnimation/InanimateInsanity'' doesn't feature death as often as BFDI, but the way characters are brought back to life just as easily is explained during season 2 by [=MePhone=] using an application within him to bring them back to life. [[spoiler: This also justifies why Bow was KilledOffForReal, as [=MePhone=] had been killed at the moment when Bow died.]]
499* ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'' has Miss Holloway, a witch whose deal with the devil makes death temporary, waking up after about two hours.
500[[/folder]]
501
502[[folder:Western Animation]]
503* On ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'', everybody just comes back to life after dying, being perfectly fine by the next episode. It's particularly egregious in episode 58, where at one point Mr. Cat [[SuicideAsComedy hangs himself]], only to be perfectly fine ''by the next scene''.
504* Kenny on ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' is a non-video game example. Because he seems to be aware of the fact that he can die and come back to life, he uses this to his advantage a number of times, for example in "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut" when he uses his body to connect a generator to a hospital and "Jewbilee" when [[ItMakesSenseInContext he smashed his head against a conch shell to free Moses.]] He does at one point complain that repeatedly dying hurts like hell.
505* ''WesternAnimation/DrawnTogether'' plays this trope to hell and back thanks to NegativeContinuity. It's also [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] many times, [[http://youtu.be/kluNJbvuZl8 as Captain Hero demonstrates here.]]
506* ''WesternAnimation/TheHollow'': [[spoiler: Somewhat [[AvertedTrope averted]], as we never know what the actual consequences of dying in the game would be when functioning normally. The other group assumed that you would regenerate, before believing that it's actually KilledOffForReal when Kai and Mira try tricking them into believing Adam died while the two groups were separated. Meanwhile, the host's reactions to the glitches heavily imply that whatever happened to the game's code would result in actual death.]]
507[[/folder]]
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