History Main / ResourcesManagementGameplay

-->-- ''WebVideo/TheHappyVideoGameNerd, during his review of ''VideoGame/SweetHome1989'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNz93wC7W68&t=2m37s here]]''

* In ''VideoGame/{{Beecarbonize}}'', each of the four sectors produce resources, which are needed to make new cards that speed up production and reduce greenhouse emissions in order to save the planet. Also, 1 Industry token is spent for every People token produced to feed the population, and running out of Industry tokens leads to starvation. You must spend 2 People tokens to mitigate this or else you'll lose the game.

* ''VideoGame/{{Quester}}'': Every step you take in the underground ruins consumes fuel, and even more will be spent if you have to flee from battles. Finding food is critical to your survival; failing to reach a certain threshold every ten days means all of your heroes will starve to death. You also need lots of raw Materials to upgrade your equipment, as well as leveling up your Questers, and many of the special moves you can unleash in battle require different resources. While these battle supplies are restored after fights, you can still easily run out mid-skirmish...

* In ''VideoGame/ARIDABacklandsAwakening'', water (unlike food) does not regenerate. There are a limited amount of waterholes in the game, each of which have four uses before they go dry- and if you waste them, well, [[UnwinnableByDesign you're screwed]]. (Luckily, the game is only around two hours, so mistakes aren't too costly.)

* ''VideoGame/ThePaleBeyond'': Much of the game revolves around managing three resources: food, fuel and decorum. Food and fuel are used to sustain the crew at the end of each week, while decorum will increase or decrease based on the usage of the former two. Running out of food or fuel can lead to scurvy or frostbite (respectively), which can kill crew members; running out of decorum is a GameOver. The game can quickly be made unwinnable if resources are misused, prompting a new (or reloaded) save.

* ''VideoGame/DreamsInTheWitchHouse2023'' tasks the player with keeping Walter well-fed and rested, warm, and dry as he continues his studies the Miskatonic University and his investigation into the supernatural. Making him eat usually costs a ration (though it is possible to get meals from other sources), and he can recover from rain and cold by being near a lit fireplace, though if he uses the one at home, this means he will have to supply his own firewood. If Walter goes hungry, tired, cold, or wet for too long at a time, it will adversely affect his health, making him more susceptible to getting sick, make it harder for him to recover from injuries, and drag down his exam scores. On some days, the weather will affect Walter's wellbeing, and nightmares or strange noises his apartment at night will conspire to ruin his sleep. The player can give Walter some more permanent protection against the weather by making him buy a raincoat or a pair of insulated trousers, and help him sleep better with a pair of earplugs, and certain medicines (or alcohol and cigarettes) will temporarily soothe his nerves as he gets into traumatizing encounters with the supernatural. Most of these thing costs money, and Walter is on a tight budget, as his only real income at the beginning of the game is his weekly allowance from his aunt, though she will give him a bonus if he does well on his exams. As the game progresses, Walter will find other ways of earning a bit of money.

* ''VisualNovel/YuNo'' has a {{time travel}}ing mechanism which allows you to instantly hop between distant parts of the [[StoryBranching storyline branches]], letting you carry items between unrelated scenes. There's a catch, however: you can only travel to moments where you've "dropped" beforehand a "save-jewel", a magical jewel. There's a limited amount of these, 8 in the PC-98 and Windows versions and 10 in the Sega Saturn and remake versions. [[SaveGameLimits This system is in place of a conventional save-load system.]] The timeline is [[KudzuPlot extremely complex]], with [[TheMaze dozens of confusing branches, loops and U-turns,]] and some of the routes require items from the end of another route. It's important to leave jewels in important moments so you can return to them later. "Loading" a dropped jewel also automatically puts it back into your pocket, so you may have to [[DamnYouMuscleMemory remember to instantly drop it again]] to keep the moment easily accessible. Furthermore, to view the in-game map which you use for loading jewel-saves, you must have at least one unused jewel in your possession. [[NintendoHard Screw up, and you may have to replay a significant chunk of the game.]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}, Corvo often has a limited amount of bolts, ammunition and other devices on hand, forcing him to use them wisely until he can scavenge, purchase or craft more.

-->-- ''WebVideo/TheHappyVideoGameNerd, during his review of ''VideoGame/SweetHome'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNz93wC7W68&t=2m37s here]]''

* The late 1980s Japanese horror adventure game ''VideoGame/SweetHome'', described in the opening quote. Often cited as an influence on early survival horror games, including ''Resident Evil''.

* ''VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLight'': You have a limited quantity of fuel, which you use on each jump. If you run out, you will not be able to jump until you get more. Getting some more can happen in several ways, from being found by an automated fuel merchant drone, to taking it from the stores of a pirate who tried to take advantage of your weakness, to having to fight the [[AdvancingWallOfDoom Rebel Fleet]]. You also have a limited supply of [[AttackDrones Drone Parts]] and Missiles.

* ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' games. You can't repeat battles, and the items you have are the ones you'll use in the next battle, so not wasting your equipment is crucial for progress. Many of the games give you heaps of gold on an irregular and [[GuideDangIt unpredictable]] basis, so you can end up with no gold for several chapters if you spend it all too early.
* ''VideoGame/DragonSlayerIIXanadu'' counts as the UrExample of this. There is a limited number of enemy encounters, some of which boost your Karma stat to a point where you can't get any experience points (you have to acquire a cursed potion to reduce your Karma, which in turn will cost you some hit points). And the icing on the cake? All slain enemies stay slain for good. That, and you also have to keep a healthy supply of food, and properly make decisions on when to upgrade your equipment.

* In the ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade'' series, you have to manage the health, morale and income of both your character and his band of companions and adventurers. Availability and variety of food, how well you handle battles or diplomacy with rivals, and how much you regularly pay your companions (the better the soldier, the higher the wage) all factors into troop morale. Additionally, there's also the matter of buying or acquiring better mounts, armour and weaponry throughout the course of the game, as you start alone and [[WithThisHerring with humble equipment]]. Though the vanilla games and most of their mods simply use universal currency for recruitment, payments and rewards, some mods play around with making this more complex. For example, a well-regarded mod about the [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings War of the Ring]] replaced the currency with "resource points", which the player had to earn separately from each of the many factions present in the mod to purchase or recruit within their territory.

* In ''VideoGame/CitizenSleeper'', the player character's bio-mechanical body begins slowly deteriorating if it is not regularly injected with a special stablizer that is very hard to come across outside corporate channels. The corporation that made the body designed it that way as a slow-working kill switch in case the user of the body would try to run away with it. This means that the player have to find a way to semi-regularly acquire stablizers to maintain the player character's health. The player-character also have to maintain their energy levels by eating meals or their condition will drop. To perform actions, each day the player gets a number of dice rolls, based on the player character's current health, which represent the player character performing an action as well as how useful the action is. There are also a number of inventory items such as the stablizers, credits, scrap and non-physical data to manage.

* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'': Between having limited ammo, limited healing herbs, and limited inventory space; they often became games of deciding just when to fight and when to find a way to avoid that newest pack of zombies and save your ammo, or risk reaching a point where you're screwed with nothing but a knife to defend yourself.
* The ''VideoGame/SystemShock'' series offers you a lot of resource management, including food and medical items, ammunition, weapon parts, and most impressively of all, cybernetic implant modules and other software (which you can use to improve your abilities, or for accessing devices and hacking). The initial version of the second game was somewhat infamous for overdoing it with [[BreakableWeapons quickly-weathering firearms]]. Due to all the games' heavily RPG-esque approach and {{cyberpunk}}-based items, they are something of a precursor to the first ''Deus Ex'' game, which built on their ideas.

* Creator/IcePickLodge's ''VideoGame/{{Pathologic}}'' has fairly extensive survival resource management. Everything from food and water (in various states of freshness), medical supplies (major items, given the story; incl. tablets, painkillers, special potions, tourniquets, bandages...), protective clothing (for medical reasons), to ammo (different bullets for each gun type), extra fuel for your lamp (not as important) and various baubles and cheap goods you can use for bartering. You have to have clothes and weapons repaired over time, due to wear and tear. Even resting and sleeping is something of a resource, as it's ill-advised to continue investigating or solving {{NPC}} quests without regularly caring for the player character's needs. The extensiveness of this management is logically justified by the premise, as the town the game takes place in is overrun with an ever-expanding mysterious plague. Even the prices of all these goods can grow and fluctuate a lot, both in official shops and while bartering with people, due to the ongoing crisis. The authorities and society as a whole are slowly crumbling, even though the player can somewhat dampen the worst of the spreading epidemic while also investigating the backstory of the town and the locals.
* In ''VideoGame/AlienIsolation'' you have to look out after the protagonist's [[HitPoints health]], her [[TenSecondFlashlight flashlight batteries]], her ammunition, secondary items, and the craftable resources to make more of them. She needs to balance progressing away from the xenomorph against exploring to find enough of these things to keep surviving against it, then figure out best how to apply them.
* The Arctic setting of ''[[{{VideoGame/Cryostasis}} Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason]]'' has the player character keeping warm as a central survival mechanic. It's similar to managing one's health in other horror games. The mechanic has the player searching for any useful sources of heat aboard the game's abandoned icebreaker, and using them to fend off the omnipresent frost. Another resource to manage is ammo, which is relatively scarce, especially some particular types.
* This is the whole basis of ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys''. You are being stalked by hostile animatronics. You can't leave your station, but you can check their locations with your camera tablet, use door lights to check if they're right outside your door, and shut the doors to prevent them from getting through. However, when the defenses are active, they drain power, and you only have a finite amount (which already drains slowly because of your office lights and fans). When the power runs out, [[BigBad Freddy]] ''will'' kill you, unless you're just on the edge of the clock flipping to [[InstantWinCondition 6 AM]].
* The ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' DLC Dead Money strips you of all your equipment and dumps you in a toxic villa where everything is trying to kill you. There is a palpable dearth of supplies and you have to scrounge for every healing item you can. Hope you were a melee/unarmed character because there isn't a lot of ammo and the ghost people don't stay dead...

* ''[[http://humbit.com/rogue/ A False Saint, An Honest Rogue]]'' is another wilderness survival roguelike. It has food and temperature as its main resources. Drop too low on either of those, and you start seeing things.
* ''VideoGame/{{Sheltered}}'' is about a family trying to survive as long as they can in a fallout shelter immediately following a nuclear war. Supplies scarce and they need to go out into the wasteland to find more.
* In the same vein as ''Sheltered'' above, there's ''VideoGame/SixtySeconds''. At the beginning of the game, you have 60 seconds to grab all the supplies (and family members) you can and take them to the bunker. After that comes the hard part- surviving until you can be rescued. Supplies can be replenished by scavenging or random events, but they can also be destroyed. Going without food or water for too long will kill family members, and lack of important items can make them get sick, go insane, or prevent you from reaching an ending.
* In ''VideoGame/ARIDABacklandsAwakening'', water (unlike food) does not regenerate. There are a limited amount of waterholes in the game, each of which have four uses before they go dry- and if you waste them, well, [[UnwinnableByDesign you're screwed]]. (Luckily, the game is only around two hours, so mistakes aren't too costly.)

* Certain installments of the ''VideoGame/SplinterCell'' series force the player to use his lockpicking tools wisely, as they're one-use only.
* ''VideoGame/HitmanCodename47'', involves a pre-mission menu that also allows the player to buy extra ammo and other smaller equipment, in addition to selecting the equipment for a mission.
* The ''Death to Spies'' series has a similar system of careful pre-mission item and weapon selection, with additional items and weapons being scavangeable during missions.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Receiver}}'', bullets are only found by threes and fours (or even ones and twos) scattered widely over the map, and you have no EmergencyWeapon. Make every shot count, in other words.
* In ''VideoGame/{{SWAT 3}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{SWAT 4}}'', outside of using your relatively small amount of ammo reasonably, you also have to ration the use of some of your items. You and even your team members can run out of stun grenades, depending on the size of a mission and how often you decide to use the grenades. The fourth game also offers tactical wedges for blocking doors, but the amount you can comfortably carry with you is fairly limited, so you have to think twice about which exact doors you'll be blocking to box in suspects.

* The now fairly obscure Japanese horror shooter ''Extermination'' had your team of special operatives exploring a base overrun with a bizarre infection. Resource management consisted of considered use of ammo and paying attention to meters displaying risk of infection to the player.
* The original ''VideoGame/Doom3'' is actually noticeably tighter on ammo than most other FPS games. While ammo is common enough that you're unlikely to run out completely, each individual ammo pickup is small enough that you can't rely on any single weapon throughout the entire game, and will need to switch between your guns fairly frequently based on your current ammo supply for each. Only shotgun ammo is found in relative excess, and the ''Doom 3'' shotgun is infamous for being [[ShortRangeShotgun essentially a melee weapon that happens to use ammo]]. This is averted in the ''BFG Edition'', which roughly doubles the amount of ammo you get.

* ''VideoGame/{{SWINE}}'''s campaigns have this trope, despite the game being a tactical RTS. This is because ''everything'' is limited - you only earn Strategic Points at the start of every mission, which you use to field your units, upgrade them and keep them supplied with fuel, ammunition and armor repairs. The number of units you can field is finite, and all three kinds of supplies are finite - in longer missions the supply trailers used to replenish your combat units will themselves run dry. Hence the conservation of the supplies you have, or Points with which to airlift more in, becomes and important strategic factor.
* ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'' has the Staff of Life, which can only be obtained once and only used 42 times.
* Sieges in ''VideoGame/{{Stronghold}}'' require you to make effective use of the troops, traps and structures you're given throughout the whole scenario. You can't replenish your forces, so a mistake early on can make things very difficult later.
* ''VideoGame/{{Pharaoh}}'': While resources are infinite, the rate of collection is not, and depends on many factors (building placement, workforce, distance from the raw materials, ''availability'' of raw materials if imported, having enough storage space, the weather for floodplain farming...). And if maintaining a suitable balance between having enough of a particular product both to export and satisfy your citizens' needs wasn't enough, you often get demands for ridiculous quantities that almost require you to set up dedicated storage facilities. Juggling them all is the defining aspect of the game, even with the considerable AcceptableBreaksFromReality and AntiFrustrationFeatures.
* The ''VideoGame/{{Caesar}}'' series, by the same developers as ''Pharaoh'', has very similar resource-and-distribution management. Due to the ancient Roman setting, this includes building reservoirs and aqueducts for supplying cities with water, and so on.
* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' derives most of its challenge from this trope, once you get past the controls and other complexities. Every single resource has to be accounted for, whether you produce it yourself, acquire (or "[[VideoGameStealing acquire]]") it from caravans, or loot it from invaders.
* In ''VideoGame/MechCommander'', salvage is everything. The credits you're paid for each mission don't cover all the repairs and upgrades you need, and some items can't be bought in stores, so you'll have to constantly gather salvage to upgrade your mechs. Also, on each mission, you're given ''very'' limited supplies of {{SupportPower}}s, such as artillery and sensor probes.
* The later ''VideoGame/BattleTech'' video game requires the player to manage heat in battle, similar to the source material. Generate too much heat in battle without being able to vent it via heat sinks, and your 'Mech will start malfunctioning and shut down (or, in a worst case scenario, explode catastrophically). This makes ''heat dispersal'' the valuable resource that has to be managed on a per-unit basis. You also need to pay for and ration out your available reserves of medical care and technical support, ensuring you have enough of both to recover and repair damaged units and heal injured warriors in anything less than two months. On top of that, you also have to manage your unit's morale and standing with various benefactors; don't expect a warm welcome if you show up on House Liao's doorstep after shooting up their Capellan Home Guards.

* ''VideoGame/TransportTycoon'' and its successor ''Locomotion'' have you mostly building and managing land, water and aerial based public transport, but resource management does come into play. Your available finances allow you to build infrastructure, vehicles and manage budgets and PR, your popularity standing in a particular community affects if you can build there, and you even (indirectly) manage actual industrial resources based on how you interconnect various industries present in the game world (e.g. sending coal to powerplants, iron ore to steel mills, agricultural resources to food-processing companies, etc.). Even commuting passengers become a resource of sorts, as the more you improve the passenger and cargo transport infrastructure, the more towns and cities can grow in size, population and further develop.
* ''VideoGame/Stars1995'' requires careful management of your resources from people to minerals. Of note, there is a finite supply of minerals available on the planets for the most part, so the end-game of the larger games involves finding ways to do more with less because the minerals just don't exist.
* ''VideoGame/VGAPlanets'' is another [=FourX=] space-empire game where you have to manage your limited supply of the four minerals needed to build spaceships and starbases, and the fuel/fighters/torpedoes for said ships. You can construct ships that produce minerals and fuel using Supplies, but then you need factories churning out those Supplies. And so almost inevitably you have to scrounge and economize.

* ''VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLight'': You have a limited quantity of fuel, which you use on each jump. If you run out, you will not be able to jump until you get more. Getting some more can happen in several ways, from being found by an automated fuel merchant drone, to taking it from the stores of a pirate who tried to take advantage of your weakness, to having to fight the [[AdvancingWallOfDoom Rebel Fleet]]. You also have a limited supply of [[AttackDrones Drone Parts]] and Missiles.

* ''VideoGame/MonsterRancher''. Since monsters have a life-span ranging from 1 year to [[MinMaxing 11 years]], you have to be ''very'' cautious of what you make your monster do, and when. In general, the money in this game could be considered as no Economy Management.

* The first two ''VideoGame/IronGrip'' games are a blend of first person shooter and tower defence. In ''Iron Grip Warlord'', your primary resources are "Power" (basically finance, used for building defensive structures) and "Morale" (self-explanatory; the game's progress and outcome depends on lowering the attacking enemy's morale to zero, while keeping your defenders' morale high).
* ''VideoGame/CultistSimulator'' requires you to ensure a constant supply of money, so as to pay for both ongoing survival, recovering from injuries ''and'' a string of [[TomeOfEldritchLore sinister tomes]].
* The old Avalon Hill board game ''Third Reich'' takes place at the corps level and is quite abstract. Attacking is very expensive. A 2:1 attack succeeds about 97.5% of the time (3:1 always succeeds) and the die roll is used to determine the casualties. Defending ground units get terrain multipliers so 2:1 is usually closer to 4:1. Managing your resources and supply lines is a huge (and very boring) part of the game.
* In ''VideoGame/CryingSuns'', your battleship starts with 5 units of fuel (or Neo-N) and uses up one each time it moves from planet to planet or jumps from one system to another. There are three ways to get more: buy it from shops, which have limited stock; find it on expeditions, which are risky and unpredictable; or scavenge it from hypercubes, which can only be done once per system. Run out, and you’ll be forced to wait for a passing ship to refuel you... and there’s a good chance the passing ship will be a hostile [[SpacePirates pirate]] looking to plunder you.
* ''VideoGame/ImmortalSoulBlackSurvival'' revolves around this mechanic. You have six inventory slots which you have to use over the course of the game to create Armor, Weapons, and Food from a limited amount of resources scattered around the map. You have to manage all of these slots over the course of the game, and if you make improper choices or don't leave enough space to pick up items that you need you will quickly fall behind everyone else.
* As the year drags on in ''VideoGame/PapersPlease'', you will be tasked with keeping track of more and more minute criteria for allowing people into Arstotzka, including multiple security features for passports, corroborating statements to check for forgery, checking the expiration dates on work permits, etc. If you want to do any of the side quests, you'll also have to make sure that you keep an eye out for specific people in the queue and be careful not to make too many mistakes or you'll start losing money. You even have to remember to take down anything you have hung up on the walls of your post when your supervisor comes by for inspection, or [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome he'll dock your pay]]!
* ''VideoGame/{{Seaman}}'' starts the player off with a limited supply of food pellets to feed to their Seaman which cannot be replenished. To prevent the Seaman from starving, one must carefully ration the pellets until they unlock the insect cage, which also requires attention: the cage must be kept from drying out, and spiders need to be dealt with to keep them from killing your moths. When properly maintained, the insect cage can provide a self-sustaining source of food for your Seaman, while neglecting it will result in your food supplies running out and your Seaman eventually dying of starvation.

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* As the year drags on in ''VideoGame/PapersPlease'', you will be tasked with keeping track of more and more minute criteria for allowing people into Arstotzka, including multiple security features for passports, corroborating statements to check for forgery, checking the expiration dates on work permits, etc. If you want to do any of the side quests, you'll also have to make sure that you keep an eye out for specific people in the queue and be careful not to make too many mistakes or you'll start losing money. You even have to remember to take down anything you have hung up on the walls of your post when your supervisor comes by for inspection, or [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome he'll dock your pay]]!