In the hardest of games, which might even be Nintendo Hard, mistakes are, well, hard to recover from using the save system. There might be Only One Save File, or you can't save at all, and you need to take your mistakes with a Bladder of Steel.
But this trope is for the hardest of the hard games, where if you lose, you don't even get to retry. You just can't play any more. That is, you must either be a Perfect Play A.I. your first time through, or you can't play again.
If it's a separate mode and it isn't regularly like this, then it's Final Death Mode. If it's not a separate mode, but you can try again with a different character, that's Permadeath.
This trope is most common with personal computer games, as its programs have capabilities like storing information in the registry, which users usually don't access, to signal the program that it's already been played and should stop replays.
Giving only one try is rarely implemented because replayability is desired by both game makers and players: more time spent playing the game means more value for the player, thus greater word-of-mouth for future players. This trope is an especially bad idea for commercially sold games, as players have to pay up to full retail prices for a game they will inevitably be forced to stop playing. Therefore, this trope is typically reserved for free games, with some being Unwinnable Joke Games, as players have less to lose in playing the game (the undermentioned Lose/Lose notwithstanding).
However, it might be done in more conventional games by applying it to a Minigame or Game Within a Game, to make an Unwinnable by Design, or loss state for a game session, where another attempt is only possible in another timeline / restoring a save.
This trope has high overlap with The Most Dangerous Video Game, usually when Your Mind Makes It Real, because then there's automatic tension in how every mistake brings the protagonist closer to death. But it's also rare without a special protagonist, otherwise it'd be strange if an inexperienced gamer doesn't die, due to inexperience.
Speaking of other tropes, having Extra Lives usually, but not always, means an aversion of this trope due to being against the "only one try" philosophy that comprises these games.
Compare All Deaths Final for other media where characters only get one life (and in reality, for that matter). Given that all people are mortal, this could be considered Truth in Television. Make the most of it.
Real examples:
- You Only Live Once is an Adobe Flash game and parody of Super Mario Bros. that, as the title implies, only gives you one life. No matter how you end it, lose or win, you can only watch cutscenes detailing what happens afterwards, unless you delete your flash history.
- One Shot: The original free version only gives the player one chance at beating it, as closing the game will kill Niko and prevent the player from ever playing it again. This limitation was removed in the commercial Steam version (though the player gets an achievement if they still adhere to it).
- Lose/Lose is a Freeware Shoot 'Em Up where if you collide with an enemy ship, the game deletes itself, but for every enemy you destroy the game permanently deletes another random file on your computer. Hence the name.
- One of the original concepts for Metal Gear was that dying would not only kill Snake permanently, but make the game unplayable.
- With the boom of live-action Room Escape Games that began in the early 2010s, several companies, such as Kosmos, have created "home" versions of the rooms (Kosmos', for example, are called Exit: The Game) for players to solve at their leisure. Many of the puzzles in the games involve cutting, twisting, assembling, writing on, and generally manipulating pieces, meaning that once the challenge is completed once, it can't be done again.
- Pandemic Legacy is a spin-off trilogy where each game is designed as a Medical Drama-turned-Conspiracy Thriller, to be played once each due to dramatic twists that aren't meant to be anticipated ahead of time. Players are expected to permanently change cards and the gameboard itself, by customising them with writing and stickers and scratching away layers to reveal additional information and even destroying them when instructed. In addition, there is an entire set of hidden cards that are only to be punched out of their panel to reveal new mechanics after specific rounds or when certain conditions are met, like an advent calendar of horrible death.
- One Chance is a game that locks you at the end screen once you've beaten it. Once you do, a cookie prevents you from ever restarting it to try and get a new ending.
- In the 1986 game Sub Mission: A Matter of Life and Death (described in a Polygon article here
), you have two human characters who can pilot the sub. If your sub is destroyed, the human stays dead indefinitely — even after rebooting the game. You could resurrect a dead human once, but if both humans died and you had no more chances, the game would become unplayable — your only choice would be to mail the publisher a few dollars for a replacement disc.
- Upsilon Circuit doesn't let you play again after your character dies. However, the game was cancelled, so the opportunity to explore it further couldn't be realized.
- An indie game on Steam, called Russian Roulette: One Life, allowed the user to virtually play the titular game with the twist that, if you lose, you will never be able to play again. As in the game in real life, you get exactly one death and it's for keeps!note
In-Universe examples:
- The Perry Bible Fellowship: "Game System", where Your Mind Makes It Real, implying this because you can only die once, but it appears that quitting the game before dying is possible, since another player wants a turn, which presumably suggests that this is a subversion.
- Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over: The virtual reality game, Game Over, has a play on this, where while Video-Game Lives exists, if you lose all your lives, "You lose. No replays, no restarts." And judging by what happens when one person loses their lives, well...
- "New Cap City" in Caprica is a Dieselpunk Cyberspace MMORPG reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto, set in a V-World recreation of Caprica City with no rules. Dying once doesn't just permanently destroy your character but bans you from the game for life. However, since Tamara isn't actually a player but a Virtual Ghost, she can't be killed, which she exploits to become an Action Girl with near-godlike power.
- The most-recognised story on Invisible Games was a Creepypasta about Killswitch, a surreal puzzle-platformer from 1989 with two playable characters: a size-changing human woman named Porto and a powerful but invisible demon named Ghast. The characters each had their own unique storyline, but the game would completely erase itself after beating it once, so a single player would not be able to beat both stories without buying a second copy, and the game was released in very limited quantity. After considerable effort, curious fans eventually managed to figure out the final Moon Logic Puzzle to complete Porto's story, only to find it had No Ending. It was assumed that Ghast's story would fill the gaps, but his invisibility made him impossible to play as in a platforming game, so nobody could beat even a single level as him, much less his entire story. Everyone who attempted Ghast's story would inevitably get frustrated and give up, switching over to Porto and beating her story, erasing their copy of the game. The last known copy was supposedly purchased at auction in 2005, with the buyer promising to do a full Let's Play of Ghast's story so that the world would finally be able to see it. The only video released was a short clip of him staring at the character selection screen and crying.
- SCP Foundation: SCP-1315, where only one attempt is possible because of some reason other than being lethal on loss. It's an NES cartridge that contains a "game" in which hazards manifest in real life, albeit only to the ones who are playing it. When you die in the "game", you vanish, and it is implied that you become minions for the "game".
