Video Game Rewards

Here is your reward!

An index of tropes relating to reward and punishment in video games. Also covers bonuses of various kinds.

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• 100% Completion
  Way of extending potentially short gameplay by setting completed tasks as a percentage, sometimes given explicitly.
• 100% Heroism Rating
  In games where you can be good or evil, doing every single good-oriented side quest will result in being hailed as a hero or saint.
• Achievement System
  Bonus objectives that track your progress towards 100% completion.
• Ad Reward
  Watching ads to obtain in-game bonuses or premium items.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes
  Beating a challenge results in a new piece of clothing for your character.
• And Your Reward Is Edible
  Beating a challenge results in food for your character.
• And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating
  Beating a challenge results in modifying and/or decorating a structure.
• And Your Reward Is Parenthood
  Beating a challenge results in your Player Character having or adopting a child.
• Anti Poop-Socking
  The game rewards you for taking a break or punishes you for playing too long at once.
• Arrange Mode
  Elements of the game are remixed for a new challenge.
• Awesomeness Meter
  You get a reward for doing something cool.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic
  The game rewards your persistence by overriding an unmerciful Random Number God.
• Battle Trophy
  Congratulations on beating that boss! You can keep his head as a memento.
• Bladder of Steel
  Games that don't let you pause or save for a very long time, or punish you if you take a break.
• Bragging Rights Reward
  It's a great reward, but in order to get it you have to be so powerful that it's useless now.
• Bonus Feature Failure
  This is meant to be a reward?
• Cartography Sidequest
  The game gives you a reward for viewing every part of a map.
• Collection Sidequest
  If I collect a hundred purple squirrel hides, I'll get this neato fridge magnet!
  • Recollection Sidequest
    When the collectables are flashbacks of an amnesiac player character's backstory.
  • Sliding Scale of Collectible Tracking
    Just how hard the game makes keeping track of which purple squirrel hides you already have.
• Comeback Mechanic
  A game purposely gives an advantage to a losing player or a disadvantage to a winning player.
• Completion Meter
  An interface element that shows how much of the game's content you haven't uncovered yet.
• Completion Mockery
  The prize for perfecting a long and hard task is not a good prize at all.
• Concept Art Gallery
  Where you get to see What Could Have Been.
• Continuing is Painful
  Where continuing or losing a life results in an even harder challenge.
• Cosmetic Award
  A reward that serves no purpose other than telling you that you won an award.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist
  You died! Your punishment is the loss of half a second of playtime! Muwahaha!
• Debug Room
  A location, menu or mode with options the programmers use for testing the game.
• Demo Bonus
  Getting extra stuff for having played the games demo.
• Developer's Room
  A room in a game filled with in-jokes and notes from the developers.
• Discount Card
  Shops sells their items at a discount to you.
• Double Unlock
  A bonus is unlocked, but you can't access it until you unlock something else.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect
  Some game objectives require you to be not perfect, but somewhere between "mediocre" and "good" to win them.
• Earn Your Fun
  You get no rewards unless you jump all these hoops! Within ten seconds! Five hundred times!
• Easy Level Trick
  A secret in a level that makes that level easier.
• Enemy Roll Call
  You get to see all the enemies by the end of the game, as well as their names.
• Embedded Precursor
  A bonus wherein the original version of a game is included somewhere in a later installment or Updated Re-release.
• Equipment Upgrade
  You are rewarded with some sort of enhancement to your gear.
• Every 10,000 Points
  You get a reward every X number of points (or coins or whatever) you collect.
• Evil Pays Better
  If you can do good or evil missions, the evil missions will have better rewards.
• Evolving Title Screen
  A video game title screen that changes to reflect player's in-game actions and achievements.
• Extended Gameplay
  A bonus story or challenge that begins after you beat the Final Boss.
• Fast-Forward Mechanic
  Lets you skip ahead in time to the good parts instead of aimlessly trying to kill time.
• Flawless Victory
  When you beat a match in a Fighting Game without getting damaged.
• Gameplay Grading
  The return of Scoring Points! Anyone can finish the level, but can you finish it with an A-grade?
  • End-Game Results Screen
    Better yet - can you finish the game with an A-grade?
  • Kyu and Dan Ranks
    The traditional grading system for Go and martial arts; it has since spread to many other games.
• Golden Path
  The path with the most content or the best endings.
• Good Pays Better
  The path to good is filled with more dollar signs.
• Guilt-Based Gaming
  The game tries to deter or punish the player for a particular course of action by making them feel guilty.
• Hard Mode Perks
  Making a game Harder Than Hard, but also throwing in some rewards as incentive.
• Healing Checkpoint
  Reaching a checkpoint or save point replenishes your health and/or supplies.
• Holiday Mode
  A bonus (different sprite, special event) that only shows up on particular dates.
• Idiosyncratic Combo Levels
  Good! Great! Awesome! Outstanding! Amazing!
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests
  Boxes of goodies that can appear pretty much anywhere and can contain pretty much anything that no one seems to mind the player collecting.
• Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat
  A fortuitous side effect of the cool, stale air you generally find underground.
• Infinite 1-Ups
  An easy way of gaining an infinite amount of lives, which makes the game far easier than it should be.
• I Was Told There Would Be Cake
  Standard video game rewards: Coins, 1UPs, power stars, and yummy cake.
• Kill Streak
  Kill a certain amount of enemies in a row without dying in order to acquire stuff.
• Kleptomaniac Hero Found Underwear
  When your hero searches through people's drawers, he finds underwear.
• Last Lousy Point
  C'mon, I've got 99% completion... dangit, where is that Last Lousy Point?!
• Law of 100
  All Platform Games will have at least one type of common item that will give you an extra life if you collect one hundred of them.
• Level-Locked Loot
  When a reward isn't immediately available, unless a character is at or above a specific character level.
• Lore Codex
  A list of entities, objects, notable events and other things that is filled in as a player encounters them in a game.
• Meaningless Lives
  Games that have lives, but it's so easy to gain them or so simple to continue that they are meaningless.
• Mercy Rewarded
  You get rewarded for not killing the bad guys.
• Missing Secret
  It looks like there's an item or secret that can be found (e.g. blank spot in the menu), but it doesn't actually exist.
• Model Museum
  A room or menu where you can freely view models used in the game.
• Monster Compendium
  A list of all enemies you encounter throughout the game with detailed information.
• Moving Target Bonus
  You get more points for killing an enemy after it starts moving.
• New Skill as Reward
  The reward for completing a task is a new ability or crafting recipe.
• Non-Combat EXP
  Your character gains experience points for activities other than committing monster genocide.
• Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award
  Being awarded with achievements unlocks gameplay features.
• Offscreen Start Bonus
  If you go in the opposite direction from "normal" at the start, you get an item.
• Old Save Bonus
  Where a save for a different game on your memory card unlocks a bonus in your own game.
• Over 100% Completion
  The game allows more than 100% completion.
• Play Every Day
  You'll earn more for playing a few minutes tomorrow than a few more hours right now.
• Promoted to Playable
  A character who was an NPC or boss in one installment of a series becomes a potential player-controlled character in a later installment.
• Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage
  An expensive, unique, and/or rare item or card which is totally useless.
• Rank Inflation
  When A rank isn't high enough, go for A+ or S or SSSSSS!
• Regional Bonus
  A bonus given to a game when it gets released in other regions.
• Replay Mode
  A menu feature that allows you to replay cutscenes, minigames and bosses you've unlocked through the game.
• Reset Milestones
  Milestones for resetting enough times/accumulating a specific reset-based resource that make things more convenient/act as secondary upgrades, often found in the Idle Game genre.
• Reward for Removal
  A reward for permanently removing unwanted units from the game, commonly found in Virtual Pet and Breeding Sim games.
• Rewarding Inactivity
  A reward given for not tackling the challenge in front of you.
• Rewarding Vandalism
  Blow up people's houses - there's money inside!
  • You Break It, You Profit
    Also, you get the real estate value of the house!
• Rewards Pass
  A paid system which gives you a reward every time it level up.
• Secret Expanded Epilogue
  An extended ending only achieved by meeting certain conditions.
• Secret Final Campaign
  Completing every campaign in the game unlocks a final one.
• Secret Level
  A bonus level that is not required to finish the game.
• Set Bonus
  Benefits that are magically available when the player has a complete set of items.
• Sliding Scale of Video-Game Objectives
  How broadly the objectives of a video game are defined.
• Socialization Bonus
  An aspect of the game where you can get additional content or powerups by interacting with other people who own the game.
• Sound Test
  A menu which allows you to listen to all (or most) of the in-game music.
• Speed Run Reward
  Speedrunning the game gets you a reward.
• Spelling Bonus
  Collecting all the letters of a word may win players something extra.
• Strong Enemies, Low Rewards
  High-level enemies will drop little-to-no worthwhile rewards for the effort of defeating them.
• Unlockable Content
  Extra content that is not immediately available but becomes so after specific requirements are fulfilled.
  • Post-End Game Content
    The extra content is only available after watching the credits at least once.
  • Unlockable Difficulty Levels
    Difficulty levels must be unlocked in some fashion before you can play them.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay
  The only way to solve this is to do something videogames normally don't let you.
• Unstable Equilibrium
  When a game rewards a player who performs well with bonuses and advantages - meaning the better you do, the easier it becomes, whereas if you do badly, it gets harder.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment
  A game that allows a player to be cruel, but will make sure that he gets his comeuppance for doing so.
  • Deletion as Punishment
    If the comeuppance is not enough to set the player straight, the game will just threaten to delete its save data (and if you're really unlucky, it'll actually do it).
• Video Game Delegation Penalty: By assigning an in-game task to the AI or an NPC, you get a less desirable result than when you do it yourself.
• Violation of Common Sense
  Where the game allows you (or outright forces you) to do something that would be really stupid in the real world.
• Viral Unlockable
  Unlocking something by playing with somebody who already had it unlocked.
• Virtual Paper Doll
  Any computer program that lets you change clothes a character is wearing.
• A Winner Is You
  Conglaturation !!! You defeeted the game ~~!
• Whoring
  The process or act of focusing all effort or resources into only one or a few aspects of a game's mechanics with the intent of drawing massive profit or advantages from it.
• You Lose at Zero Trust
  A game that punishes you for neglecting your relationships with other characters.

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