Playing With / Permadeath

Basic Trope: When you die in a game, you're forced to start a new game.

• Straight: In the RPG Tales of Troperia, dying means you have to restart the game, and if a party member dies, they cannot ever be used again for the rest of the game.
• Exaggerated:
  • If you die, you can't play the game ever again. If you try, the game crashes.
  • Alternatively the game still works, but you're stuck in the Game Over screen
  • When you die, the game automatically refunds itself and prevents you from buying it again.
  • If you die in Tales of Troperia, you inexplicably also die in real life.
• Logical Extreme:
  • Get hit even once and you (in real life) have to suffer a Class Z-4 apocalypse.
  • On a less severe note, getting hit once (including accidentally stubbing your toe) causes your computer/console/phone/whatever you're playing it in (and potentially the entire room you're in) to explode.
• Downplayed:
  • This only applies to one crucial battle.
  • Permadeath is a Self-Imposed Challenge option in Tales of Troperia; leave it off and you're just back to the last Checkpoint.
  • Before death there is a generous window to stabilize them and take them off the battlefield.
  • You can die a few times before it's over.
  • Out of Continues
  • There IS a revival item, but you'd rather get it VERY late in the game.
• Justified:
  • Tales of Troperia is supposed to be realistic.
  • Tales of Troperia is a Roguelike.
• Inverted: Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, Death Is Cheap
• Subverted:
  • The game makes you return to the title screen...only for the game to say "Sike! We really had you going there, didn't we?" and bring you back to the last checkpoint.
  • Although dead characters may never be brought back to life, Ned allows you to reanimate your fallen teammates. They become one dimensional creatures with only a single overpowering emotion either of love for the hero in an unhealthy way, obsessive loyalty, or hatred and desire for vengeance but they are mechanically equivalent except for different resistances. The undead can be repeatedly raised for more gold and some level loss.
  • You cannot raise the dead but once you obtain the time machine you can rescue them from their death. Any death which would create a Temporal Paradox forces the level to restart.
  • The game boots to the continue screen.
• Double Subverted:
  • ...Only there are no checkpoints, so the game just starts from the beginning.
  • Ned's revived teammates are little more than a way to give generic minions as a replacement which leads to you being chewed out by their friends and family.
  • A class of enemies, psychopomps, start showing up only when you have undead party members. They have a One-Hit Kill technique on undead that also prevents reanimation. They prioritize targeting undead strongly and should you lose all undead party members they immediately disappear implying they don't care about the villain's cause and are only here to maintain the flow of the afterlife.
  • The time machine is swiftly destroyed before you even have a chance to use it.
  • If you do continue, the game crashes.
• Parodied: When you die, a cut scene shows your body falling to the floor... followed by The Team holding your body and sobbing.... and then there's a Really Dead Montage.... and then the screen fades to black and you restart.
• Zig Zagged: If you die to a Mook, you go back to a checkpoint. If you die in a boss battle, it's over.
• Averted: When you die, you lose your items and return to your last Checkpoint.
• Enforced:
  • The original game was far too easy, so the creators removed the lives mechanic.
  • It's the game of the work where Anyone Can Die and they didn't adapt it out.
  • The creators wants the game to be Nintendo Hard and have alot of Fake Longevity.
• Lampshaded:
  Alice: Be careful, Bob. If you die, not even my magic can save you.
• Invoked: The game originally had a lives mechanic, but Emperor Evulz removes all of Bob's lives and destroys all extra lives and checkpoints.
• Exploited: Bob talks down several minor enemies by pointing out he won't be able to come back.
• Defied: Bob quickly takes a resurrection elixir right before the game over screen, saying, "I'm not done yet!"
• Implied: In universe Bob has tried creating many different characters to beat Tales of Troperia.
• Discussed:
  Charlie: If you die, you go bye-bye. No second chances.
• Conversed: "Man, this game sure is tough. If I get killed, I have to start all the way over from the beginning."
• Deconstructed:
  • The permadeath feature winds up mostly unused in practice, as players wind up just restarting the level rather than face a permanent loss.
  • Alternatively, if the game has the forced Permadeath and can't be the other way (also no save states), players could end up rage quitting because because all of the progress they made are all erased just because they lost to a boss
• Reconstructed:
  • The story includes a few points where you must choose someone to Hold the Line ensuring death cannot be avoided even in a perfect play-through.
  • The player hacks the game to restore the game save file.
    • Alternatively there's a Game Mod that allows extra lives and/or continues and/or save states, or all of them altogether.
  • The sequel became a Sequel Difficulty Drop to compensate for the first game's difficulty.
• Played For Laughs:
  • Dying to a Superboss, the Troll causes final death mechanically by angering Bob into a Rage Quit of the save file.
  • Dying causes a screen that says OH NOES!!!11, YOU DIEDEDEDED!!!! GAY UBER! to show for a few seconds, and it pops up like those Russian Bootleg Game Over screens (disturbing scenery optional), before you're booted up to the title screen
• Played For Drama: As in Reconstructed but it also drives home the message that nobody escapes unscathed from war, while encouraging multiple playthroughs.

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