Inventory Pool on Death

Inventory Pool On Death

Inventory loss in games has been around for a long time as a way for death to become meaningful. Theoretically, by forcing the player to lose part of their inventory, games should become didactic: they quickly teach to player to become better, to take more care when approaching dangerous enemies and situations. However, this loss of inventory is traditionally minor and therefore the amount of educating that is done is also minor. One recent twist on the formula is to make the loss large but give the player the chance to return to their corpse and regain what was lost. This accomplishes two things: first, by stripping the player of a large amount of resources it makes death initially feel more severe. This is a far more effective method of teaching the player to play cautiously than traditionally low penalties. Secondly, it rewards players for getting back to the location where they died and doing progressively better each time. If a player is particularly afraid of a large enemy, they will exercise more caution around that enemy to avoid being killed and losing their inventory again and again.

Example: Salt and Sanctuary

In Salt and Sanctuary, players lose all of their unspent currency, “salt”, upon death. The player has one chance to reach the area of the level in which they died to regain their lost funds. If the player dies on the way, the salt is lost forever. When the player reaches the area where they died, they are required to kill the enemy that killed them to get their salt back.