There was a time when gaming was more popular in arcades, disincentivizing the act of adding a save system that could remember a player's progress in the game. After all, these machines had to swallow as many quarters as possible, and a great way of doing this was to make the player start from the very beginning and increase their chances of failing.
This all changed over time as gaming became more oriented towards home consoles, with many players hating the idea of losing all their progress due to a simple mistake. Some game developers have taken this a step further, coming up with innovative new ways to implement save systems in their titles.
10 Ori And The Blind Forest
Ori and the Blind Forest is a great Metroidvania with a heart-wrenching story that will make players feel a ton of emotions. The game is a blast to play through, and one place where it ends up being quite unique is its save system.
In this game, saving is done through a finite resource that players get by defeating enemies. This discourages players from abusing the save system and really makes them think about the perfect time to save in the game so that they don't end up wasting a valuable blue orb.
9 Undertale
Undertale's save system may seem rather traditional, but it's what the game keeps a track of behind the scenes that makes it so effective. The game records every act a player does, even if they reload old saves and do things a little differently.
Most people will discover just how deep the save system is when they reload to save Toriel after her death turns out to be particularly gruesome. Flowey disparages them in one of the best moments in the game and shows that players are checking out a pretty special game indeed.
8 Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an admirable open-world game made by a relatively small development team, with the focus on realism being pretty unique indeed. The game can be pretty hardcore and tough, with the very act of saving being a challenge in its own right.
Players need to either sleep or use the rare Savior Schnapps to save the game, which makes every act in the game all the more tense. A single death can set players back quite a bit, punishing anyone who decides to take a poorly calculated risk.
7 Alien: Isolation
Alien: Isolation is a great horror game with immersive sim elements that can be pretty unnerving to play. Everything in the game feels pretty tense, and even the act of saving ends up being pretty risky in dangerous areas.
Finding terminals and putting Amanda Ripley's access card in real-time while a Xenomorph is hunting her down can make for some pretty tense moments. Players are never safe in this game, and the save system hammers this home even more.
6 Resident Evil
Resident Evil is a great video game that needs no introduction. The tight, claustrophobic controls and intense survival horror gameplay of this title were truly innovative for the time and formed a template that several other games would later try to emulate.
Saving was an active choice that players needed to make, totally depending on the number of ink ribbons that they had in their inventory. A wasteful save would only deplete this valuable resource, so players needed to be pretty smart about this decision.
5 Dark Souls
Dark Souls is a game where saving is more of a passive act. Players need to activate bonfires which serve as checkpoints, while also helping them to level up and become stronger.
A death sends players back to their last bonfire, with their Souls hanging in the balance until they manage to acquire this valuable resource from the place where they died. This makes it critical to reach as many bonfires as possible.
4 Shovel Knight
Shovel Knight is a great homage to retro gaming, with the title's simple yet engaging gameplay coupled with fun characters and smart level design making for a great time. One great area where Shovel Knight innovated was the save system.
While players could use checkpoints in a traditional manner, they could also break a checkpoint to get more treasure. This made for a great risk-reward system, with players being punished for being too greedy and destroying valuable checkpoints while also rewarding them for being skillful and not dying after breaking a checkpoint.
3 System Shock 2
Most people consider BioShock to be the game that used its Vita-Chambers for the first time, but that's not the case. Ken Levine worked on another genre-defining game before directing BioShock, and that title is System Shock 2.
In this game, players had to find Restoration Bays on certain levels and activate them to revive at the point of death. While save-scumming was still a major part of the experience, players opting for a more hardcore experience had to avoid dying at all costs before finding a Restoration Bay, since death could mean a game over.
2 They Bleed Pixels
Any game that innovates on a save system deserves to be commended, and They Bleed Pixels certainly falls into this category. The title encourages players to defeat enemies if they wish to save the game.
Players have to really decide upon the optimal time to save every single time, which made the tough gameplay of They Bleed Pixels all the more challenging. It doesn't take too long to get used to this innovative save system that is totally governed by the player.
1 Hitman: Blood Money
Hitman: Blood Money is one of the many great titles in the series that fans love to this day. Blood Money features several great missions and refined the Hitman formula to great success.
The game also tied the number of saves players could make in a level to the difficulty. Players really had to map out a level and decide when to save at the best time possible, since save-scumming was actively discouraged and could harm the player's chances of completing a level.