Save scumming in games is a pretty common “tool” used by most of the gaming community at this point, if the player can simply save and reload to guarantee a win in a gambling mini-game or circumvent the bad results of success/fail in-game event, why wouldn’t they?
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But, on the developer’s end, save scumming is something that they usually try and avoid having the players feel “forced” into using in order to succeed. And, to that end, some devs even implement systems or reactions to save-scumming that punish players for even trying it. So, let’s look at some of the most iconic examples.
7Animal Crossing
This is by far the most iconic example, and it’s Mr. Resetti from theAnimal Crossinggames. This little mole would always appear when players would attempt to reset and change the date on their console to get circumvent certain events, get around different mechanics, or even attempt to farm some free Bellsto renovate their home.
After a player would reset without saving (which was usually part of the trick), Mr. Resetti would pop up and force the player to sit through a long lecture about the dangers of resetting and the selfish greed that comes with it. And, with each successive reset without saving, Resetti’s lectures would escalate, making players almost “want” to do it and see where it goes. Of course, after the GamecubeAnimal Crossing, resetting in this way became way less prevalent due to auto-saving and in-game systems circumventing this exploit, but Resetti still appears in every game in some way, just a bit different each time. To be fair, Tom Nook, one of the game’s main mascots,is also not the same character he used to be.
6Undertale
Next up is a bit of a loophole, as Undertale doesn’t really “punish” players for save scumming in a literal sense, but more in a verbal or emotional way. For example, every time players fight against Sans in a Genocide run, lose, and then fight him again, he’ll comment on the fact that he’s already beaten them before. Or, in another example, players can actually skip big blocks of dialoguebefore a funny boss fight,such as with Mettaton.
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It’s story canon that the player character, Frisk, can reload, as Frisk, Sans, and Flowey (and by extension Chara) are all capable of it. In fact, this is seen very early on, as if players misunderstand and accidentally kill Toriel at the end of the tutorial section, Flowey will heavily hint that the player can just reload their save and fix things. To put it in simple terms, there are a handful of characters that know the player is save scumming, comment on it, and sometimes even insult them for doing it.
5Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
The last couple ofAssassin’s Creedgamesin the exceptionally long line of themall began to introduce a sort of secondary currency that players could use to get unique costumes, rare items, and so on. And, inAC: Odyssey, it’s Orichalcum, a currency earned through Daily Quests and a few other methods that players could exchange at Oikos of the Olympos. And, if they got The Olympian Gift, a loot box of sorts, players would be granted a random Epic/Legendary tier item when opening it.
And, if players bought this gift, were unhappy with what they got, and reloaded to attempt to buy and open it again for different results, aka save scum it, they would find on reloading that the item is gone from their inventory, the box is gone, and the Orichalcum they used to purchase it was gone as well.
4Jade Empire
For the next one let’s go back a bit to the year 2005 with a game calledJade Empire.Jade Empireis a game inspired by Chinese Mythology developed by Bioware, two years after they finishedStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In it, players take control of a customizable character simply called “The Spirit Monk” as they go against a militaristic force called the Sun Li. Of course, in between the main story quests, players can also do all the side activities that are customary for a large RPG world such as conversing with NPCs, completing side quests, and of course gambling.
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And, there’s a specific NPC called Gambler Daoshen that will explode into a bunch of meaty chunks if players win against him twenty times in a row. Winning 20 times in a row naturally is essentially impossible, so this was meant to be a way of punishing players who were egregiously save scumming to fill their pockets.
3Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games
The Hamtaro Ham-Ham games (the series of Ham-Ham-type games, not the singular game with the same title) are such odd little treasures. These games are so full of charm and love, but from a gameplay standpoint, people don’t really get why they’re fun until they try them on their own. In any case, there are a whole bunch of them, and almost all of them have this odd featurewhere players can’t manually savebut have to rely on the game’s auto-saving instead.
And, in one game specifically calledHamtaro Ham-Ham Games(a truly confusing name for one entry into a franchise with similar titles), players participate in different sports events. But, if they try to save scum by restarting the game mid-event to avoid losing, they’re in for a painful surprise when their game starts back up as it’ll load after the event is over and they’ll have already been declared the loser.
2Fallout: New Vegas
A lot of theFallout games are actually very susceptible to save-scumming thanks to the way they handle Dialogue events. Before a Speech Challenge, especially inFallout 3,players could just save, check to see if they’ll pass it, then reload if they won’t or don’t quite have the necessary stats yet.
That said, the punishment for save scumming inNew Vegasisn’t related to Speech Challenges, rather, it has to do with gambling. InNew Vegas, players can earn a lot of Bottle Caps (the game’s currencyand a hilarious part of its world-building) from the numerous casinos, which means there are tons of incentives for save scumming.
But, the Obsidian developers get around this in two key ways. One, there’s an upper limit to how much someone can win in one of the casinos before getting kicked out or banned from gambling. And two, when players attempt to save scum and reload within a casino, all the games go on a one-minute cooldown so that they’re forced to wait each and every time. TheFalloutgames have always been good at cheekily punishing players for usingstandard exploits like stealing items,save scumming, or hoarding resources, and this is just another example of that.
1The Nightmare of Druaga: Fushigi no Dungeon
Nightmare of Druagais one of the many entries into the sub-category of Mystery Dungeon-type games that Chunsoft has made over the years. Other games in this sub-category include thePokemon: Mystery Dungeongames,Dragon Quest: Young Yangus and the Mysterious Dungeon,and of course both theTower of Druagaand its sequel theNightmare of Druaga. This game is a roguelike where the main character Gilgamesh is doing one of two things, tackling the Tower of Druaga to get to the end of it, or running around town upgrading gear/completing NPC sidequests.
But, if players, for any reason at all, close the game by any means other than saving and quitting, they’re subjected to a rant from Ishtar the next time they load about messing with the flow of time and so on. And, if they do this multiple times or so, they’ll eventually get punished for resetting by receiving all the punishments for dying in-game, including the loss of every single item obtained in the run they were in and a loss of half the player’s current gold.
