The meaning of death in video games has changed a lot thanks to the emergence ofSoulslike gamesand the success ofroguelites. Still, while losing progress and redoing levels has become an essential part of some games’ experience, it’s still quite rare to find titles that genuinely give you a single life to use.
Having a single life to spend in a game can be frustrating, but it also enriches the experience, proving that sometimes, you only need one life to make a game truly unforgettable. With that in mind, here are the ten best games where you only get one life.
10Sunless Sea
Set in a dark, Victorian-gothic universe, Sunless Sea takes you to an underground ocean filled with secrets to uncover. To survive the perils of this gloomy world, you must explore, trade, and manage resources while also watching out for your sanity.
While Sunless Sea’s engaging lore and branching narrative are essential for its success, the game wouldn’t have such an impact if it didn’t offer you a single life. At the beginning of Sunless Sea, you create a character and define their ambitions. However, once you die, you must restart the adventure with a new character. That design choicemeans every action has a consequence.
9One Hour One Life
One Hour One Life is a groundbreaking MMO that simulates life, giving you control of a character from birth to death. Each minute in One Hour One Life corresponds to one year of your character’s lifespan. So, since the clock keeps ticking while you are logged out of the game, there’s not much time available to make your life worth it.
The idea of One Hour One Life is to show that only through cooperation can humans build a thriving civilization. Since no one has enough resources in a single lifespan, everyone must work together to grow food, gather resources, and improve the world. It’s a unique gaming experience developed entirely around the concept of making your single life count.
8Minecraft Hardcore Mode
Minecraftis a cozy game where you and your friends can explore, collect resources, and build anything you can imagine, thanks to its inventive block system. There are monsters that lurk in the night and dangerous caves filled with boiling magma. Still, if you die, you can always return to your base, restock your items, and try again. That’s why Monecraft’s Hardcore Mode is such a game-changing experience.
In Hardcore Mode, you only get one life, and the whole world gets erased if you meet your final demise. This mode transforms the familiar, creative playground of Minecraft into a high-stakes survival challenge that rewards careful planning and forces you to keep an eye out for dangerous monsters all the time.
Project Zomboid is the ultimate zombie survival, throwing you into a merciless version of post-apocalyptic Kentucky. While most zombie games turn you into an undead-killing machine, Project Zomboid is an ultra-realistic experience where you mustfind food and clean water, using every ounce of your wit to evade the infected and other survivors.
The fact you only have a single life to spare in Project Zomboid makes the journey all the more frightening. A single zombie bite can end your run, but that’s the least of your problems. From infected wounds to starvation, there are dozens of different ways to die in Project Zomboid.
6Noita
With stunning pixel art visuals, Noita allows you to experiment with its magic system and create spells that interact with the world around you. While exploring dungeons and fighting colossal creatures, you can use the chaotic magic system of this roguelite to test the boundaries of the world. Noita’s core gameplay is a lot of fun but also extremely dangerous, as the game offers you a single life to conquer its monumental challenges.
Since trying out new spells can lead to unexpected results, Noita keeps you on your toes with the constant threat of death. It’s a game that rewards patience and high observation skills as you adapt to the ever-evolving scenarios and unlock new magic powers.
Don’t letDon’t Starve’s charming art style fool you because this is a tough-as-nails survival game. Like other survival games, Don’t Starve demands you to manage scarce resources to fight hunger, the elements, and creatures that hide in the shadows. Everything is out to kill you and you must find the tools to survive.
Thanks to its deep crafting system and an incredible variety of enemies and environmental dangers, there’s always something new and exciting to experience in Don’t Starve. Unfortunately, death is a constant threat, as losing your single life will erase your whole progress.
Don’t Starve also has a multiplayer standalone version, Don’t Starve Together. This version allows you to play the game with friends or interact with strangers online, adding another source of potential danger in your quest for survival.
Risk of Rain Returnshas up to 12 people controlling the survivors of a spacecraft crash on a dangerous alien planet. In the remake of Risk of Rain, you aim at finding teleporters and moving from one area of the game to another, killing monsters to gain experience and collecting equipment to improve your defensive and offensive abilities. It’s a simple concept enhanced by only having one life in Risk of Rain, and death is definitive.
What makes Risk of Rain even more challenging is how enemies grow stronger over time. That means you may explore the randomly generated map to gather resources at the cost of letting your enemies become deadlier or rush to the next teleporter while sacrificing optional boosts.
Rimworldis a unique city manager set on a sci-fi alien planet, in which your task is to guide a group of colonists while they build a new civilization. That’s easier said than done, as the colonists must uncover steady sources of food and water while defending themselves from the natural threats of the planet.
There’s unparalleled freedom to choose what kind of technology you’ll research and how far you will explore the alien planet. This customizable experience grants Rimworld a high replay value, which is well-suited, as the game only gives you one life. Every decision is final and every defeat is permanent.
InFTL: Faster Than Light, you take control of a spaceship crossing the vastness of the cosmos, using whatever resource you can find to ensure the vessel survives the dangerous journey. There are dozens of random encounters to experience in FTL, including battles with enemy ships and merchants that can trade resources for valuable tools, which means you’ll have a somewhat unique experience in the game compared to everyone else.
Since there’s no way to predict the dangers you’ll face, FTL forces you to choose carefully how to upgrade your ship and avoid it being destroyed, while alsodeciding the path the story takes.
The Binding of Isaacis one of the games that helped cement the indie industry, showing how titles made with scarce resources can still compete with triple-A studios when it comes to fun. Offering hundreds of items, enemies, and bosses, The Binding of Isaac ensures that each time you play the game, you’ll have a unique build to play around with, learning how to use different tools to kill your enemies.
You only get one life in Binding of Isaac, and dying means you have to restart the game. However, there is so much to see and so many mysteries to uncover that The Binding of Isaac keeps you coming back for more.
The Binding of Isaac received a remake in 2014 named The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, which added even more content to the game. Since then, the remake has had several expansions, including Afterbirth, Afterbirth+, and Repentance.
