Failure is a part of life, and the earlier someone accepts this fact, the easier it will be for them. Sometimes, the failure isn’t that big of a deal; maybe the proposal you pitched during a work meeting didn’t get accepted. Other times, it can be something that can potentially send people spiraling into depression. A good example of this could be failing a major exam that you have been preparing for.
That’s where video games come in. These games often mirror real-life experiences where, even despite your best efforts, you still see the game-over screen. And that’s when a game teaches you the biggest lesson of life: To press the “Continue” button, get right back up and see through the task you have been tackling. That’s howvideo gamescan help players learn about failure, and most importantly, how to deal with it.
10Papers, Please
Glory To Arstotzka, But At What Cost?
Papers, Please
Arguably one of the most quaint games, Papers, Please puts players in the shoes of an immigration officer in the dystopian country of Arstotzka. The entire gameplay loop revolves around checking the passports of civilains, their immigration documents and making sure to let through only those people who are authorized to enter and have the correct documents.
But things aren’t always as black and white as you may think. Sometimes, you might mismatch the spellings of someone’s name, or forget to verify their gender on their passport. These mistakes will result in the government docking your pay, and that’s where things get really difficult.
Being the only bread-earner of a family of 4, your salary is just enough to barely scrape by. And every mistake you make will lead to less food on the table or not enough money to buy medications or heating. Things can potentially get so worse that your entire family ends up dying, and it all starts with you making mistakes.
9Super Meat Boy
A Thousand Deaths Make the Victory Sweeter
Super Meat Boy
Almost everyone knows about Super Meat Boy and how difficult this uniqueplatformer canbe. The premise is simple: You’re Meat Boy, and you have to save Bandage Girl from increasingly difficult levels with all sorts of nasty things that can on-shot you.
Failure is a core aspect of the game, and the developers made sure that no player can make it though the game on their first try without constantly dying in nearly every level. This is showcased by the recording of all their deaths in a level that a player can see once they complete a level.
But by failing a level enough times, players eventually end up learing the fine nuances of Meat Boy’s movements, or the timing of a saw blade’s movement or when to press the jump button if they want to make it to the other side.
8Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
Where Losing Progress Is the Game
Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy
Getting Over It is aunique game. Players control a man who is stuck in a cauldron and uses a hammer to push himself forward and up a mountain. But the twist comes from how the game handles checkpoints, of which there are none.
There is no fail-state in the game, no fall damage or no enemies that can hurt you. The only villain in the game is the mountain’s terrain and player’s poor control over the man in the cauldron. Even a single mistake or a misplaced hammer can drop you down the mountain, effectively erasing hours of progress. And that’s when the game’s core theme kicks in: the player can either give up at that point, or get over the frustration and back to climbing the mountain.
7Pathologic 2
You’re Not Supposed to Win, Just Endure
Pathologic 2
By genre, Pathologic 2 is asurvival horrorRPG set in a plague-ridden town. But it’s like other titles in its domain. This one is filled with time-sensitive decisions, limited resources and grossly overwhelming odds where often winning isn’t part of the equation.
Pathologic 2 teaches players about failure, not by spamming a Game Over screen in their face or making them retrack their progress up a mountain, but by putting them in a world where they simply can’t win. Failure is part of the game’s narrative, and the only choice players have is which loss to endure.
6Spelunky 2
Chaos Theory in Roguelike Form
Spelunky 2
Shifting gears from the bleakness of Pathologic 2, Spelunky 2 is a roguelike platformer that teaches players about failure the more traditional way. The game is made up of randomly-generated levels filled with traps and enemies, and death can come from anywhere, sometimes even be a chain reaction of unexpected events.
Success depends on learning the game’s mechanics and quickly adapting to whatever player’s are faced with. Sometimes, taking risks is the only way they will get to move on to the next level. The game reinforces the idea that sometimes, mastery or success often comes only through repeated failures.
5Return of the Obra Dinn
Return of the Obra Dinn
One of the most visually distinct titles on this list, Return of the Obra Dinn is a detective puzzle game that is set entirely on a ghost ship where everyone is dead. Players use a magical stopwatch to relive people’s final moments to try to piece together what happened on the vessel.
The aspect of failure comes from making wrong deductions, drawing wrong conclusions or even assuming too much. Rushing through things will inevitably lead players to failure, and sometimes, that’s the only way players can learn patience and the ability to make smart decisions. It teaches that failing isn’t the end of everything, but a stepping stone which players can use to recalibrate their actions and be better.
4The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
Sin, Survival, and Learning From Death
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
One of the earliest roguelike dungeon crawlers, The Binding of Isaac games are directly inspired by the older Legend of Zelda Games. The Rebirth version is the definitive version of the game, offering various improvements and additional content.
The game uses procedural generation to make sure that every run is different with random items, enemies and dungeon layouts. And since players can’t plan ahead since they don’t know what items and enemies they will face, success in this game depends on being able to adapt. And to do that, they will have to fail, not once, not twice, but over and over again. Nothing is carried over after dying, other than the knowledge and skill the player learned during a run, and that’s it.
The game teaches that you can be successful despite continuously failing a single task.
Failure Is Just Another Step Out of Hell
Zagrues is the son of Hades who wants to escape the underworld. That’s the premise of Hades. The game plays like a roguelike action game where players begin as weaklings who die in the first or second dungeon, but slowly build themselves up to be strong enough to finally escape. And while doing that, they now only obtain new weapons and techniques, but also progress in a narrative that unravels what’s going on in the game.
Hades is the perfect example that, even though you seemingly fail to do something, there is always a silver lining. Maybe you learned a new skill or built new connections, but you got one step closer to being able to finally achieve your goal.
Falling Isn’t Failing When You Get Back Up
Yet another game about climbing a mountain, Celeste focuses on the story of Madeline, a girl who is trying to climb the Celeste mountain while battling issues like mental health, anxiety and self-doubt.
The game continuously puts players in situations where they will die again and again, but it also encourages to try that section again by having an almost negligible loading time between death and respawning. The controls are tight and continuously trying again and again actually feels rewarding. This, coupled with the emotional narrative of the game, we have a perfect recipe to learn how to deal with failure.
1Dark Souls
Don’t You Dare Go Hollow
Dark Souls
Because that’s what will happen when you give up. Dark Souls is filled with symbolism of all kinds. One could say that the bleak world, the hopeless cast of characters, and the main goal of the game, which is something that won’t fix the world, is a snapshot of what it feels like to have clinical depression.
Yet, the game subtly encourages players to wake up in this world, not just once, but every time they die, pick their sword up, and get back to making progress towards their goal. Progress in this game isn’t linear; Some days, players might be able to make short work of the lowly enemies in the game and only face trouble by one of the bosses. But on other days, even the lowly grunts will give players a hard time getting past.
And that’s the beauty of it. Dark Souls is a game that does so much more than simply teaching players about failure and how to get back up after failing. It teaches them that, just like the game, progress is never linear. There are always good days and bad days, and having a single bad day doesn’t mean that you’ve lost all progress. It just how life works, and the only way through is by patience and perseverance.
