History Main / InventoryManagementPuzzle

* ''VideoGame/SweetHome'' has inventory management as one of its signature aspects. Each character has four inventory spaces: one for a character-specific item, one for an equipped weapon, and two more for any other items they find lying around. Nearly all of the game's puzzles are item-based, requiring you to juggle both the limited inventory spaces and [[TeamworkPuzzle all five characters]]. Even worse, [[KilledOffForReal if a character dies]], you have to find a replacement item for whatever their unique equipment did, eating up even more inventory space.

* Pretty much the whole point of ''VideoGame/DeathStranding'' is hefting 100s of kilograms of cargo around on your back, so half of it is making sure it all fits comfortably. You can manually stack boxes or use an auto-stacker to cram them into more ergonomic positions, but this can adversely affect special cargo like pizza which must remain horizontal. The more cargo you have on your body, the harder it'll be to remain upright. In addition to the cargo you have to transport, you also have to carry around all your equipment, which by the end of the game will have you fully outfitted in rectangular boxes.

* ''VideoGame/DarkCloud'': Nothing stacked. Multiple different items keyed to curing one status ailment each. Each character has limited inventory space for his or her own weapons and can't carry anyone else's. You'll need multiple weapon repair items per dungeon floor or your weapons will break and be [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost forever]]. Not to mention the ridiculous "thirst meter." It was a major reward to be able to carry 10 more items.

* The original ''[[Franchise/DotHack .hack]]'' games for [=PS2=] were an inventory nightmare as well. Not only was your personal inventory limited, but even the bank to store excess items was quite limited. Extremely frustrating in a game where you often need to carry around multiple sets of weapons and armor and items to deal with different enemy resistances as well as the RPG staple of healing, reviving, and other utilitarian items.
** Made even more infuriating when you finish the game's plot and get the "Item Completion Event" and have to collect one of every item. Since your inventory space is limited, you have to carry around rare {{Permanently Missable|Content}} items until the end of the game. No matter how useless they later become (because you get far better weapons/armour).
*** As long as you don't mind spending money on loads of cheap garbage to facilitate a tradeback with other party members, you can work around this by trading an item to a teammate and hoping they don't say SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear!

* ''VideoGame/{{Dubloon}}'''s inventory can hold up to 32 ''kinds'' of items (but their quantity can be infinite). Not to mention your crew, of which each member can equip only ''one'' item. Yes, wearing a glove makes you automatically unequip armour.

* Both ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' and ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' start you off with a limit of 10 usable items (not counting "Important Things"). The latter, however, lets you double your capacity with an item you find [[spoiler:in the Pit of 100 Trials]]. Items may be discarded, but if you don't pick them up soon, they're subject to EverythingFades. In addition, shops let you store items in them without them fading. Those have limits, as well, but at least you may retrieve any stored item from any shop.

* ''VideoGame/{{Suikoden}}'' was vaguely annoying in this regard. There was no party inventory; instead each of your six characters could carry eight items. This sounds generous, but about half of this would usually be taken up with multi-piece armour, because equipment counted towards this limit. It also made shopping a hassle. Not to mention switching characters. Two characters that each carry eight items can't even pass items between the two of them.

* The Flash game ''VideoGame/HelpTheHero is'' this trope. The gameplay literally consists of managing the hero's naturally grid-based inventory.

* In the late 90s, some airplanes had rudimentary black-and-white video games built into the phones in each headrest. One such game was an inventory puzzler, where you had to fit various items in a suitcase, from golf balls to handguns.
* There is a puzzle game called VideoGame/SaveRoom which is a direct parody of ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'''s item system.

* The Flash game ''VideoGame/HelpTheHero is'' this trope. The gameplay literally consists of managing the hero's (naturally, grid-based) inventory.

* There is a puzzle game called SaveRoom which is a direct parody of ''Franchise/residentevil'''s item system

** In an earlier adventure, ''Webcomic/ProblemSleuth'' and all the rest have a four-slot inventory, with one slot for weapon and sometimes some special slots for places such as keeping something under your hat. In the ''Homestuck'' intermission, the Midnight Crew have a similar system -- only they have one inventory slot and four weapon slots. It doesn't make it any harder for them, because their sole inventory slot is constantly occupied by a stack of cards... which morphs into a big chest, wardrobe or the like at the moment it's needed. Individual items also can be taken as individual cards from the deck, bypassing the chest phase.

** The [[AllTrollsAreDifferent trolls']] assorted captchalogues are every bit as weird, including "encryption" (you have to decode it to get the item back), "chastity" (you'll coincidentally find the key to unlock it when the time is right), "ouija" (you get an item based on the whim of the spirits), "miracle" (so complex that getting ''anything'' out is a miracle) and "scratch and sniff" ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin exactly what it sounds like]] and is one of the most logical in the whole adventure: you pick a card and sniff it to learn what it actually holds. The catch is that its user is ''blind'' and that is exactly how she would see the contents anyway.)
** Most blatantly, Jake English has the "Puzzle" modus, which functions... well, almost exactly like the ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' example.

* The InteractiveFiction game ''Videogame/{{Anchorhead}}'' partially averts this: you can carry almost all the items you'll ever need in the pockets of your trenchcoat, but you can only hold so much in your hands at any one time.

* In ''Videogame/EYEDivineCybermancy'', your character has several holsters of varying size - a huge back slot for two-handed weapons, and four thigh/shoulder holsters for one-handed weapons, plus several smaller pouches for ammo and grenades. You can, for example, fit a [[{{BFS}} Damocles]] sword and a pair of submachine guns in your back slot, but not a Damocles and a [[GatlingGood Sulfatum]]. Generally, the [[CriticalEncumbranceFailure sheer weight malus imposed by large guns]] prevents this from being an issue, along with ammo taking up very little space. However, trying to carry around half a dozen (lightweight) weapons and their respective ammo types can require some careful inventory juggling.

* ''Videogame/FinalFantasyXI'' starts players off with only 30 inventory slots on their person and another 50 in the "Mog Safe," which is only accessible via house or nomad mogs. Both upgrade to 80 spaces through quests. Later a "Mog Locker" was added with Treasures of Aht Urghan. Personal inventory and the mog safe are both expandable (up to a point) via quests. Unfortunately equipped armour and weapons still counts against the inventory space and in the beginning severely limits the amount of loot a character can carry. This problem increases exponentially once you have multiple high-level jobs, which in many cases can require 100% gear-swaps on the fly for their maximum efficiency. There is also storage, which is extra space that can range from 0 to over 100 spaces, by stuffing the items inside furniture in your house (this includes strange places like decorative crystal eggs and lamps). The catch is that the storage is only accessible in your own house, not any of the rent-a-rooms you stay in outside of your home nation, which is painfully inconvenient if you need to change jobs and gear for an experience party on a time limit.

* The ''Videogame/{{Diablo}}'' series had a pretty small GridInventory with very few stackable items, and ''VideoGame/DiabloII'' adding a small trunk and [[HyperspaceArsenal Hypercube]], which meant lots of trekking back and forth to sell ur lewtz (use somebody else's town portal and save scrolls!). One trick to get around this in a solo or less jerky server is to just drop things on the ground back at base (although you need to stuff everything away before logging out,) which also defangs the only real bite that the game's DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist had.

* ''Videogame/{{DRL}}'' leaves Doomguy with 21 slots, and only ammunition stacks (and even this has a cap per slot). Soon enough, Doomguy has to consider whether to bring along more spare ammunition, medpacks or whatever else, and items left on a level are lost upon leaving. Inventory management is outright critical in Angel of Light Travel challenge, which reduces inventory size to five slots, and then there's the Archangel of Light Travel with only ''two slots''.

* ''Videogame/MightAndMagic'' ''VI - VIII'' suffered from this to some degree. In each game each person has a separate GridInventory which gets filled quickly during dungeon raids, especially if enemies in question drops frequently armor, and especially in ''VI'' that had [[MarathonLevel bigger dungeons]]. It ''did'' have way to counteract it ... with an endgame spell which would turn item to gold with a permanent loss to value (and corresponding magic school had to be mastered, which was not an easy task). ''VII'' had at least chests once you fixed your castle that would never reset and a Town Portal spot right there, making for an easy way to stash your stuff. ''VIII'' had it worst, since unlike in the other games there are [[TwentyBearAsses quests requiring drops from enemies]] which would fill your inventory blindingly fast. Another matter were the quest items which you had to take, and one of them was a sarcophagus that took half of inventory of your party member, meaning you had to give all long weapons to someone else or ditch them.

** Most blatantly, Jake English has the "Puzzle" modus, which functions... well, almost exactly like the ''Videogame/{{Diablo}}'' example.

* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'': In a parody of video game inveotories, a lot of thought appears to have gone into making the inventory mechanics as complicated as possible; characters "captchalogue" (pick up) items that are stored in not-wholly-corporeal inventory stacks called "sylladexes", which tend to have very complex conditions and limitations controlling how and when stored items can be accessed. Rules for which item a character can use vary depending on how many items they've picked up before or after the one they want to use, where the item falls in alphabetical order in relation to the other ones, or whether a value calculated by the number of consonants and vowels in the word matches the same value for the verb you want to use with the item, depending on the "fetch modus" used. Items forced out of the inventory system due to lack of space tend to shoot out with enough force to break or maim whatever is in their path, which has been used to great effect in Strife.

** ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonAWonderfulLife'' averts this. Your player character starts with the staggering ammount of 280 slots for items, right from the start. All the slots allow you to carry and stack all kinds of items, and even in the case you need extra space, you have another 500 slots between your fridge and your toolbox.

** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemShadowDragonAndTheBladeOfLight'' has a very clunky inventory system where units can only hold ''4'' items for unit, as oppose to at least 5 items in later games. In addition, trading can only be done by the initiator and will end the unit's turn and the preparation does not allow swapping items around so trading and inventory management must be done during the battle.

* ''Videogame/{{DRL}}'' leaves Doomguy with 21 slots, and only ammunition stacks (and even this has a cap per slot). Soon enough, Doomguy has to consider whether to bring along more spare ammunition, medpacks or whatever else, and items left on a level are lost upon leaving. Inventory management is outright critical in Angel of Light Travel challenge, which reduces inventory size to five slots, and taken UpToEleven in the Archangel of Light Travel with only ''two slots''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'' allowed each character to carry up to fourteen items, even when some of those items are being worn. However, there's also a storage facility that you can access (via delivery service) from any phone. It has a much higher limit, but item hoarders can still find themselves bumping up against it.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' limited you to 20 unique items on your person, total. ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'' and ''Crystal'' introduced the bag system that separated items into different pockets according to purpose, but "normal" items still had the limit of 20. More extraneous pockets were added in ''VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire'' (i.e., for berries and [=TMs=]), but by Diamond and Pearl the 20 item limit had been removed (though the pockets stayed in place). Of course, like ''Videogame/{{Earthbound}}'', there was a way to store items in the PC until Diamond and Pearl, but this also filled up rather quickly. The introduction of {{Mons}} being able to hold items allows Pokemon to be stored with those items, effectively allowing hundreds more (albeit non-unique) items to be stored.

* The [=PS2=] game ''VideoGame/DisasterReport'' and its sequel, ''Raw Danger'', had a backpack that carried all your stuff. Since the game was designed as a survival game where speed was more important that carrying everything you could find, you had to make hard choices about what you wanted to carry, as what seemed useful could be useless later. As the game progressed you can get better backpacks with more space, starting with an emergency field aid bag and ending up with a massive camping bag that ''still'' couldn't hold everything you wanted.
* This is used as a type of puzzle in the Creator/SuperiorSoftware puzzle game ''VideoGame/{{Ravenskull}}''. You can carry a maximum of three items, no matter what types: you can carry three scythes, but you can't carry four cupcakes. In general, you can retrieve dropped objects, but some areas require deciding what you need most and abandoning the rest for ever.
* Some of [[Creator/{{Rare}} Ultimate's]] early IsometricProjection platform adventures needed careful management of the three slot FIFO inventory to evade several tricky spots, including working out exactly where to put the ''blank spaces''. (Common puzzle in ''Alien 8'': Stand on item to get enough height to clear eggshell wall, jump-carry to leap off item [[JumpPhysics while picking it up]], land, ''immediately'' drop new item to avoid being killed by clockwork mouse / whatever, jump-carry to clear next wall. Needs two items with the empty space in between the two, so you don't leave anything behind when you jump-carry.)

* Pretty much the whole point of ''VideoGame/DeathStranding'' is hefting 100s of kilograms of cargo around on your back, so half of it is making sure it all fits comfortably. You can manually stack boxes or use an auto-stacker to cram them into more ergonomic positions, but this can adversely affect special cargo like pizza which must remain horizontal. The more cargo you have on your body, the harder it'll be to remain upright. In addition to the cargo you have to transport, you also have to carry around all your equipment, which by the end of the game will have you fully outfitted in rectangular boxes.

* ''VideoGame/DarkCloud'': Nothing stacked. Multiple different items keyed to curing one status ailment each. Each character has limited inventory space for his or her own weapons and can't carry anyone else's. You'll need multiple weapon repair items per dungeon floor or your weapons will break and be [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost forever]]. Not to mention the ridiculous "thirst meter." It was a major reward to be able to carry 10 more items.

* Each character in ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'' begins with a pathetically small inventory, which can be upgraded by buying Small Bags or Large Bags. Upgrading from Small Bags to Large Bags when you've maxed out on bags adds even more complexity to the puzzle, since you now have to dump not only everything from the Small Bag into your other bags, but also the Small Bag itself, before replacing it with a Large Bag.

* Creator/{{Infocom}}'s ''VideoGame/{{Planetfall}}'': Picking up too many items causes the item you last tried to pick up, as well as a random item from your inventory, to go tumbling to the floor. If you try to pick them up again without doing something with the situation, it'll just happen all over again -- with another item. More annoyingly, both in that game and ''VideoGame/{{Stationfall}}'', its sequel, hauling a magnetic object around for too long while also carrying a magnetic ID card would [[UnwinnableByDesign blank the latter]]. Let's not even mention ''Stationfall'''s slowly evaporating explosive... which would invisibly evaporate if you have it inside a container.

* Sierra's ''VideoGame/QuestForGlory'' series, being part adventure game and part RPG, effectively hybridizes the "bottomless pockets" philosophy of Sierra's other games with an RPG-style inventory capacity limit. In this case, the key factor is weight; your character can carry any number of items of any size, as long as their combined weight stays beneath your character's upper limit (determined by their strength). However, this is not a ''hard'' limit - you can, in fact, carry items above and beyond this amount. Doing so, however, physically strains your character, depleting your stamina much faster than normal (which kills you if it runs out). That being said, at no point will you ever come across enough stuff to weigh you down unless you do it on purpose (picking up far too many throwing rocks, for example). By the time you reach the hard limit for strength for the game, you can carry everything with ease. Wizards and thieves don't even need to get to the hard limit (unless the thief insists on carrying dozens of throwing daggers), and fighters and paladins have heavier equipment with swords and heavy armor and shields, but since they're expected to develop their strength, it's not a concern.
* In the first two ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' point-and-click games, Rincewind was accompanied by the [[BagOfHolding Luggage]], a walking chest with nearly infinite storage space. This was helpful, as Rincewind himself could only carry a few items. A few puzzles involved going to areas where the Luggage couldn't go (such as up the tower), and you had to make sure to bring the right things along. Or, when you got a flagon of dwarven beer, making sure Rincewind himself carried it, because otherwise the Luggage would drink it first.
* The old Atari game ''VideoGame/{{Adventure}}'' only allowed the character to carry one item at a time. This was due to technological limitations (back then the ability to carry items at all in a non-text based game was groundbreaking) but it overall added a lot of real difficulty to the game. The biggest reason: the only weapon in the game counted toward your one-item limit.
* ''VideoGame/{{Phantasmagoria}}'' had a strict eight-item inventory limit. This failed to be annoying for most of the game because (a) the puzzles were crafted such that only a very few items were ever in-play at the same time, and (b) This being the Interactive Movie genre, which was never really perfected, players usually had much worse things to get annoyed by.

* In ''VideoGame/DreamChronicles'', the inventory is limited to ten items. Normally, this isn't much of an obstacle, as the objects get to be used pretty quickly, but there are a few puzzles with way more pieces than just ten: this would mean you can't avoid moving back and forth between several parts of the location when trying to solve them. One more generic example of this is the gate puzzle, where you need to use scales to find the correct items for unlocking the gates. After you have collected all of the items in the street, you will have to leave some of them on the gate pillars in order to be able to pick up the scales. At the same time, however, multiple ''identical'' objects only require a single space inside the inventory, implying that Faye ''can'' carry more than ten items, just that the game's interface won't allow collecting too much stuff.
* ''VideoGame/BookwormAdventures'' awards the player a new treasure in every chapter, with the total number of them being eighteen (not counting upgrades). Lex can only take three treasures to every new chapter, which can be tough choice: the treasure selection screen provides a guess at what is to be expected, but it doesn't neccesarily cover everything that you will encounter in the chapter, and sometimes fails to provide any meaningful advice at all.
** Its sequel has 13 treasures (one of which is useless until the FinalBoss is defeated) and six non-upgradable companions. Two treasures & a companion can be taken into every chapter.
* ''VideoGame/{{Shivers}}'' tasked you to capture ten evil spirits haunting an abandoned museum, which required you to have the appropriate urn and matching lid for that spirit. However you could only carry one urn, lid or urn-and-matching-lid at a time; trying to pick up a new one would drop the old item in its place, so you usually had to make notes of where you left stuff. What's more, after you recaptured a spirit, the urn would be moved to a separate place on your task bar, implying that you could carry as many "completed" urns as you liked.
* Most of the ''Might and Magic'' series does this, except that you can (sometimes) move items to different characters. If all your characters are full, though...
* The InteractiveFiction game ''Videogame/{{Anchorhead}}'' partially averts this: you can carry almost all the items you'll ever need in the pockets of your trenchcoat, but you can only hold so much in your hands at any one time.

* ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve'', Squaresoft's hybrid of a ''Franchise/FinalFantasy''-style RPG and a ''Franchise/ResidentEvil''-style SurvivalHorror, featured a limited inventory, the necessity to simply throw important items away, incredibly long stretches where it was impossible to swap out the chosen items for those in storage, and key items which could not be discarded even when they had no more use. You ''could'' increase your carrying capacity -- by ''leveling'' in inventory (in exchange for not leveling other stats instead). Some armors had the ability to increase the size of your pockets if you wore it, but if you tried to swap armor and your pockets are full, you'll have to discard some items to make room. ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve2'' separated normal items and key items into two menus. Normal items had a limit of 20. You could attach any item and weapon to your armor pockets since that became your inventory menu for battles, but doing so won't free up any space in your regular pockets. Pouch Belts increased your armor's carrying capacity by 1 and the max limit for armor pockets was 10.
* ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'' allowed each character to carry up to fourteen items, even when some of those items are being worn. However, there's also a storage facility that you can access (via delivery service) from any phone. It has a much higher limit, but item hoarders can still find themselves bumping up against it.
* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' has gone through various stages of this.
** ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' limited you to 20 unique items on your person, total. ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'' and ''Crystal'' introduced the bag system that separated items into different pockets according to purpose, but "normal" items still had the limit of 20. More extraneous pockets were added in ''VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire'' (i.e., for berries and [=TMs=]), but by Diamond and Pearl the 20 item limit had been removed (though the pockets stayed in place). Of course, like ''Videogame/{{Earthbound}}'', there was a way to store items in the PC until Diamond and Pearl, but this also filled up rather quickly. The introduction of {{Mons}} being able to hold items allows Pokemon to be stored with those items, effectively allowing hundreds more (albeit non-unique) items to be stored.
** In ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' and ''Platinum'', there's an Underground mini-game with its own inventory, which easily fills up with spheres. However, you can bury them anywhere to get rid of them, and if you bury multiple spheres in the same place, they'll consolidate into a larger sphere that takes only a single slot.
** In ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeonRescueTeam'', you had a twenty-item limit on the stuff you could take into dungeons. That's fine. You can store extra items in Kangaskhan Storage, which has infinite space. I could live with that. But then when ''Mystery Dungeon 2'' came along, you could increase your inventory capacity from sixteen to forty. But now, there's another issue: ''you can run out of storage''. To increase your storage place, you have to go up ranks by earning points from completed missions, but the problem is that at some point you won't be able to complete missions fast enough before you have to start cleaning out your storage. Though, it does help that 75% of all items are fairly useless, and 75% of all useful items are given to you at a much faster rate than you using them up...
* ''VideoGame/{{Suikoden}}'' was vaguely annoying in this regard. There was no party inventory; instead each of your six characters could carry eight items. This sounds generous, but about half of this would usually be taken up with multi-piece armour, because equipment counted towards this limit. It also made shopping a hassle. Not to mention switching characters. Two characters that each carry eight items can't even pass items between the two of them.

* Both ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' and ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' start you off with a limit of 10 usable items (not counting "Important Things"). The latter, however, lets you double your capacity with an item you find [[spoiler:in the Pit of 100 Trials]]. Items may be discarded, but if you don't pick them up soon, they're subject to EverythingFades. In addition, shops let you store items in them without them fading. Those have limits, as well, but at least you may retrieve any stored item from any shop.
** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'' also had an inventory limit, and considering (unlike most console [=RPG=]s) each individual healing item counts as "one," your two-page limit got filled awfully fast.
** ''VideoGame/PaperMarioStickerStar'' does this with the sticker album, which holds all the stickers used for attacks and puzzles. Thankfully, you gain new pages after each major boss battle and an auto-sort to help out.
* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireDragonQuarter'' featured an incredibly tight inventory limit. You would begin the game with exactly ten slots in your inventory. You could get up to thirty extra slots, but they were entirely optional, and missable. Each slot could only hold one type of item (Heal Kits, Fairy Drops, Save Tokens, unappraised weapons, etc.). You could technically carry any number of a type of expendable item, but each slot could hold only up to 10; any more, and the excess amount would have to occupy a new slot (11-20 required two slots, 21-30 required three, etc.). Despite the above rule, only one piece of unappraised equipment could ever fit in an inventory slot. Equipment that you picked up in dungeons was therefore guaranteed to flood most of your inventory. You could leave your items and equipment with a character that acted as a storage service, but incomprehensibly, the amount of space they had available was usually less than what you had, making it nearly useless, except for carrying items over to a new game.
* ''VideoGame/VagrantStory'' had quite a limited repertoire of weapons you could carry (plain items weren't bad), making you store excess ones in "containers" which were magically linked to each other so you could pull any weapon out of any container. This wouldn't have been so bad if you couldn't do ItemCrafting to change the stats of each weapon (and weapons have ''fifteen'' stats), meaning your inventory takes up a whopping three memory card saves. Every time you wanted to exchange items to/from your "saved" inventory it would take a good 15-20 seconds to save.

* In ''Fullmetal Alchemist: Meisou no Rinbukyoku'' and its sequel ''Omoide no Sonata'', the player must manage a deck of five material cards in and out of battle. Each card has two values that increase upon being combined with most cards except for purple ones, which decrease them instead. The values cannot be lower than 1 or higher than 7, and each card can only be combined four times, enabling better skills the further it goes. At certain spots, crafting a certain card of a specific value is needed to progress.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Recettear}}'', you have enough space to store 20 items in the dungeon, going up to 30 and then 35 after tons of EmptyLevels. While you can bring healing items and equipment with you for your adventurer, you can only temporarily lend them your equipment, so their unequipped items take up an item slot (and unfortunately, you can't let them keep new equipment unless they specifically buy them from you). Also, if you get KO'd in the dungeon, you can only bring back one item with you (2 later, and then 3 after some serious grinding). Once your inventory gets filled up, you have to decide between keeping items with immediate value or crafting components to hopefully make a bigger profit later (assuming your haul was even rewarding in the first place).
* ''VideoGame/RivieraThePromisedLand'' allowed the party to carry only 20 items, with no external storage option. This limit gets especially frustrating when an item is won from almost every single battle, and almost all items have usefulness in raising character's stats. Even more frustrating in battles, when only 4 items were usable at all. On the other hand, abusing the training option enough makes it possible to ditch most weapon items since there will be stronger versions found soon anyway. The only items which should never be ditched are the TooAwesomeToUse Fanelia and Longinus Lance.
* Used in ''VideoGame/Grandia1'', each character has a specific, though generously sized inventory, and there's a large bag. And [[EverythingFades everything]] ''[[AvertedTrope doesn't]]'' [[EverythingFades fade]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Brandish}}'' starts off looking like one of these, as you only have twelve inventory slots plus the three slots specifically for your currently-equipped armor, shield, and weapon. Experimentation (or perhaps just [[ReadTheFreakingManual reading the manual]]) reveals just how many bones the game throws you to '''avoid''' being one of these:
** You can dump items on the ground; these manifest as a green pouch icon. You can even dump multiple items in the same spot, in which case you pick them back up in a last-in-first-out hierarchy. Items discarded this way don't seem to be subject to EverythingFades, unless the limit is more than a floor or two. The downside is that you can't see the items' locations on your map, so you have to keep track of where you dropped stuff.
** You can place items in treasure chests, which do show up on your map. But unlike the above tip, chests can only hold one item at a time.
** Very early on, you can find a [[BagOfHolding Dimensional Box]] which essentially gives you an extra page of inventory space. And from what I've seen, there seem to be three of these in the game. The downside is that items that automatically activate (such as a [[OneUp Ring of Life]]) don't work if inside of a box -- and the ring's in-game description explicitly says so.
** Once you find a box, opening one on your inventory screen lets you freely rearrange your items (ostensibly to give you a way to put them in the box). But this also lets you stack items by putting an icon of one type on top of another of the same type. Previously, you'd be in the odd situation where the "three health potions" you picked up would occupy a different slot than the "four health potions" you found elsewhere. Not all items can be stacked in this way, though, and if you're not careful, you can mix poisons and potions, which cancel each other out in a one-to-one ratio. Oh, and stacking gold bars slightly increases their total value.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'' gives you a hard inventory space of 32 individual "disposable" items (potions, revives, and so forth). Long battles such as the Divine Dragon battle and final boss aside, the fact that most of these have percentage-based effects might make it less grating... then you realize that your available equipment inventory is ''eight times this''. If you want to be prepared for any situation, you'll only be able to hold two, maybe three of any given item type besides attacking items. Luckily, a handful of really useful battle items can be used repeatedly, but you're in trouble as far as healing goes.
* ''VideoGame/{{Dubloon}}'''s inventory can hold up to 32 ''kinds'' of items (but their quantity can be infinite). Not to mention your crew, of which each member can equip only ''one'' item. Yes, wearing a glove makes you automatically unequip armour.
* ''VideoGame/{{SaGa|RPG}}'':
** ''VideoGame/TheFinalFantasyLegend'' has this in spades. Your characters have their own inventories of eight slots ('''including equipment'''), as well as a common party inventory of only eight slots. Only humans can use all eight slots of their inventory; mutants already have four reserved for innate abilities, leaving the other four for items. Monsters can't hold items at all.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyLegendII'' is a little better. Your common inventory has 16 slots, and you can prevent mutants from learning four skills to have room for more items. Mutants arguably fit this trope in and of themselves; how many slots do you allocate each towards skills, armor, weapons, and spellbooks?
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'' had this in varying degrees, generally getting more lenient over time.
** In [[VideoGame/DragonQuestI the first game]] it wasn't present at all; your inventory had room for every item, and every time you bought a new piece of equipment, you'd sell the one of that type you currently had.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestII'' was particularly bad with this, [[NintendoHard as if the rest of the game wasn't hard enough already]]. Each of your three characters can only hold up to eight items, ''including equipment'', which could take up 4-5 of those eight slots. Most of the rest is taken up by key items. [[ArsonMurderandJaywalking The items also don't stack]].
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'' had the same eight-items-including-equipment per character limit, but added a safe where you could store extra items; this same system is used in the next two games as well. V also upped each character's inventory to twelve items.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVI'' and onward replace the safe with a common HyperspaceArsenal that is always with your party, though only items in the characters' inventories can be used in battle.
* ''VideoGame/SweetHome'' has inventory management as one of its signature aspects. Each character has four inventory spaces: one for a character-specific item, one for an equipped weapon, and two more for any other items they find lying around. Nearly all of the game's puzzles are item-based, requiring you to juggle both the limited inventory spaces and [[TeamworkPuzzle all five characters]]. Even worse, [[KilledOffForReal if a character dies]], you have to find a replacement item for whatever their unique equipment did, eating up even more inventory space.

* In ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'', Hard Mode limits the amount of any item you can carry to exactly ten. Need 1-Ups? You can only buy/hold 10 of them at any one time. Same with any gear, beans or anything else in the game. It's not as bad as some of the others here (10 of each thing still doesn't mean much given how there's about 10 different types/strengths of healing items and what not), but it does make the early game hell and certain resources used for things later on rather easy to run out of (like the status healing Refreshing Herbs or the background enemy killing Taunt Balls).

* ''VideoGame/AzureDreams'' does this twice. You can't enter the dungeon with more than five items and can't hold more than 30. So do you rather want to take a returning device (which you may have the luck to find or not), equipment or an additional ally with you before going after monsters?
* In ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'', you have a single inventory for every item, combining medicines, exploration items, and even enemy drops. It has a fixed size, and items ''do not stack''. This requires a careful balance of priceless space between medicines, Warp Wires, and how much are you willing to bet to find certain enemies to harvest.
* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' enforces a fixed limit of 15 items per party member, and this includes not just consumables but also equipment, plot items, and items that give you [[PsychicPowers Psynergy]] needed to solve puzzles. Since the series throws tons of items at the player throughout the games and you can't store any of these things without selling them (and can't sell plot or Psynergy items at all), it's quite easy to run out of space if you aren't constantly selling outdated equipment. It becomes less of a problem in the second and third games due to both games having more party members than the first, though it takes a while for all of them to show up in either case.
* Game Gear ''VideoGame/MadouMonogatari'' games only limited you to nine item slots per bag. You would have to discard an item if you found another and want to keep it.

* ''VideoGame/SystemShock'' was the first FPS to impose fairly strict limits on inventory. of the sixteen weapons in the game, only seven can be carried at a time; grenades and consumables can be carried in unlimited quantities, but a separate inventory for other items (such as Batteries and First Aid Kits, and most puzzle items) only allow twelve at a time. The sequel, being more of an RPG/Survival Horror game than its predecessor, swaps it out for an extremely restrictive Tetris inventory.

* In ''Videogame/EYEDivineCybermancy'', your character has several holsters of varying size - a huge back slot for two-handed weapons, and four thigh/shoulder holsters for one-handed weapons, plus several smaller pouches for ammo and grenades. You can, for example, fit a [[{{BFS}} Damocles]] sword and a pair of submachine guns in your back slot, but not a Damocles and a [[GatlingGood Sulfatum]]. Generally, the [[CriticalEncumbranceFailure sheer weight malus imposed by large guns]] prevents this from being an issue, along with ammo taking up very little space. However, trying to carry around half a dozen (lightweight) weapons and their respective ammo types can require some careful inventory juggling.
* ''VideoGame/EscapeFromTarkov'' has this trope in spades, and then some. Aside from your ever-filling [[HomeBase Hideout]] inventory, you also have your on-hand equipment, each providing different amounts of spare space and slots depending on the quality of your load-bearing-vest/bags.

* Unusually for being an all-action FPS with no RPG features at all, ''{{VideoGame/Chrome}}'' and the sequel ''Chrome Specforce'' feature an ''extremely'' restrictive Tetris inventory. Not only do you get a square-based grid where to fit your guns, but the grid is split in several small spaces and ammo takes some of it too. This makes any weapon loadout different than a rifle plus a shotgun greatly impractical - simply carrying a rocket launcher and its ammo, for example, restricts the only other weapon you can possibly carry to something small like a pistol.

* ''Videogame/FinalFantasyXI'' starts players off with only 30 inventory slots on their person and another 50 in the "Mog Safe," which is only accessible via house or nomad mogs. Both upgrade to 80 spaces through quests. Later a "Mog Locker" was added with Treasures of Aht Urghan. Personal inventory and the mog safe are both expandable (up to a point) via quests. Unfortunately equipped armour and weapons still counts against the inventory space and in the beginning severely limits the amount of loot a character can carry. This problem increases exponentially once you have multiple high-level jobs, which in many cases can require 100% gear-swaps on the fly for their maximum efficiency. There is also storage, which is extra space that can range from 0 to over 100 spaces, by stuffing the items inside furniture in your house (this includes strange places like decorative crystal eggs and lamps). The catch is that the storage is only accessible in your own house, not any of the rent-a-rooms you stay in outside of your home nation, which is painfully inconvenient if you need to change jobs and gear for an experience party on a time limit.
* In ''VideoGame/SecondLife'', Rezzing (placing in-world in a usable form) can often only be done on land you own or rent. The number of items a piece of land can hold is a function of the land's size and the complexity of the items, so it becomes an Not-in-Inventory Management Puzzle, instead. ("I can put up my castle if I pack away my space-station first, or I can have both if I choose simpler furniture.")
* ''VideoGame/MapleStory'' has inventory limits that vary by class. Since EverythingFades (and other players can freely come and take your dropped items), this can get frustrating. Oh, and the less creative quests often require you to not only hunt 1000 monster drop items, but to hand them all in at once. So in addition to the hours and hours of grinding you need to reserve no less than five inventory spots...starting right around the time when you're high enough a level that you've amassed a full inventory of items. But never fear, as you can use real money to buy extra slots.
** ''VideoGame/{{Mabinogi}}'', another free MMORPG produced by Nexon, uses a similar grid inventory system. Since there are no character classes, inventory is identical across characters. Pets have variable inventory sizes; which, illogically, are not always dependent on the size of the pets. For example, two of the medium-sized dogs are tied for the largest inventory space; which is substantially larger than any other available pet, ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shire_horse including Shire-type draft horses]]''.
* Doubly applied in ''VideoGame/DarkAgeOfCamelot''. Not only do you have a limited inventory, but items have weight, usually relevant to whether it's a lightweight consumable or heavy weapons or armor. Making matters worse (for some classes), your carrying capacity is based on strength, which is the same stat used for physical attacks. As a result any mage type class will be much less capable of carrying large quantities of goods than a melee class, especially relevant when crafting. Carrying too much weight, even within the bounds of your inventory capacity, snares and eventually roots the player.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' lets you carry 100 items, which sounds like a lot, but your slots would fill awfully fast if you didn't sell or trash items you don't use. Crafting can be a nightmare with inventory management since you need to gather quite a lot of materials and it becomes doubly true if you plan to level more than one crafting class. There's a separate inventory for gear (referred to as an armory), but the number of slots for that is determined by how many classes and jobs you unlocked so far. Retainers ([=NPCs=] that act as your personal item carrier) can carry almost twice as many items as a player character, but they don't have an armory system. You're also only allowed to have two retainers and you'll have to pay an additional fee if you want to have more retainers. Inns also have a special cabinet that lets you store irreplaceable items and there doesn't seem to be a limit to that. This became a problem for players liked to hoard gear for the purpose of glamours; even though gear can also be stored in your regular inventory, it could quickly fill up if you liked to hoard a lot of gear. Players asked the developers for bigger inventory space for years and the ''Stormblood'' update finally granted it by giving everyone 40 more slots for their inventory and several more slots for their armory/gear. Key items have their own inventory page and has nearly as much space as the regular inventory, but you'll never get it filled up since quests remove the items in question when they're needed or have no further use.
* The inventory in ''VideoGame/CabalOnline'' uses a GridInventory system and certain items take up more space than a potion. Melee weapons and armor takes up the largest space while the other armor parts take up at least 4 grid spaces, requiring some creativity on how to store the items in the inventory and warehouse alongside all the potions and other important items.

* The various Best Way UsefulNotes/WorldWarII RTS games, the most famous being ''VideoGame/MenOfWar'' and its sequels and spinoffs, gives the soldiers and vehicles grid-based inventories that all items are placed on. This allows for soldiers to pick up and swap items and even salvage ammo from disabled vehicles (or take the machine gun off of a vehicle and [[MoreDakka use it on foot]]).
* ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'' has six inventory spaces per hero, with three heroes allowed. The expansion had an upgrade that allowed regular units to carry two items each (but not use them).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Roguelikes]]

* In ''VideoGame/NetHack'' you have 52 inventory slots available, although identical objects stack. Players are more likely to be encumbered by the weight of the objects before they reach the inventory limit, however. Bags and other containers can store an unlimited number of items, and the BagOfHolding will even reduce the weight of the items it contains. However, removing an item from a bag takes up time during which you can be killed, and putting the wrong sort of item into a BagOfHolding will cause it to explode, destroying all the items it contained and damaging (and possibly killing) you. Or, if you're especially unlucky, [[YetAnotherStupidDeath you trip on the stairs while encumbered]].... Nethack has persistent levels, so you can leave items on the dungeon floor and come back for them later: this is a common strategy (called ''caching'') in the later stages of the game. However, some monsters might eat objects which are lying around, while other monsters can pick them up and use them against you....

* ''VideoGame/{{Spelunky}}'' allows you to only keep one item in your hands at a time. Sounds fair. However, you can only "store" bombs, flares, and ropes, meaning if you want both the Shotgun and the Gold Idol, you have to do some juggling back and forth. And God help you if it's a dark level and you need to use your flare too... However, it should be noted that items you wear (shoes, gloves, glasses, the cape or jetpack, the parachute) and a few other special items (the ankh and the Hedjet Eye) are "equipped" and take up no inventory space, as opposed to the "carried" items you can only have one of. And the game won't even stop you from wearing both gloves or both shoes at the same time.

* The dungeons in ''VideoGame/RecettearAnItemShopsTale'' invoke this. Fortunately any dropped item is recoverable (until you leave that level), so some swapping is possible.
* ''[[VideoGame/RagnarokRoguelike Ragnarok]]'' only allows you to carry a finite amount of items and weight, though you can carry more if you can find a [[BagOfHolding red bag]], which gives you an extra 127 slots and makes items weightless when they are within the bag.

* ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeon'', true to its roguelike roots, has limited inventory space. Provisioning is vitally important to surviving a dungeon run, but the more room you devote to provisioning, the less room you have for gold, treasures and trinkets which are needed to both improve the Hamlet, de-stress and improve your characters, and afford further provisions for future runs. As a result, many are the times when you will need to decide whether to drop an item of provision or loot to make room for what you've just picked up in the dungeon.

* ''VideoGame/MechWarrior3'' is a Behind the Lines mission. Three destructible, unarmed vehicles, each can carry 2 mechs and 300 tons of equipment - and that includes armor and ammo.

* In the Genesis ''VideoGame/ShiningForce'' games, each character is limited to four items. Including their weapon (there's no armor in either game) and their magic ring if they're using one. Fortunately, the first game allows you to store stuff in your Headquarters, and the second game lets you store items in the Caravan once you're about a third of the way into the game.
* ''VideoGame/OgreBattle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber'', a unit could only carry up to ten consumable items. This doesn't seem so bad, except for the fact that units can be made of five characters, which averages to two items per character. To make matters worse, when a unit travels on a stage, a meter that measures fatigue fills up rather quickly. There are special items can be used to lower fatigue, but they take up item slots that could be used for healing items. This is nothing to say about the cost of the items relative to the amount of money you receive in this game.

* Famously averted in the ''Franchise/SilentHill'' series, which allowed you to carry infinite items... at least until ''VideoGame/SilentHill4: The Room'' came out and imposed an inventory limit. ''[[VideoGame/SilentHillOrigins Origins]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/SilentHillHomecoming Homecoming]]'' both followed suit.
** ''[[VideoGame/SilentHillShatteredMemories Shattered Memories]]'' on the other hand completely removed the entire inventory system.
** And then ''[[VideoGame/SilentHillDownpour Downpour]]'' reinstated it.

* ''VideoGame/{{Kuon}}'' averts the trope as well. It has a limited inventory... but it's limited to the exact amount of items that can be picked in the game. Gameplay-wise, it's a handy meter for measuring how far you're into the game.

* ''VideoGame/DeadCounty'': The [[PlayerCharacter delivery man]] has only four inventory slots. If it's full, he needs to drop something to pick up something else.

* The ''[[{{VideoGame/XCOM}} X-COM]]'' games gave each soldier a backpack, belt, shoulder and thigh straps, and two hands to hold their gear. Each location had a differently sized grid and varying TU costs to move to other locations. Then you had to factor in equipment weight (armour is curiously weightless) and its effect on stamina. Oh, and programming limitations only allowed you to bring 80 pieces of gear on a mission. This counts guns and magazines separately. The 80 item limit is JustForFun/{{egregious}} on base defense missions, when the available equipment is selected from the base's stores. If you've got a big pile of Earth weapons still, you won't be using your Heavy Plasmas. Or worse, [[ItWorksBetterWithBullets a lot of clips but no weapons!]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Gungnir}}'' is an odd case. While there's no inventory limit itself and characters can hold up to five pieces of gear in battle (which is enough), there's a weight system applied to everything, with stronger equipment typically weighing more. It's particularly jarring when a bikini that weighs more than a ''suit of armour''.

* In ''VideoGame/UltimaVI'', items weigh a certain amount of stones, with maximum carrying capacity determined by strength, so the stronger characters would carry more stuff. Container items weigh a certain amount, and carry more items. Opening a container or looking in a corpse while it is on the world map will reveal the items found within, stacked on top of each other, which can be picked up or moved aside. Moving items in inventory is more convenient, while moving items on the map means there is no dealing with weight.
* ''VideoGame/UltimaVII'' and ''VideoGame/UltimaVIIPartII'' did this in an interesting way. Besides the standard numerical weight and size limits, the size of an object's sprite factored in. Inventory was not handled as a list or even a grid, but a huge pile of sprites that could be dragged freely around the (2-dimensional) interior of a container. The Inventory Management Puzzle was less Tetris and more Eye Spy.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}} 8'' there's even "max items per slot" property ''for each item in ruleset''. But sometimes it's disproportional, as 100/slot for arrows and any other ammo vs. 1/slot or 5/slot for small flasks and sometimes it's just puzzling: Ale is 1/slot, though it looks like the same yellow bottle and weights the same 0.2 lbs as most booze (and Potions of Stamina) that usually are 5/slot. Note that in ''Wizardry 8'', each ''character'' had a limited inventory, while the ''party'' had (barring encumbrance) unlimited inventory space. While there's some degree of FridgeLogic inherent in this, it still makes more sense then many other examples here.

* ''Amulets & Armor'' had a fairly generous five pages of 2D inventory slots, and some items even stacked. It quickly stops looking so generous, when you realize you can only buy/sell things at the end of missions (not levels!) and ''the game doesn't pause'', making inventory management more about quickly grabbing items than carefully packing them. It doesn't help you to be able to stuff twenty more arrows into your inventory when you'll just get killed because you can't find your wand before you're eaten by a dragon.
* ''VideoGame/ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura'' combined weight limits with a GridInventory that almost made sense: Armour, large weapons (bows, rifles, swords, etc.), sheet metal, and the like were very large; gems, ammunition, and grenades were very small. And there were a lot of chests where loads of extra items could be stored securely indefinitely. Of course, hiking back to get those items is a real pain unless you're a mage and can teleport.
* The ''VideoGame/SiegeOfAvalon'' anthology has a [[GridInventory grid system]], and allows items to be dropped and left perfectly safely, except that at some points in the game, certain areas are replaced with similar or identical areas and all items in the originals are lost. The grid inventory is also in the treasure chests and party members, and is in fact the main reason to take others with you. Oddly, bodies do not fade away, but items can be taken off them but not put on them, which often leads to dead enemies lying on the ground with no pants on or even stripped entirely and left naked. For the rest of the game or until the aforementioned map switches. Which only affect about six areas anyway.

* In ''VideoGame/AdventureQuest'', you can only carry 8 weapons (the 1st of which is a default weapon, and can only be temporarily changed in certain quests or replaced by guardian equipment), 8 armors (same thing) 8 pets, 8 spells and 8 shields. Normally this isn't too much of a problem, since there are only 8 elements, and potions can be refilled between battles at almost any time (quests excluded). Plus the inventory can be increased by buying property.
* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' has this, though this is definitely an encouragement to travel light more than anything. Any item takes one slot, you can get up to 42 in one playthrough via upgrades, and as you don't need many weapons or health kits for efficient combat, the surplus is always loot. And since so much of the guns you pick up are cheap...
** One of the DLC provides a place to stash any loot that's cramping your style in one very specific location, accessible only by GlobalAirship. Yeah, stash your loot...or, as the menu for this function says, "Store your crap!" Rare is the player that ever uses more than the four guns you can equip at one time anyway.
* ''VideoGame/DungeonSiege'' doesn't even try to hide how cruel it is with this trope. Rather than giving you any way to expand the inventory of your characters, it lets you sacrifice a party slot for a ''pack mule'' that has a bigger inventory but cannot fight or level up. The expansion alleviated this somewhat with the introduction of inventory-expanding backpacks ([[FridgeLogic then how were you carrying everything before?]]). However the "Transmute" spell alleviates this somewhat - you can transmute most items to gold for a percentage loss in value compared to selling them direct. Unfortunately you are not guaranteed to find the spell before your inventory maxes out.
* ''VideoGame/CastleOfTheWinds'' somewhat averts this as the player is limited by both weight and bulk (with each piece of equipment having a specific amount of weight and size). Thus you could carry lots of potions and magic rings, but only a few suits of armor (the carrying case could also be swapped for larger ones). In addition, it's also possible to set down any equipment on the floor at any place, and no one will steal them ([[FridgeLogic not even the Sneaking Thief]]). Keep in mind this game came out in ''1989''.
* ''VideoGame/DivinityIIEgoDraconis'' lets you carry 100 items (or stacks of up to 50 identical items) completely regardless of your strength, and you can extend it by spending skill points. Also, you cannot drop items (even though there are items on the ground you can pick up) nor can you put things ''back'' into containers; your only option is to ''destroy'' an item to make room. There is a roomy chest for storing stuff in the Battle Tower, but that isn't available until fairly long into the game. Curiously, the prequels (''VideoGame/DivineDivinity'' and ''VideoGame/BeyondDivinity'') had standard item weight and a persistent world where you could drop stuff wherever you wanted.

* ''Videogame/MightAndMagic'' ''VI - VIII'' suffered from this to some degree. In each game each person has a separate GridInventory which gets filled quickly during dungeon raids, especially if enemies in question drops frequently armor, and especially in ''VI'' that had [[MarathonLevel bigger dungeons]]. It ''did'' have way to counteract it ... with an endgame spell which would turn item to gold with a permanent loss to value (and corresponding magic school had to be mastered, which was not an easy task). ''VII'' had at least chests once you fixed your castle that would never reset and a Town Portal spot right there, making for an easy way to stash your stuff. ''VIII'' had it worst, since unlike in the other games there are [[TwentyBearAsses quests requiring drops from enemies]] which would fill your inventory blindingly fast. Another matter were the quest items which you had to take, and one of them was a sarcophagus that took half of inventory of your party member, meaning you had to give all long weapons to someone else or ditch them.

* ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'': You can only carry 41 items (51 for 1.2 PC) at a time (by using the trash as a slot), and those items are divided into stacks of varying size (250 for blocks [999 for certain items in 1.2 PC] and 99 for torches, just to name a couple). This means you have to manage your inventory carefully if you plan to go digging for treasure, and you'll have to backtrack often to unload items once you invariably run out of room. On the plus side, there are a great many chests scattered around the world, enough that you won't have to throw anything worthwhile away (and in the unlikely event you don't have enough, you can always craft more with some wood and iron). The vendors can also be used to offload some of the loot, while many players carry a piggy bank around with them to use as storage, bag of holding style. The much more expensive safe and the end-game Defender's Forge can add even more space.

* The system is used in the post-apocalyptic ''Literature/FreewayWarrior'' series by the same author, with the additional rule that you lose stealth if you have more items. Oddly, you aren't able to store excess items in the car you spend most of your time driving.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' mostly gets by with a weight limit determined by your strength (and a few factors like your race's size and number of legs) and some common sense from the DM ("No you can't pick up the castle and bring it with you, I don't care how many 1 copper-piece-a-day hirelings you can afford"). ''D&D'' is also the TropeNamer for BagOfHolding, which is bigger on the inside and reduces the weight of everything within.
* ''TabletopGame/ATouchOfEvil'': Heroes are restricted to one Item or Ally card per Location deck, plus three Items and/or Allies from non-Location deck sources. However, some Event cards allow restricted expansions to how much you can have, and a few Items explicitly state that they don't count against your carrying limit.

* Similar to ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'', ''VideoGame/Prey2017'' uses a GridInventory with items taking up one or more squares based on their size. There is a lot of VendorTrash, much of it ''literal'' trash (banana peels, crumpled paper, cigar stubs, etc.), but this is used as fuel for the [[MatterReplicator Recycler]], which turns all your garbage into neat little cubes of various raw materials, which can then be re-processed into useful items. The cubes of material are themselves items in your inventory, but they take up far less space than un-processed trash.

** The console versions of ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' have an inventory limit of 150 items, which is about 10 times more than you'll ever need since items equipped on a character don't count and there are no non-equippable items. While the item limit is certainly higher than a player would need, the system still has its share of other management issues. For example, if you open an item container with a full inventory, you are forced to reduce all the items inside into omni-gel, since you can't pick them up. The option of leaving them there or destroying some of the VendorTrash in your inventory instead is not available. As well, just navigating the inventory interface is a hassle, requiring the player to jump about comparing items to make sure that each party member has the best equippment available. Still, when the inventory system was discarded in the sequel, [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks there were many angry cries of throwing babies out with dirty bathwater]].

** ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' has the same thing. While inventory's a bit easier to handle now that only Hawke can equip most pieces of armor (apart from rings, necklaces, and belts), it still fills up pretty quickly. Perhaps the most annoying bit is that randomly found rings, necklaces, and belts with randomly generated stats won't show you their stats until you put them in your inventory, meaning that with a full inventory, you either have to ignore the items, or discard your own items, which sucks when it turns out that the piece you picked up has worse stats than anything you have equipped. It does have one advantage - much of the VendorTrash you pick up is marked as such, and sorted into a separate category in your bag. If you find yourself short of space, tossing all the stuff in there can be helpful, as most of it rarely sells for much and has literally no in-game use besides hocking it for pennies.

** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', sharing the [=GameBryo=] engine with ''Morrowind'' and ''Fallout 3'', continues the trend and adds ItemCrafting, which uses borderline VendorTrash to create ammo and consumables ("How many duct tapes did I need to make the weapon repair kit?"). The optional "Hardcore" mode adds, among other things, weight to your ammunition, with values from 0 ([=BBs=]) to 5 (mini nukes). Fortunately, you can still use your party members as pack mules.

* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' has this, though this is definitely an encouragement to travel light more than anything. Any item takes one slot, you can get up to 42 in one playthrough via upgrades, and as you don't need many weapons or health kits for efficient combat, the surplus is always loot. And since so much of the guns you pick up are cheap VendorTrash...

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* While not technically a video game, a lot of thought appears to have gone into making the inventory mechanics for ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' as complicated as possible. In some cases, the main character has had to "captchalogue" (pick up) useless items just to get the item he actually wants to use out of his "sylladex" (inventory stack) so he can captchalogue it AGAIN and then use it. Rules for which item a character can use vary depending on how many items they've picked up before or after the one they want to use, where the item falls in alphabetical order in relation to the other ones, or whether a value calculated by the number of consonants and vowels in the word matches the same value for the verb you want to use with the item, depending on the "fetch modus" used. Items forced out of the inventory system due to lack of space tend to shoot out with enough force to break or maim whatever is in their path, which has been used to great effect in Strife.

*** Stack: John's first Modus, which uses a FILO system.
*** Queue: John's second Modus, which is the exact opposite of Stack. Unfortunately, to get something out, you have to cycle it through to the end of the queue.

*** Array: John's third Modus, which was a birthday present. It allows him to access any card at any time. However, he views this as boring and is also frustrated that he can't weaponize it (in his previous Modi, captchaloguing more items than he can hold would eject one) and thus arranges his cards into an array of 4 "queuestacks" which act like a queue or a stack depending on what he needs.
** Jade's Fetch Modi are instead based on various popular board games, such as Jenga, Memory, and Pictionary. She deserves special mention since she figures out how to use the Pictionary Modus to trick the system into giving her free upgrades.

** Subsequently, we get the Juju modus, which is shared between two people - each player's inventory can only be accessed by the other. This would normally be incredibly handy, except that the two people in question hate each other with a passion and as a result the inventory ends up closer to a garbage can than anything useful.

** In an earlier adventure, ''Webcomic/ProblemSleuth'' and all the rest had a 4-slot inventory, with one slot for weapon and sometimes some special slots for places such as keeping something under your hat. In the Homestuck intermission, Midnight Crew had a similar system - only they had one inventory slot and four weapon slots. It didn't make it any harder for them, because their sole inventory slot was constantly occupied by a stack of cards... Which morphed into a big chest, wardrobe or the like at the moment it needed. Individual items also could have been taken as individual cards from the deck, bypassing the chest phase.

* In the ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'' games you can only carry 15 items, you are free to set things down wherever you like, and [[EverythingFades Nothing Fades]] (although you have to watch out for Lost & Found making off with them). However, the game features additional storage "slots" in the form of letters and the letter-saving system, resulting in a lot of present-swapping for item hoarders.

* In the first two ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' point-and-click games, Rincewind himself could only carry a few items... and for some areas where the [[BagOfHolding Luggage]] couldn't go (such as up the tower) you had to make sure to bring the right things first.

* Game Gear ''[[VideoGame/PuyoPuyo Madou Monogatari]]'' games only limited you to nine item slots per bag. You would have to discard an item if you found another and want to keep it.

* ''VideoGame/DemonsSoul'', unlike its SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', had a weight limit on the amount of items you can carry, and you are not allowed to go over the limit. If you want to free up some encumberance, you can store items in the stockpile. This brings up a minor case of FakeBalance: consumable items have an item weight, but their weight is small enough that you can carry dozens of each type of healing grass and others with no problems. As a result, weight limit only ends up being a nuisance as you casually play through the game and pick up items and gear along the way.

* ''VideoGame/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' game (a TextAdventure) has several of these integrated into the story. There's the "thing your aunt gave you which you don't know what it is" which is a ClingyMacguffin and [[spoiler:a BagOfHolding--anything at all can be stuffed into it]]. Another involves holding [[spoiler:tea and no tea at the same time]]--yes, we know. That's why it's a puzzle.

* This feature core to most ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' games. The "survival" in Resident Evil's "survival horror" comes in the form of managing increasingly limited resources used for increasingly low-reward fights, [[TropesAreTools with the inventory restriction ensuring that you never have access to as many resources as you'd like.]]

* They made a whole game almost out of this alone in 2009's ''VideoGame/TheVoid''. Most of the game is about collecting Color, which amounts to food for your soul, without which, you fade out of existence, processing it in your Hearts, turning it into Nerva which is then used to fuel your travel, planting and mining more Color, combat and feeding the NPC Sisters to get them to help you. And surprisingly enough it works, keeping you on edge constantly, because any resource management mistake can be lethal.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'' has a limited "Adventure Pouch" which can only hold a limited number of shields, bottles, spare ammo packs (his main items have their own small ammo packs), and medallions, initially set at four spaces and later upgradeable to eight. Any extra Adventure Pouch items he picks up or buys have to be left with Peatrice the Item Check Girl. (Fortunately, though, Link's main tools, PlotCoupons, and ItemCrafting collectables are still subject to the usual HyperspaceArsenal rules.)
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' places a limit on the number of melee weapons, shields, and bows you can carry that can be increased by collecting hidden Korok Seeds from around the world and trading them in with Hestu. Like with ''Skyward Sword'', though, any armor and {{Plot Coupon}}s you come across are firmly exempt from this trope. ItemCrafting ingredients and food are also limited, but the cap on them is so large that it's rarely an issue.
** Clothing has an arbitrary limit too (5 inventory pages). With the DLC and enough Amiibo, you can run out of slots.

* ''VideoGame/RogueGalaxy'' lets you hold some five pages of items, which is well and good... until you realize how many "key items" the game drops on you. You also have access, however, to another five pages of storage accessed via SavePoint. The irritating part is that consumable items have ''incredibly'' arbitrary limits. Fifty Heal Potions is understandable, but why can you only carry ''thirty'' Resurrections?
* ''VideoGame/XMenLegends 2'' infuriated many players with its inventory management system. There were set limits on the number of pieces of equipment the player's party could carry, and there was a set limit on the number of pieces of equipment that could be stored, but taking up more than half the space in the storage inventory forced the player to run the risk of the game glitching in various and sundry ways. Making things worse, the player could not simply leave pieces of equipment laying on the ground, because those would also count toward the overall total, eventually resulting in the same glitch. Thus, the only way to keep the game from glitching out halfway through was to periodically sell off piles of equipment to Forge, the only way to eliminate a piece of equipment altogether.
* An extreme case in ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'' with the panel system. While your actual inventory is nearly limitless, you can only take so much with you on missions. And because your level, skills, spells, weapon, backpack slots (temporary inventory for collected items), a ring that upgrades stats and upgrades to the above (such as allowing your Guard to block attacks behind you) are all stored as panels it takes some careful planning. You'll also often have to leave enemy drops, mostly synthesis Materials, behind due to limited backpack space because you're going to want the items from chests (as that is recorded and needed at various parts to unlock things) as well as healing items you pick up should the stock you brought with you run out.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/ThroneOfDarkness'' where the inventory manages itself, there are up to seven characters each with an inventory of his own, AND the blacksmith and priest are available at all times, after they are brought back to their posts, so you don't have to run back and forth to reach them to give them your loot.
* Each character in ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'' begins with a pathetically small inventory, which can be upgraded by buying Small Bags or Large Bags. Upgrading from Small Bags to Large Bags when you've maxed out on bags adds even more complexity to the puzzle, since you now have to dump not only everything from the Small Bag into your other bags, but also the Small Bag itself, before replacing it with a Large Bag.

* ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve'', Squaresoft's hybrid of a ''Franchise/FinalFantasy''-style RPG and a ''Franchise/ResidentEvil''-style SurvivalHorror, featured a limited inventory, the necessity to simply throw important items away, incredibly long stretches where it was impossible to swap out the chosen items for those in storage, and key items which could not be discarded even when they had no more use. You ''could'' increase your carrying capacity -- by ''leveling'' in inventory (in exchange for not leveling other stats instead). Some armors had the ability to increase the size of your pockets if you wore it, but if you tried to swap armor and your pockets are full, you'll have to discard some items to make room.
** ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve2'' separated normal items and key items into two menus. Normal items had a limit of 20. You could attach any item and weapon to your armor pockets since that became your inventory menu for battles, but doing so won't free up any space in your regular pockets. Pouch Belts increased your armor's carrying capacity by 1 and the max limit for armor pockets was 10.

* Hair-pullingly frustrating in ''VideoGame/{{Ys}} VI'', in which Adol can only bring 9 of each and any item, including your lifesaving potions. Heck, there exists a cheat simply to raise the item cap to 50!

** ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' was easier than a hooker on crack in this regard. It had a practically infinite HyperspaceArsenal, and the inventory was shared between all characters at '''all''' times (except ''one'' point where the party is captured.)

* The ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' series is a prime offender, made worse by... Well, by everything. You needed to reserve inventory space for the typewriter ribbons used to save your game. Any pretext of "realism" was undermined by the fact that the games featured dimensionally transcendental footlockers where excess items could be stored -- and any item placed in these boxes would be accessible from ''any other box''.
** However, in the UpdatedRerelease of the original ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' there is a mode that makes those footlockers act like real life ones, taking away the advantage and making the player run all the way back to the first footlocker if that's where they left all the important equipment.
** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' changes the system somewhat by giving the player unlimited space for treasures and key items; it's only weapons, ammunition and health items that go in the player's manageable inventory. On top of that, the manageable inventory was changed from half a dozen or so discrete item slots into a grid made of small squares; different items took up different areas of squares based its size and shape. An herb, for example, is only two squares while a pistol might by take up a 2x3 rectangular area and shotgun 2x8. Occasionally, you end up having to reorganize your inventory to consolidate the empty space, especially when making room for something large like a new gun or a TooAwesomeToUse single-shot rocket launcher.
** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5'' then takes a giant leap backwards, by replacing 4's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRBQVrYTC_g comfortable]]" inventory system with the player-unfriendly AI switch-and-match system from the ''Outbreak'' spin-off series, and all items take one inventory space on a 3x3 grid. There are at least some advantages, though, and the action-oriented nature of the game means that having to sift through a large grid of items could provide an unwanted break from the action; the downside to this is that it's also ''impossible'' to break from the action to switch items, since unlike previous games that allowed you to retreat into the safety of an inventory menu, enemies are still very much able to attack you you while you're reaching for that herb or shotgun. This, in turn, leads to another item management puzzle from the fact that four of the item slots can be assigned to shortcuts on the D-pad for quick access - do I want grenades on that button, or should I put an herb there?
** The co-op item-swapping of ''Resident Evil 5'' is also loosely present in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'', due to its two-disc storyline. Whomever you played first had the option of taking a police utility belt from the RPD locker which gave them 2 extra inventory slots. Unbeknownst to most players, you could leave that belt where you found it and pick it up as you played through the second disc as the other character. This made the second half of the game much easier.
** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica'' smoothened out inventory puzzles by allowing the player to mix an herb from the inventory with an herb lying on the ground, as opposed to forcing you to pick it up before mixing them (requiring you to always have at least one empty item slot). On the other hand, the game switches between Chris and Claire a few times (with no prior notice), and the player is locked out of the preceding character's personal inventory until he/she becomes the PC again.
** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil0'' did away with the magical lockers, but didn't need them as such both because the player had 2 characters, and also because that game allowed the player to place items in any room and pick them back up later. This allowed players to do things like drop an item, pick up an herb, mix the herb with another already in inventory, then pick back up their item. Or, drop an item, pick up a key, use that key to unlock a door, then pick their item back up.

* Ever click the buttons at the side of the screens on a Nintendo Wii? You see all the little "screens" on each page? Every VC game or other application takes up one screen. If you're one of those people who buys and plays everything Nintendo puts on them, you'll be hurting for screens pretty fast.