History Main / ResourcesManagementGameplay

* ''VideoGame/{{Stars}}'' requires careful management of your resources from people to minerals. Of note, there is a finite supply of minerals available on the planets for the most part, so the end-game of the larger games involves finding ways to do more with less because the minerals just don't exist.

* Early ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' games could definitely qualify. Between having limited ammo, limited healing herbs, and limited inventory space; they often became games of deciding just when to fight and when to find a way to avoid that newest pack of zombies and save your ammo, or risk reaching a point where you're screwed with nothing but a knife to defend yourself.

* Part of many {{Adventure Game}}s (including [[VideoGame/ColossalCave the original]]) usually in the form of food, lighting, or ammunition. Some even offer a bit of sucker's bargain where you can sacrifice some [[ScoringPoints treasure]] in exchange for more supplies.

* Most {{Roguelike}} {{RPG}} work like this. The reason behind it is that PlayerCharacters usually need food (well, so do players, but most human beings find it difficult to consume digital food), and food is limited for each floor, so you will be forced to ration and go to the next floor when you run out of it.

There is a vital gameplay element -- perhaps fuel, or money or air or healing -- which is finite and unreplaceable; if it runs out, you're done for. Therefore, the whole game begins to revolve around managing your supply. If you upset the UnstableEquilibrium by failing to scrimp resources, the game can become {{Unwinnable}}.

* The central gameplay mechanic in Creator/IcePickLodge's ''VideoGame/{{Turgor}}'' (a.k.a. ''The Void''). This is further complicated by the fact that there is ''one'' resource to manage that does ''everything'' (health, ammo, currency, etc). A limited amount appears in each time cycle, and it's alarmingly easy to render the game {{unwinnable}} through clumsy or reckless spending of color.

* In ''VideoGame/AlienIsolation'' you have to look out after the protagonist's [[HitPoints health]], her [[TenSecondFlashlight flashlight batteries]], her ammunition, secondary items and the craftable resources to make more of them. She needs to balance progressing away from the xenomorph against exploring to find enough of these things to keep surviving against it, then figure out best how to apply them.

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Thief}}'' games, while some of your tools are virtually always present and available, you can run out of many items, including [[BoringButPractical regular]] and [[TrickArrow trick arrows]] (the ammo), [[TrickBomb trick explosives]] (used mostly for stunning or stalling opponents) and helpful potions (for increasing health, breath, etc.). Replenishing these items involves either finding spares strewn around the missions themselves, or buying the items anew in secret shops in between missions. Depending on how a mission is structured and what challenges it poses, one often has to adopt his tactics to ration certain ammo and items more carefully than others. Naturally, you can handle a lot of things with just stealth alone, but certain tools are very helpful in getting to places or ensuring you won't be detected as easily (e.g. water arrows for putting out lights, rope arrows for vertical exploration).

* ''VideoGame/VGAPlanets'' is another FourX space-empire game where you have to manage your limited supply of the four minerals needed to build spaceships and starbases, and the fuel/fighters/torpedoes for said ships. You can construct ships that produce minerals and fuel using Supplies, but then you need factories churning out those Supplies. And so almost inevitably you have to scrounge and economize.

* The old Avalon Hill boardgame ''Third Reich'' takes place at the corps level and is quite abstract. Attacking is very expensive. A 2:1 attack succeeds about 97.5% of the time (3:1 always succeeds) and the die roll is used to determine the casualties. Defending ground units get terrain multipliers so 2:1 is usually closer to 4:1. Managing your resources and supply lines is a huge (and very boring) part of the game.

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* ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' games. You can't repeat battles, and the items you have are the ones you'll use in next battle, so not wasting your equipment is crucial for progress. Many of the games tend to give heaps of gold on an irregular and [[GuideDangIt unpredictable]] basis, so you can end up with no gold for several chapters if you spend it all too early.

* It is possible to run out of starship fuel in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. It's not instantly fatal, as you can expend other resources to get you to the nearest star port. But if you run out of fuel ''and'' resources you can't move and the game is over. Fortunately, this is so hard to do you [[UnwinnableByInsanity basically have to try to do it in order to pull it off.]]

* It is possible to run out of starship fuel in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. It's not instantly fatal, as you can expend other resources to get you to the nearest star port. But if you run out of fuel ''and'' resources you can't move and the game is over. Fortunately, this is so hard to do you basically have to try to do it in order to pull it off.

* ''FireEmblem'' games. You can't repeat battles, and the items you have are the ones you'll use in next battle, so not wasting your equipment is crucial for progress. Many of the games tend to give heaps of gold on an irregular and [[GuideDangIt unpredictable]] basis, so you can end up with no gold for several chapters if you spend it all too early.

-> ''It’s important that you grind. But with no Inns, how are you supposed to heal? Tonics are found through the mansion, and automatically heal everyone in your party 100% regardless of your levels. That may sound too convenient, but remember, you can’t buy tonics. You’ve to ration the handful littered throughout the whole mansion.''
--> ''WebVideo/TheHappyVideoGameNerd, during his review of ''VideoGame/SweetHome'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNz93wC7W68&t=2m37s here]]''

* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys1'' has electricity. You start at 99%, and it drains constantly throughout the night, although it drains faster when you have the lights on or the doors closed. You need to make it from midnight to 6AM. If the power runs out, the robots kill you. If you run out of power between 5 and 6AM, you ''might'' be able to survive by PlayingPossum - [[spoiler: Freddy always shows up in person for power outages, and spends nearly a minute (an in-game hour) celebrating with a creepy song.]]

* This is the whole basis of ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys''. You are being stalked by hostile animatronics. You can't leave your station, but you can check their locations with your camera tablet, use door lights to check if they're right outside your door, and shut the doors to prevent them from getting through. However, when the defenses are active, they drain power, and you only have a finite amount (which already drains slowly because of your office lights and fans). When the power runs out, [[BigBad Freddy]] ''will'' kill you, unless you're just on the edge of the clock flipping to [[InstantWinCondition 6 AM]].

* The first ''VideoGame/{{Hitman}}'' game, ''Codename 47'', involved a pre-mission menu that also allowed the player to buy extra ammo and other smaller equipment, in addition to selecting the equipment for a mission.

* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' has electricity. You start at 99%, and it drains constantly throughout the night, although it drains faster when you have the lights on or the doors closed. You need to make it from midnight to 6AM. If the power runs out, the robots kill you. If you run out of power between 5 and 6AM, you ''might'' be able to survive by PlayingPossum - [[spoiler: Freddy always shows up in person for power outages, and spends nearly a minute (an in-game hour) celebrating with a creepy song.]]

* The trope is parodied in one strip of ''VG Cats'', where Cloud will not even spend one of his inn coupons[[note]]Not only are inn coupons useless for anything else, but even without them, it hardly costs anything to stay at an inn[[/note]] to heal a badly wounded party.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' integrates this and other WesternRPG [[RPGElements Elements]] into the greater ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' series. From the beginning, you have to scrounge around for melee weapons, bows, food, and little animals to make potions with. Since all weapons break easily, you need to continuously find new weapons to replace them, and the sheer amount of food items you can find and make is balanced out by the damage that later enemies do. You even need to manage your "experience" in the form of the Spirit Orbs, as you can cash in four of them for a HeartContainer or a Stamina upgrade, though there is a character who can exchange one for the other.
** Although the game integrates resource management to a much greater level than any previous game in the series, there are no truly limited resources: weapons and monsters respawn periodically with the Blood Moon. However, the Trial of the Sword, available by DLC, plays it completely straight: there are a series of rooms with fixed contents, and no gear or items can be brought in from outside. If the player fails to use the environment to their greatest advantage, the Trial can become unbeatable.

* The main resources to manage in the ''VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis'' series include finances, manpower available for recruitment, and various diplomatic statistics.

[[caption-width-right:244:But what if [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade you're]] bleeding to death moreso later?]]

* A staple in Creator/FrictionalGames' survival horrors, but not without subversions.

** ''VideoGame/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent'' has lantern oil [[CaptainObvious for your lantern]] (similar to Penumbra's batteries for the flashlight), and tinderboxes for lighting candles, lamps, static lanterns and other light sources strewn across the environment. Without light, your SanityMeter drops rapidly. The healing item stand-ins for the previous painkillers are, appropriately enough for the period, vials of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudanum Laudanum]].
** ''VideoGame/{{SOMA}}'' is more of a subversion, due to its even greater focus on exploration and narrative than the earlier titles. While you still need to keep an eye out on replenishing your health regularly and you're frequently searching for clues and solving puzzles, you're not rationing items, [[InfiniteFlashlight always have a light source]], and you have a diegetic-only inventory.

* The later ''VideoGame/BattleTech'' video game requires the player to manage heat in battle, similar to the source material. Generate too much heat in battle without being able to vent it via heat sinks, and your 'Mech will start malfunctioning and either shut down (or, in a worst case scenario, explode catastrophically). This makes ''heat dispersal'' the valuable resource that has to be managed on a per-unit basis. You also need to pay for and ration out your available reserves of medical care and technical support, ensuring you have enough of both to recover and repair damaged units and heal injured warriors in anything less than two months.

* In the ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade'' series, you have to manage the health, morale and income of both your character and his band of companions and adventurers. Availability and variety of food, how well you handle battles or diplomacy with rivals, and how much you regularly pay your companions (the better the soldier, the higher the wage) all factors into troop morale. Additionally, there's also the matter of buying or acquiring better mounts, armour and weaponry throghout the course of the game, as you start alone and [[WithThisHerring with humble equipment]]. Though the vanilla games and most of their mods simply use universal currency for recruitment, payments and rewards, some mods play around with making this more complex. For example, a well-regarded mod about the [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings War of the Ring]] replaced the currency with "resource points", which the player had to earn separately from each of the many factions present in the mod to purchase or recruit within their territory.

* The ''VideoGame/SystemShock'' series offers you a lot of resource management, including food and medical items, ammunition, weapon parts, and most impressively of all, cybernetic implant modules and other software (which you can use to improve your abilities, or for accessing devices and hacking). The initial version of the second game was somewhat infamous for overdoing it with [[BreakableWeapons quickly-weathering firearms]]. Due to all the games' heavily RPG-esque approach and {{cyberpunk}}-based items, they are something of a precussor to the first ''Deus Ex'' game, which built on their ideas.

** The episodically published ''VideoGame/{{Penumbra}}'' series has packets of painkillers as healing items and the battery life of your flashlight (luckily, you can find replacement batteries fairly regularly, if you look around). Your other light source is a glowstick which never runs out, but it's weak for illuminating larger distances. The opening episode, ''Overture'', also has the occassional packet of food supplies, the contents of which you can throw to lure away certain enemies. The sequel, ''Black Plague'', was somewhat criticised for [[TenSecondFlashlight nerfing the battery life]] of the flashlight quite a bit, forcing you to replace batteries more often (though that also adds to the tension and loneliness).

* ''VideoGame/SirYouAreBeingHunted'' makes being tracked by mustachioed, tweed-clad robots that much harder by limiting you to whatever you can scavenge and fit inside your grid. Rifles and shotguns in particular can really mess up your tetris game.

* ''VideoGame/UnrealWorld'' is an open-world roguelike set in a land based on prehistoric, Iron Age Finland. The primary goal is to simply survive throughout the calendar year, and one can go about it in numerous ways. The game is strongly management-focused, with the player regularly needing to eat, drink, rest and sleep, nad avoid overheating, hypothermia or catching diseases. Additionally, every tool and structure needs to be built from gathered resources. Resource gathering itself can often take a while, especially if there's a need for larger quantities of building materials (e.g. for building a log cabin) or rarer, special materials (e.g. quality leather, as a tying/binding implement) and certain crops (both wild and agricultural plants follow seasonal cycles, so you can't just pick them whenever you want). Outside of exploring to find new natural resources for everyday life, the player can also barter with {{NPC}}s from established settlements and existing tribes.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Caesar}}'' series, by the same developers as ''Pharaoh'', has very similar resource-and-distribution management. Due to the ancient Roman setting, this includes building reservoirs and aquaducts for supplying cities with water, and so on.