History Main / SaveScumming

* The ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} II'' manual actually ''recommends'' save scumming before entering the villages that provide random bonuses (and sometimes unleash barbarian hordes).

-->'''Vivec:''' ''"When I die in the world of time, then I'm completely asleep. I'm very much aware that all I have to do is choose to wake. And I'm alive again. Many times I have very deliberately tried to wait patiently, a very long, long time before choosing to wake up. And no matter how long it feels like I wait, it always appears, when I wake up, that no time has passed at all."''

Old, old method of playing games. Basically, you save the game whenever you get a result you like (or before you face a risk), and restore the saved game whenever you get a result you ''don't'' like. It could be because the game demands TrialAndErrorGameplay, or perhaps you have a limited number of tries to get the RandomNumberGod to get a favorable result. Or maybe you just suck, but you don't call this cheating (it's kind of YMMV). Although sometimes, it might be the only way to even win a LuckBasedMission, no matter how good you are, or it could be the only way to get a very rare item. And woe betide you if you save the game after a seemingly minor error that ends up making the game {{Unwinnable}}, or makes you miss some PermanentlyMissableContent. Seasoned savescummers will make multiple saves throughout the game so they can go back to the part that they messed up on. Hardcore savescummers will go as far as committing their savegame files to a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control Version Control System]] that allows the user to create a sophisticated tree of rollbacks and what-ifs.

* In ''Literature/{{You}}'', Simon designed the WAFFLE game engine to make this impossible. The game saves automatically when you quit, and you can't load up a previous save in-game. The idea was to make player choice more meaningful, but it was a divisive feature that apparently turned off a lot of would-be consumers.

* ''VideoGame/SplinterCellDoubleAgent'' for UsefulNotes/{{Wii}}, UsefulNotes/GameCube, and UsefulNotes/{{Playstation 2}} actually encourages it. Not only can you restart the mission whenever you like, making it impossible to save yourself into a no-win situation, but if you keep save reminders on they will remind you to save all the frigging time. Presumably, as the game suffers some bugs such as a framerate issue, guards sometimes managing to spot you ''through walls'', and their habit of abruptly turning around for no reason while you're sneaking up on them, the devs wanted you to know it was an option in the face of FakeDifficulty.

[[folder: Survival Horror]]

* In ''VideoGame/UnleashTheLight'', your progress is saved after you clear a stage, but resetting it won't respawn different enemies, consumable items obtained from treasure chests, or the layout in RandomlyGeneratedLevels. However, in Rose's Room, the abilities, upgrades, badges, and recruitable party members can be rerolled.

* In ''VideoGame/NoUmbrellasAllowed'', most of the customers and the items they sell are randomized whenever you restart a day, but some of them are scripted. If you make a mistake in these transactions, you can restart the day to try correcting them.

* ''{{Anime/Hamtaro}}: Ham-Ham Games'', like the other ''Hamtaro'' licensed games, has no manual save function and autosaves when moving between from one area to another. In case you still try Save Scumming your way to victory by restarting in the middle of an event, the game starts up immediately ''after'' the event and [[DevelopersForesight declares you the loser,]] [[NoFairCheating regardless of how you were actually doing in the event itself.]]