Saving Game

[bigmarky]

Is there an easy way to save the game vs having to kneel to some statue?

That's a game breaker for me, so hoping there is an alternative way

[James]

Sorry, I'm afraid there is no autosaving, only save points.

[CraigMcArthur]

Sorry, I'm afraid there is no autosaving, only save points.

Have you considered having a "save state" for a quick temporary exit? I'd quite like to be able to sit down for 15-20 mins to play, but generally can't because I can't guarantee a save-point etc..

[ThaHandle]

The save points are classic plus it provides a bit more difficulty, haven’t you ever played an older game before? Only the gods can “save” your life not some fake autosave

[James]

My goal was for the save points to be about 15-20 minutes apart to be able to be played in chunks like that, but I think sometimes you can end up a little lost and it seems longer. Knowing where it felt like you'd gone that far but hadn't reached one would help fine tune I think.

[CraigMcArthur]

The save points are classic plus it provides a bit more difficulty, haven’t you ever played an older game before? Only the gods can “save” your life not some fake autosave

I'm not suggesting auto-save. I'd dislike that. It'd be categorically un-Metroidvania-esque.

I'm suggesting "hibernation". You pause the game, quit, and when you resume; you pick up where you left off. If you die after that, you'd go back to your last save-point. A perfect example of this is Dark Souls. You can at almost any point. The only benefit is being able to walk away at a moment's notice. It's not a save-point. It's a save-state or hibernation.

My goal was for the save points to be about 15-20 minutes apart to be able to be played in chunks like that, but I think sometimes you can end up a little lost and it seems longer. Knowing where it felt like you'd gone that far but hadn't reached one would help fine tune I think.

I'm confident all save rooms or a warp-rooms are no more than 15-20 minutes away once you've uncovered the map and familiar with the game. I know I can be dropped in any part of Castlevania:SOTN and speed-run to a save room within 5-10 minutes.

As a first-time player, even though I reveal the map methodically, it's still easy to end up on a map-branch where you didn't uncover the local save room. You could have only been 2 rooms away from it, but because you went 'left' instead of 'right', you end up discovering it when you go down that other branch.

I'm talking specifically about instances where, for example, my other half brings in our dinner and I need to quit the game at a moment's notice to put Netflix App on the PS4, for example. If I say "hold up for 15-20 minutes while I find a save point" I'd get a potato thrown at me for not putting Friends on straight away!

Sure, they've told me "dinner soon, get Friends on" but naturally I ignored that because I didn't want to put the controller down and be bored for 10 mins

Castlevania on Nintendo DS introduced it specifically to address battery availability. You might be further than battery health from going 15 minutes to a save room. I don't have a Vita, I don't know if it does a memory dump to hibernate itself, but it would be a really nice feature across all platforms.

[James]

If I'm not mistaken the DS handles it on the hardware side as a system hibernation, so your data in memory isn't wiped. I'm not sure how we could offer that feature on the software side. I will give it some thought though.

[Darxim]

The DS did have a hibernation mode if you closed them without powering them off, but the Castlevania games on it offered something a bit different. It was a one-use quicksave, so you could turn your system off or even play another game for a while, but still come back exactly where you were. Once the save is loaded, the save file is deleted. You could save again later, but again, if you reloaded that save, it was deleted. Also, there's only one save slot for it, so if you save again without having loaded the last one, the last one is overwritten. That's what Craig's talking about.

[James]

Ah OK, I kind of remember that now. It's been a while since I've played a DS haha. That sounds cool though, definitely not outside the realm of possibility

[Lailoken]

I imagine though it wouldn't be a small amount of work to save the state of the game if not already set up for that