Corpse run
On death, the player drops accumulated resources at the death site and must return — often through the danger that killed them — to reclaim them, or lose them permanently. The corpse run (Souls' souls, Minecraft's dropped items) makes death sting without ending the game: progress isn't erased, it's put at risk, creating a tense recovery loop where a second death compounds the loss. Designers use it to give death real weight in games without permadeath, to generate white-knuckle 'get in and get out' moments, and to make careless play costly. Key decisions: what's dropped (currency, all items, or nothing gear-related), retrieval window or decay timer, whether the corpse persists through multiple deaths (Souls deletes the previous pool — a brutal double-loss), and accessibility of the recovery route. Pitfall: corpse runs through long, tedious traversal punish the player's time rather than their skill — the danger should be the fight, not the walk back.
- Dev effort: Small
- Timing: Real-time or turn-based
- Common in: soulslike, survival