Permadeath or permanent death is a game mechanic in both tabletop games and video games in which player characters who lose all of their health are considered dead and cannot be used anymore. Depending on the situation, this could require the player to create a new character to continue, or completely restart the game potentially losing nearly all progress made. Other terms include persona death and player death. Some video games offer a hardcore mode that features this mechanic, rather than making it part of the core game. Permadeath contrasts with games that allow the player to continue in some manner, such as their character respawning at a checkpoint on "death", resurrection of their character by a magic item or spell, or being able to load and restore a saved game state to avoid the death situation. The mechanic is frequently associated with both tabletop and computer-based role-playing games, and is considered an essential element of the roguelike genre of video games. The implementation of permadeath can vary depending on the type of game. In single-player video games Permadeath was common in the golden age of arcade video games. Most arcade games (such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man) feature permanent death as a mechanic by default because they lack the technical ability to save the game state. Early home gaming mimicked this gameplay, including a simulation of entering coins to continue playing. As home computers and game consoles became more popular, games evolved to have less abstract protagonists, giving the death of a character more impact. When developers added the ability to replay a failed level, games become more complex to compensate, and stronger narratives were added, which focused on progressing characters through a linear story without repeated restarts. Inspired by the dungeon crawls in the first wave of Dungeons & Dragons adventures, early role-playing video games on home computers often lacked much narrative content and had a cavalier attitude toward killing off characters; players were expected to have little emotional connection to their characters, though many allowed players to save their characters' progress. Few single-player RPGs exhibit death that is truly permanent, as most allow the player to load a previously saved game and continue from the stored position. The subgenre of roguelike games is an exception, where permadeath is a high-value factor. While players can save their state and continue at a later time, the save file is