Deep in the warlock's dungeon, your band of adventurers trudge onward, harried but still in relatively good spirits. A perilous quest it has been so far, fraught with danger, but they have always come out on top. Before them now lies a strange gate, barred with mystic runes bearing a warning: "Do not enter, ye of little courage," it forebodes. With a shrug, you head bravely through, remembering to hit the quicksave button before doing so, knowing that regardless of whether you will triumph over whatever may lie beyond or not, you can always load the game back up and try again.

Does this sound familiar to you? I'm sure we've all been there, frantically hitting the "Save Game" button fearing that whatever's behind that next corner could just be what is going to do us in. More importantly, does this bother you? Because it kind of bothers me.

In many ways, easy ways to save your progress is a good thing. It allows the player to choose for himself when he wants to play, as opposed to having gameplay sessions be forcibly lengthened because there is no way to save, or too far to that next save spot. It's almost indispensable for handheld games; I'd consider a handheld game that does not offer a "Quicksave and suspend" option almost broken by design. When I'm on the move, on the bus or waiting for a lecture to start, I don't have the leisure of being able to play for those extra minutes required to get to a point where I can save.

At the same time, easy saving has a devastating drawback: it takes away almost all sense of danger from a game. Any challenge can be defeated by simply invoking the spell Quickus Loadus enough times and trying again until you get it just right. There is no need to plan ahead or weigh the risks of going into uncharted and possibly dangerous territory when you can just save and go inside, and if that room should happen to be full of Decapitating Underslugs, well, nothing of value has been lost; simply reload the game and try again, or try some other door. Singleplayer first-person shooters are especially bad at this. I don't know a single one that doesn't offer a quicksave option.

I feel that this seriously harms the feeling of suspense in a game. No matter that the game is spooky and disturbing and you're supposed to feel afraid; when second chances are dime a dozen, there's no need to be careful, no impending sense of danger—because there is no danger! Bioshock was especially bad this way, not only offering quicksave options, but also near-ubiquitous Vita-Chambers that instantly restore you to life should you fall in combat. I can't say I ever felt the suspense I was probably supposed to feel (although they did try by severely limiting your supply of weaponry).

I've been playing a freeware game called La-Mulana lately—it's a great game, start downloading it while you read the rest of this. You play as Indiana Jones-esque explorer Lemeza Kosugi, who explores the ancient ruins of La-Mulana seeking to upstage his father, Shorn. This game is harsh. Deathtraps are everywhere. Walls will kill you if you hit them willy-nilly without thinking first. The puzzles that litter the ruins are obscure and confusing and require a great deal of exploration and thinking before they can be solved. Most importantly, there is no way for Lemeza to refill his health meter, and the only place you can save your game is all the way back in town, outside the ruins. What this means is that you're constantly on edge, trying to conserve your health, knowing your last save was a good 20 minutes ago and dying now would cost you valuable progress. At least, that's the idea.

Sadly, La-Mulana, as difficult as it is, loses its edge after a while. Once you acquire the Grail item, which lets you teleport between key points in the game, you can pretty much save whenever you want anyway, at least if you have found the grail monument needed to get back into the ruins again. But at least it tries, and does quite admirably in spite of this. After a while, you realize you can't go around whipping everything you come across hoping it will yield something good, because that will get you killed, and you really don't want to get killed.

The point is that the developers of La-Mulana understood this problem. There's no reason for you to stop and think twice about leaping into a dark pit when you can just quickload your way back up again. Taking away the ability to do so forces the player to think twice, to constantly be on edge and care about his limited stocks of health and items.

So why is this bad anyway? Some would say it's a good thing, because it empowers the player to play the game the way she wants to play it. I can't argue with that. It's certainly true that players should be left to enjoy games in whatever fashion pleases them the most. At the same time, I feel as if some important and exciting part of game design space is being closed off from me, because I can't put mysterious, menacing situations in a game, knowing that the quicksave function will negate all the impact it's supposed to have. Sure, one could say that players who want that kind of thing could just stay away from the quicksave function, but I can't with a straight face say that my game features "Moments of suspense, daring and deathly menace" when it also contains a mechanism for completely negating all those things at arm's length.