Housemarque has acknowledged the feedback by fans regarding Returnal lacking a proper save method but they have nothing to announce at the moment.
Returnal is a rogue-lite third-person shooter which doesn’t let the player save for hours at times. This is due to the game’s design which prompts the players to explore various biomes while defeating bosses at the end of each of them. Sometimes, this can take hours so the player has no immediate resting point if they are in the middle of clearing a biome.
This has led to a lot of backlash among the community because of the lack of time and the commitment required to make progress in the game. To top it, the game is quite difficult so the additional difficulty curve means it is easy to lose progress after dying.
Rogue-lite generally doesn’t allow to save in the middle of a run because it kind of defeats the purpose of the game design, although this has been intensified somewhat with Returnal, mostly due to how long each run can take for the player. It wasn’t the case for games like Dead Cells.
While the game has received favorable critic reviews and carries a great average score especially for a new IP, reviews did point towards the saving system that is coupled with the additional difficulty curve thus making it hard to make progress in the game.
Returnal is available now exclusively for the PS5 and has been patched with a day one update. The game was developed by Housemarque and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It utilizes all of the hardware features offered by the PS5 including Adaptive Triggers and Haptic Feedback.
