I lived. I died. I lived again. (Sort of): Cloning in Lifeship

I'm going to start this off with an embarrassing admission. My initial concept for Lifeship included permadeath after dying once on a mission. ONCE. I wanted there to be stakes. I wanted the missions to feel IMPORTANT. Thankfully, my lovely partner stepped in and knocked some sense into me. People do not want to invest heavily in a character just to have them die. She was absolutely correct. However, this left me with a difficult question. "How can I implement stakes if people can't die?" Gloomhaven handles this by removing you from the mission -exhausted-. Video games usually have you restart from a save point or in some cases, build dying INTO the core loop (See any Souls game). Back in the far distant past, games like Super Mario Bros gave you a number of lives and once those were gone, you started over. There are pros and cons to all of these options, but I ended up basing my decision on what I thought would be funny.

In Lifeship, members of the Super Team are chosen NOT because they are the most qualified to help, but because their junk DNA allows them to be cloned. So what happens when you die on a mission? A couple of things. First, the rest of your Super Team laughs at you. (At least this is what happens with the dev team) Second, your body becomes a piece of unique heavy salvage. Any Super Team member can recover your body and bring it back to the ship for 2 CK. (It is a weird incentive to watch you die sometimes.) If they do bring your body back, you get to keep all of your equipment and salvage. If not, it is lost. Third, you wake up in the clone bay with a new, fun, mutation. Mutations function exactly like equipment and usually provide some new ability to your character. The first time my Soldier died on a mission, they gained the Minor Mutation 'Reflective Skin'. Reflective Skin has an initiative of '01' (Super fast) and the ability 'Protect' (Enemies will target you instead of any adjacent ally.) This was actually a HUGE benefit for my character and helped push me into a much tankier build. Of course, not every mutation is going to work perfectly with your build, but they are all beneficial in some way/cases.

Each Character has 3 trips to the clone bay before the process no longer works. Each trip, the mutations become more severe and also, more powerful. If a character dies a fourth time, they do permanently die. But even this is an accomplishment and characters who die permanently are granted similar benefits as those who fully achieve the character's objectives.

Weird as it sounds, I really enjoy dying in the game. It is usually funny, it adds stories, and the mutations are genuinely fun to play with. The Clone Bay provides incentives for players to overextend themselves in the pursuit of better loot, better outcomes, and better characters. I love where Lifeship is at now, and I am excited for you to discover death in the game as well.