Video games normally shower you with money. Defeat a few monsters, sell the twelve swords inexplicably concealed inside your trousers, and you can buy an entire town's inventory before lunch. Even games that begin with an empty wallet rarely expect you to remain poor for long.
Some games are considerably less generous. Their shops stock tantalising upgrades while ordinary work pays a pittance, or their currencies must also fund basic survival and character progression. You can usually become wealthy with enough grinding or one particularly devious strategy, but that rather proves the point. Until then, every purchase feels momentous, and buyer's remorse can be genuinely fatal.
The original The Sims is much less interested in fulfilling fantasies than its increasingly permissive sequels. Your first job pays terribly, household essentials cost a fortune, and your new homeowner somehow forgot to buy a toilet before moving in.
Making matters worse, keeping a Sim fed, rested, clean, entertained, and socially functional consumes most of the day. Promotions require both skills and friendships, while bills continue arriving regardless of whether your fragile digital employee has stopped weeping. Buying a better bed feels less like decorating and more like escaping poverty.
Henry begins Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 without the armour, status, or savings expected of an RPG hero. Food, accommodation, repairs, training, and presentable clothing all cost groschen, while respectable early work pays like medieval minimum wage.
The economy becomes easier to manipulate once you master crafting, theft, or the ancient art of removing expensive armour from dead bandits. Before then, even learning a useful combat technique can require serious saving. Nothing reinforces Henry's reduced circumstances quite like considering horse theft because a teacher wants 100 groschen.
Hollow Knight scatters Geo generously enough that individual enemies seem profitable, but Hallownest provides an impressive number of ways to separate you from it. Die once and your savings remain with your Shade; die again before defeating it and they're gone.
That danger matters because mapping the kingdom costs money. Maps, pins, charms, benches, and essential shop purchases steadily drain your funds, especially early on. A difficult journey back to your Shade therefore becomes more than recovering progress. It is a tiny debt-collection mission against your own corpse.
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