(This topic assumes that the games in question have some death or game over mechanic. If you get a game over screen, or if you fail a mission, that would count as a death. I would also count a softlock (when a game becomes unwinnable) as a death.)

Generally, when one thinks about difficult games, one thinks of games where the player is expected to die a lot. However, I have found that this isn't always the case, and sometimes death rate and difficulty do not correlate.

For example:
* La Mulana has a secret dungeon that has a reputation for being incredibly difficult. However, you are unlikely to die there, as enemies do little damage and give a lot of EXP (which, when you get enough, gives you a full heal). We can compare this to La Mulana 2's final area, which is not as difficult, but where dying is a realistic possibility.
* Final Fantasy Mystic Quest has a reputation for being an RPG for beginners. However, while the game is easy, it is actually likely that you will get a few game overs during the course of the game, particularly later on. Just a bit of bad luck and your party will be wiped out. (Rather humorously, it is not that unlikely that you will die to the first enemy in the game; it happened to me in the first playthrough, and if you watch a speedrun race of the game, chances are at least one player will lose to that enemy.) It definitely helps that you can just retry a battle that you lose; if the game had permadeath, or even if it only allowed saving on the world map, I think people wouldn't consider the game to be that easy.

So, any thoughs on this? Any other games that have weird characteristics in terms of difficulty versus death chance?

Amusingly, I genuinely didn't expect it to be videogame-related.

Also, uh. Most (post-sierra) adventure games ?

Also, there is "dying" and "dying". Sands of Time's prince never "dies" (just gets the story wrong). And the 2008 Prince of Persia... beh...

My current favorite puzzle game, Recursed, had no death. It looks a bit like a platformer game. But you are actually hoping around the screen jumping in and out of chests that create new rooms and caring chests into other chests to solve the puzzle of how to get the key to get out.

It is broken into levels, and the higher levels are very difficult. You can get lost. You can get stuck. You can room the level and have to start over, but there is an in-game mechanic for that - you don't have to reload.

But you can never die

I think I would distinguish between "difficult" and "frustrating". Dying a lot doesn't necessarily mean the game is frustrating. Actually it doesn't even have to mean it's very challenging or difficult either (e.g. if the deaths are unpredictable at first and you just need to learn when and where to avoid them, after which the game becomes easy - although that type of gameplay might be perceived as tedious and frustrating again).

For example, VVVVVV and Hotline Miami are games in which you die a lot. But since the levels or the distances to the next checkpoint are short and you immediately get back into the game after dying, I didn't find the experience frustrating at all. At times these games could be challenging, but they were not difficult just because you die a lot. That wasn't a problem with these.

In other games though, death can be very frustrating, e.g. if it means you lose a lot of progress or loot, or if you have to repeat a lot of stuff that you've already mastered before, in order to get to the point where you failed, or if you have to endure longer pauses before you can try again (like unskippable game over screens, long reloading times or repeated cutscenes). These games are not necessarily difficult either, they are just very punishing, sometimes by design, sometimes for lack of polish and user friendliness.

"Difficult" to me means if something is hard to master, it can be combined with dying a lot and being punished harshly for failure, but that's not what makes it difficult, that only makes it (potentially) more frustrating. It can be "difficult" though to keep your cool and be patient with such games instead of giving in to the impulse to rage quit. ;)