There's been talk of games where you naturally regenerate health (roguelikes and apparently modern FPSes, for example), but what about games where the reverse happens?

Basically, as you play through the game, your health would gradually decrease, and unless you finish the level or find healing items, you will eventually run out of health and die, no matter how good you are at avoiding the enemies.

I am aware of a few games that actually have such a mechanic:
Gauntlet (NES) (unlike the other games I list, there's a maximum health that can be increased)
Gauntlet 2 (NES)
Jack Bros. (Virtual Boy)

So, what do you think of this sort of mechanic? Do you think it's a good mechanic or a bad one? Can you think of any other games with this sort of mechanic?

(Game idea: Roguelike where your health decreases over time, but there's no hunger mechanic.)

FarCry 2.

You have malaria. If you don't keep pills on hand and regularly take them...you die.

I don't recall any that do this for the entire game, but some certainly have environmental areas that damage you no matter what you do and you are thus given little time to accomplish whatever it is you need to do. Not a fan. Thank goodness for mods.

I got one for ya, and one of my favs from the PS2....Shinobi (2002):

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinobi_(2002_video_game)#Gameplay]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinobi_(2002_video_game)#Gameplay[/url]

"Hotsuma's sword, Akujiki, is his primary weapon. Akujiki feeds on souls, initially devouring those of the enemies he kills, then that of Hotsuma himself if he does not kill any enemies for too long. This leads to an emphasis on killing all enemies in a battle as quickly as possible."

Amazing game that combined modern design with classic gameplay by the way.

Is that actually true? I keep hearing that you have to keep stocking up on pills, but every time I've played it, I swear they're infinite once you complete the mission to get them.

One of the unlockable perks (in this case, starting modifiers you choose from before starting a run) in Caveblazers is a vampire perk where your health decreases by a small amount every several seconds, you regain health by killing enemies, and the higher your current health is, the more damage you deal. (There might be one or two other small details as well, but those are the principal effects.)

Galerians, a ps1 survival horror where you play a psychic teenager.

Overtime you have to find medicine to ease your headaches because when it got too low you kinda exploded and after that you become very weak

I don't like the game, but my friend was impressed by it

I remember Elements for MS DOS
Very rare game, I've got the full version of it from a spanish videogame magazine called "ok pc gamer" back in 1998. The magazine was from 1997 but came a few months later to Argentina. In that edition the magazine also give us a copy of Monster Bash.

Elements it's a puzzle videogame where you lose energy on each movement.

I have played Far Cry 2. The malaria is kinda annoying but it didn't kill me at all.

Really? I didn't see it like that at all. All it meant that when you got the "malaria attack", you just needed to push one key to take a malaria pill, and it went away.

The only times you had to replenish your malaria pills supply... were there like one or two extra missions during the whole game which you had to finish in order to replenish your malaria pill supply (for the rest of the game)?

So at least to me it didn't seem a similar mechanic like Gauntlet games etc., you weren't constantly hunting for more malaria pills, or die. In fact, I don't recall ever dying for malaria in Far Cry 2, I am not sure if I even knew you could die of it.

That said, that malaria pill mechanic was a bit... odd, ie. I am unsure why exactly it was in the game. It didn't really add anything meaningful to the game. But, I still didn't mind it much, I just needed to remember to press one button if the screen started turning yellow, and then take those one or two extra "malaria missions" when they popped up.

If you could die of malaria in the game, then I presume that it was either because you just refused to take the malaria pill (now why would you do that?), or you didn't try to finish the malaria pill mission(s) (again, why not?). It is not like there wasn't plenty of time to do either, you weren't really running against the clock or anything. Maybe the most "annoying" thing about malaria was if the malaria attack came during combat, so you had to stop shooting and find cover to take a pill.

EDIT: Ok, Hoang Marcel also commented on this.

Dead Rising has a bonus mode that works like this- I think it's called 7 Day Survivor or something like that. There's no plot, you just have to survive for seven in-game 'days', and your health ticks down to ensure you can't just hole up in a safe corner, you need to keep on the move to constantly find new healing items (which, of course, brings you into contact with the zombies who will try and make your health fall even faster).

Several Vampire games have this with the draining blood-pool, which you have to replenish from time to time.

They are. Two or three times during the game you are given special missions where you need to get more but after that you always have them.

As others have mentioned, it's really a minor thing and little more than a gimmick that doesn't effect much.

I'm beginning to wonder why I mentioned it. :P

- Nightmare Creatures

Man I HATED that mechanic, game was great but quite hard already and this "always dying" made it quite unplayable on later stages... :(

It's basically a timer, and a timer is basically this. So I'm not too fond of it. It pushes you to action, I don't like to be pushed to action. It can take the form of hunger, thirst, oxygen and such parameters in various sorts of survival games. Main exemples coming to mind are big-fish-eating-smaller-fish games. Such as this Jaws game on ipad, which forced you to eat fish and people (at the risk of depopulating your aera) fast enough to compensate for the regression of a health/fed bar. But this gameplay is not uncommon.

It was also the case for your vampire in Fright Night on the Amiga.