8 Ways You Can Accidentally Break Popular Video Games
2. The Vanishing Key - Deadly Premonition
For people who like to fully complete every part of a game as they go, backtracking is a common practice. Maybe you need a certain item from a later stage in order to collect everything in a previous one, and in most games, it's pretty easy to return to a previous level at any time you choose, without messing your save file up.
But then... there's Deadly Premonition. At one point during Chapter 9 of the underrated survival-horror, you're required to talk to Olivia in order to gather some key information, but, not wanting to chat in broad daylight, she gives you a key to the back yard of the diner and asks you to come after hours.
Normally, you'll get the key, open the door, and continue the game. But if you choose to backtrack to an earlier chapter before progressing in this manner - and you complete said chapter - the game will overwrite your inventory and you'll lose the key.
Without the key, you can't open the door, and without opening the door, you can't continue the plot and finish the game. The only option is to start over, which is especially frustrating because it means you're being punished for doing something as simple as replaying a previous level. Not cool.