How to Fix Permadeath Not Deleting the Active Run Save

Permadeath means dead is dead. If players reload to escape death, the run save is still on disk. Deleting it the moment the player dies closes the loophole.

How to fix it

1. Delete the run save on death

In the death handler, remove the run save file (after banking meta currency) so there is nothing to reload, then present the death screen.

2. Delete before the death UI

Perform the deletion before any UI the player could exit from, so quitting at the death screen still leaves no resumable save.

3. Keep the profile untouched

Only the volatile run save is deleted; the persistent profile with unlocks and currency stays, since permadeath ends the run, not the account.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Godot error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.