Muck – Can You Save

Muck is a free survival roguelite that follows one of the main roguelike features, permanent death. This can be a little frustrating when you’re playing a game for hours on end and don’t have a safe way to run away for a moment. Whether that’s grabbing something to drink or going to the bathroom. One of the reasons this mechanic worked well for roguelikes is because they’re turn-based.

However, in the case of Muck, a survival game, it’s in real-time. This means you can’t take a break even just for a few minutes without risk of dying. The only safe window you really have is if you’re playing with others and they can survive without you temporarily. This brings us to a common question many people have, can you save or even pause Muck?

Can You Save in Muck

This is the last thing you want to see on your screen after running away for a break.

Update (6/14/2021): While you still can’t save in Muck, the developer added a pause feature for those playing alone in single-player. Simply pressing escape will pause your game and prevent time from moving. You won’t have to worry about enemies attacking you either.

Original Article:

Unfortunately, the answer is no, you cannot save the game right now. It’s unknown whether or not this feature will be added at a later time. In my opinion, developer Dani should add a save mechanic where players can save and quit. This is a popular choice for roguelike/lite games where you can only save when quitting. This prevents people from save-scumming and loading before they died.

One of the likely reasons roguelikes have permanent death without saving is so you don’t finish the game too quickly. If you can constantly revert to a save before you lost, you have a much better chance of seeing through the content. However, the biggest appeal and challenge of roguelikes has always been that you don’t have any progression between deaths. This is where roguelite games have filled the genre to help those that want a challenging experience with progression.

A popular example of a roguelite with meta progression is Rogue Legacy where you can buy upgrades along the way. This is one of many in our Best Roguelikes & Roguelites list. While I don’t think Muck should go to that extreme of having permanent upgrades, a save and quit feature would be huge. This is already a common question on the Steam Discussions where people ask how to save in Muck.

Even if it’s only a feature locked to single-player or the host of a multiplayer server. With that said, I don’t know the challenges of setting this up from a developer perspective. But it’d certainly be a major quality of life change.

A Neat Trick For Avoiding Enemies

One useful trick some people have taken advantage of while playing Muck is to build a base way high up in the sky to avoid enemies. As long as you’re not directly above where the base begins at the ground, you may be safe. However, enemies can still destroy the stairs leading up to your sky base. If this happens, you’ll drop to the ground and, unfortunately, be in danger again. This is one potential trick for being safe temporarily.

If you’d like to see more Muck guides here at Slyther Games, we’ve put together a few common questions being asked around the community. You can either visit our Muck Beginner Guide or take a look at the guides below. And if you have a different question for us, feel free to comment below the article.

• How to Respawn
• How to Use Creative Mode
• How to Make a Shield

Jeffrey Lerman

Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.