Returnal received an update last month that allowed you to save progress. However, players have already found a way to exploit the mechanic.
When Housemarque’s Returnal was released earlier this year, it soon became one of the PlayStation 5’s favourite exclusives. Returnal is a challenging, Soulsborne-inspired roguelike third-person shooter.
In Returnal, players visit a hostile, yet eerily beautiful alien world. Without giving too much away, every time the player dies, everything is reset. Your progress is reset, all pick-ups and even the procedurally generated world. It’s a fantastic gameplay mechanic that keeps Returnal feeling fresh and pushes the player to fight on.
Not everything is lost
However, Returnal also featured no save function. This is a favourable gameplay feature for some, but it’s not popular with everyone. A player’s run could last hours in Returnal and if you had to go outside for real-life activities, it meant that all your hard work could be wiped when the console is turned off.

There was a workaround at the time, and that was to leave your PS5 in sleep mode. Unfortunately, this wasn’t always ideal either. For one, you could come back to your console and totally forget that Returnal is in stasis and load up another game by accident. You could even have a power cut with both scenarios resulting in all your hard work being lost.
Thankfully last month, Housemarque released an update that would not only add some form of save function but would also uphold the integrity of Returnal’s gameplay design. The new Suspend Cycle function would allow you to pause Returnal and return later to continue where you left off.
Return to your desired savepoint
Even if you switched off your PS5, the Suspend Cycle would create a single-use suspend point and when you continue playing, that suspend point would be erased ready for the next one. However, players have now found a way to take advantage of the Suspend Cycle to make the save function even more favourable.
Twitter users have shared ways to be able to restart from your desired save point each time you die. Apparently how this works is that when you suspend your save in-game, you then upload that save to the PlayStation cloud. Then when you die, download the save from the cloud and you’ll restart at your desired suspension point.
I’m not sure if I would use this exploit myself, but I can see why Returnal players might find it appealing. That said, it will be interesting to see if Housemarque releases a new patch to counter this exploit.
Will you be using this save exploit in Returnal? Let us know across our social media channels. Returnal is available now for PlayStation 5.
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Featured Image Credit: Sony/Housemarque