Designing the System

I was thinking about how useful it would be to have a "save button" in real life. The idea is that you can set a point in time which you can go back to at any point afterwards, basically just as you would in a video game. One difficulty in constructing this system is determining how much memory is retained between the alternate timelines you create. You'll have to be able to remember something, to avoid getting into infinite loops, but maybe that can be limited to an abstract bigger picture view of the timeline. Due to the butterfly effect, and the sanctity of RNG, world events would probably naturally differ between the timelines, and after a few days, one save would be different enough from the last your old memories become irrelevant.

I also have to determine how many save slots you get. One idea is to only have one save slot. The benefit of this is it forces you to keep moving through life, saving every now and again, without making major leaps to the past. On the other hand, one might choose to save at some very early point in time, live life for some number of years, make a "mistake", and go back on a whim, not moving forward at all. To solve that problem, the saves could be single-use, and there could be a minimum time between saves. These restrictions seem like good ideas even using a system with multiple, or infinite save slots, because they'd force you to think about your saving spree, grounding you.

There are a few other problems which might arise. For example, it probably wouldn't be possible to load your "save file" if you die, unless it's an automatic response. And if it's an automatic response, that could cause an infinite time loop unless the save is deleted and there's no save left when you die. Thinking about it, being able to die and come back to life in any capacity takes the immersion out of many games, never mind life! A slight bit of the realism or fun may be lost after the first death, but at the same time, I'd much rather play games as they are than with permadeath built-in. Losing my 63 hour Persona 4 save file would feel awful enough, which makes me fearful of actually dying...

Using the System

Even just one save slot, which can only be loaded a small number of times, would make life a lot more interesting. I'd make saves at the big decision points in life. I would love to try out specialising in different subjects like Geography, English, or Music, leading onto career paths I've already rejected in my real life, although perhaps my core nature would make this approach impossible. I could also do daft things like run away from home, throw the 11+ exam to get into a worse secondary school, or most importantly, explore the world in ways I couldn't possibly do in my present life. Even if I lived a perfect life, I'd still be greatly restricted in where I can go. My world map appears limited to a few major financial hubs and commuter destinations. If I had to choose just a few cities to spend my life in, it'd look like "Cambridge, London, New York, Singapore, etc" anyway, but having a save button and being able to dedicate decades to exploring god knows where would be so much fun.

Alternatively, depending on the restrictions set, I could go all in on the "Life is Persona" shtick and try to min-max everything. It would be very helpful to be able to go back a day if you do something cringe, have a bad social interaction, or waste a day without improving yourself. If there were no restriction on constantly saving and loading, I think I'd quickly go mad, possibly trying to become an unattainable ideal person. Maybe I'd instead go into a hedonistic spiral and wither away by spiritual decay.

Perhaps there's a balance, where I can focus on living just one life, but without repeating each day a hundred times. I'd probably become a much "better" person than I could otherwise. Still, with my restrictions, I think I'd prefer living multiple different lives, like in my first approach, due to the regret I'd feel otherwise if I had this magical save button on me.