
If you kill all 3 party members and take their soul powers, you unlock Ultimate mode. If you recruit all 3 party members, you unlock Nightmare mode. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon: Only Normal difficulty is available from the start, but you unlock the other two depending on how you played the game.BioShock Infinite: In order to play in the much harder 1999 mode, you must either beat the game in regular mode or enter the Konami Code.Bayonetta and its sequel have the Hard and Infinite Climax difficulties locked behind beating the entire game on Normal and Hard, respectively.Some of them have to be unlocked by clearing other game modes. Backpack Hero: There are various game modes that change the difficulty of the game by modifying your HP or the enemies', changing which items can be found in dungeons, or immediately taking you to the Boss Room.An Untitled Story: Completing the game on "masterful" difficulty unlocks the "insane" difficulty, which is like masterful but you are a One-Hit-Point Wonder.The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures: Completing the game on "Old School" difficulty unlocks "Hard as Balls", completing that unlocks " Fucking Impossible", and completing that unlocks " YOLO".Ace Combat: In older titles, unlocking the ultimate Ace difficulty mode usually requires you to finish the campaign at least once on Normal or Hard.

As these Darkness Levels are the main form of progression, the line between difficulty levels and actual video game levels is blurred. 20 Minutes Till Dawn has a whopping 16 difficulty levels, with each one requiring you to survive 20 minutes on the previous level to unlock.

Compare New Game Plus, in which a subsequent playthrough carries over content earned the first time around the game may be made more difficult to compensate. Related to Earn Your Fun, when more skilled gamers find the default difficulty levels too easy for their tastes. As mentioned, may lead to Fake Longevity, especially if Hard Mode Perks are involved. Mercy Mode is a subtrope where an easier than normal mode is unlocked when you do poorly. There are multiple possible reasons for this: it could be meant as a bonus for players that prove they're hardcore enough to beat the vanilla hard mode, it encourages players trying out the vanilla hard mode before letting them jump right into the Harder Than Hard mode, and/or helps pad out game time by encouraging multiple playthroughs. This gating of content is frequently reserved for the Harder Than Hard difficulty. Occasionally you need to earn the right to play them, which typically requires beating the game at least once. Some video games with Difficulty Levels don't just hand over the keys to everything immediately.
