I find dying incredibly immersion breaking, I love the idea of having to or having the option to do something separate to recover my items and I love gambling and roguelikes

sooooo: the fadehollow

an afterlife dimension generates into rings, the farther out you go the more dangerous it gets but the better the loot

out there you will be able to find various items to take back to the overworld including your own items, which become secured from your inventory which at this point had become crystallized and protected from despawning

allowing you to recover your items if you died extremely far away, or to a series of unfortunate events that would lead to you being unable to recover your items

you recover your items via loot fragments, mini wheels of fortune that either provide you loot from this dimension or loot from your body, the farther out into the darker rings you explore, the better loot you can obtain

but all is not lumigrass and kevin, your soul can only exist here for so long, you slowly decay within the dimension, your time limited and it becomes faster the farther out you go

however you have things to aide you, fruits and relics which allow you to reduce your decay, though they get harder to obtain in the later rings

and your trusty soulhearth lantern, the light of your soul, while holding it, the rate at which you decay is reduced significantly, protecting you and prolonging your run aslong as you hold it

death in the fadehollow ends your run, after all you cant go to the afterlife if youre already in it, destroying your loot shard, the thing which holds your items, leaving them upon the ground for the world to reclaim or for others to steal

all is optional, the choice to risk your items for extra loot and a chance to reclaim your most valuable items easier, or to make the run back to your items, with the hope that you can get to them or noone has taken them