New Game Plus

New Game Plus is a mode unlocked at a game's ending that restarts its narrative and level content from the beginning while letting the player keep some or all of what they earned the first time — levels, equipment, abilities, sometimes even foreknowledge the game explicitly writes new dialogue around. Chrono Trigger used it to let a second playthrough branch toward endings the first couldn't reach at all, treating the replay less as a bonus lap and more as the intended second half of the experience.

The mode quietly reframes what the first playthrough was. A game built with NG+ in mind can afford a first pass that's cautious about difficulty and exposition, because it knows the "real" experience — harder enemies, a player who already knows the map, dialogue that lands differently with hindsight — is scheduled for the second pass. That's a different design bet than a game with no NG+ at all, which has exactly one chance to calibrate difficulty for the whole possible audience.

This is worth separating from Meta-Progression, the broader category NG+ belongs to. Meta-progression describes any persistence across attempts — a roguelike's unlocked starting items, a Metroidvania's collected lore, a live-service game's account level — and it usually accrues across many short runs. NG+ is a specific, single-cycle instance of that idea bound to one complete narrative replay, most common in RPGs and action games with a definite ending to return to.

The mode also interacts directly with Multiple Endings: a game that gates its best or truest ending behind conditions only visible after a first completion is effectively requiring an NG+ pass to see its own final act, which raises the fair question of whether that ending is optional content or the actual intended conclusion wearing a permission gate.