The most common way this comes up is in “survival” games. You browse the environment for health and ammo, and then burn it all up facing massive hordes of zombies (or, ARC, or whatever monster of the day is). I’ve also seen it in other types of games, like in the newer Zeldas where you get dozens of types of weapons, none of which can be repaired.
Something I love about these patterns is that they get you to adapt and shift your playstyle naturally. You aren’t granted transforming ammo that fits whatever weapon you hold - you must use what’s available, even if every option from grenades to flamethrowers ends up being fun.
They provide the fun of looting, as well as a method to expend that loot in a way that maintains the cycle. Nothing irritates me more than the red “inventory full” message, so I make an effort to expend my resources quickly, and a lot of these games reward the player in turn for it.
So, this tends to fit a lot of major/mainstream singleplayer story-based games like Resident Evil, as well as traditional shooters like Half-Life in which all your weapons maintain an ammo count. I’m curious what other unexpected games come up that satisfy this itch, even providing creative ways to encourage “dumping resources” in a rapid way, just to give you empty slots to fill up again.
Noita has some of this nature. Your “weapon” for the game is whatever you can find and cobble together, some expendable resources and some just permanent abilities or upgrades. You might do one run with a wand that shoots a limited number of nice powerful balanced spells, or you might find a way to abuse the system and get an unlimited firehose weapon of such unimaginable power that it throws you around the screen like Sonic the Hedgehog whenever you hold down the trigger, or you might assemble a shockingly powerful explosive weapon that will probably wind up ending your run when you get careless and it kills you. No two runs are the same and you’re constantly having to figure out how to make the best of what you’ve got. It is a difficult game, though. The ceiling for how powerful you can make your own abilities is very high, because you can put together some abusive combinations, but in the later levels the enemies are insanely unfairly powerful to compensate.
It’s a blast. In my opinion.