Save Scummer

• Features
• Installation
  • Autocompletion
• Usage
  • Add
  • Backup
  • List
  • Restore
    • Backup specifiers
    • Restore Examples

Save-Scummer is a simple CLI utility to backup and restore game saves. This is intended for rogue-lite games like Rogue Legacy, FTL and Don't Starve, but it could also be applied to other games or non-game applications.

I made this because I enjoy roguelike/rogue-lite games, but when one starts to get too difficult, I may resort to save-scumming as an option to make the game a bit easier. When doing that manually, I find myself wasting precious seconds of time copying files back and forth, so naturally I decided to waste hours making it (semi-)automated instead.

A full backup utility (like Duplicati) or sync utility (like rsync) will obviously have many more features, but for the basic case of handling game saves, I wanted something simpler with concise command line usage.

Features

• Just provide a save directory (or glob pattern) to configure a new game
• Easily make backups, and restore them by most recent (default), time expressions (to indicate how far back in time you want to go), or choose from a list
• Tab autocompletion

Installation

Install with uv (recommended):

uv tool install save-scummer

Or with pip:

pip install save-scummer

Autocompletion (optional)

Tab autocompletion is available for most common shells: bash, fish, zsh and Windows PowerShell. To install, run:

ssc --install [shell name]

Usage

Save-scummer provides the command save-scummer (also aliased as ssc) with the following subcommands:

sh: ssc COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  add      Add a game and its save directory
  backup   Create a backup of one, multiple, or all games
  ls       List all currently configured games
  restore  Restore a backup of the specified game

Add

Use ssc add to add (or update) a game and its save directory.

Relative paths, user paths, and glob patterns are supported:

ssc add game1 ~/Games/game1           # Add a dir (including any subdirs)
ssc add game1 '~/Games/game1/**'      # Equivalent glob pattern (quotes required)
ssc add game2 'C:\Games\game2\*.sav'  # Add files ending in .sav

Backup

Use ssc backup to create a new backup. Just specify the game title, and an optional description:

ssc backup game1 -d 'level 10 with full health'

Or just backup everything:

ssc backup --all

List

Use ssc ls to show a summary of all configured games:

╒════════╤═════════════════╤═════════════════════════════════╕
│ Title  │ Total backups   │ Last saved                      │
╞════════╪═════════════════╪═════════════════════════════════╡
│ game1  │ 0               │ never                           │
├────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┤
│ game2  │ 7 (94.96 KB)    │ 2021-01-19 15:20 (23 hours ago) │
╘════════╧═════════════════╧═════════════════════════════════╛

Or use ssc ls [game title] to show more details on a specific game and its backups:

Game:               game2
Total backups:      7 (94.96 KB)
Last saved:         2021-01-19 15:20 (23 hours ago)
Last backed up:     2021-01-19 16:24 (22 hours ago)
Source directory:   /home/user/game2/saves
Backup directory:   /home/user/.local/share/save-scummer/backups/game2
Backup files:
0:  game2-2021-01-26T19:23:26.zip
1:  game2-2021-01-20T16:33:42-pre-restore.zip
2:  game2-2021-01-19T19:26:10.zip
3:  game2-2021-01-19T18:31:58.zip
4:  game2-2021-01-18T12:17:52.zip
5:  game2-2021-01-17T16:18:09.zip
6:  game2-2021-01-17T15:01:58.zip

Note that "Last saved" is the time that the source files were created/modified.

Restore

Use ssc restore to restore a backup. A specific backup can be indicated by backup index, age, date/time, or filename. Otherwise, the most recent backup is restored.

Usage: ssc restore [OPTIONS] [TITLE]

Options:
  -i, --index INTEGER  Backup number (starting at 0, from newest to oldest)
  -a, --age TEXT       Minimum age (relative to current time)
  -d, --date TEXT      Maximum date/time (absolute)
  -f TEXT              Backup filename; either absolute or relative to backup dir

Backup specifiers

Index: The backup index, sorted from newest to oldest, e.g. "Restore the save from x backups ago." 0 is the latest backup, 1 is the backup made before that, etc. Negative values can also be given; -1 would give you the oldest backup. See ls command for full list of available backups.

Age: Minimum age of the save to restore, e.g "I want to go back in time by 1 hour." Amounts of time can be specified in 'HH:MM' format, or with a number followed by a unit. Examples:

• '1:30' (an hour and a half ago)
• '30m' (or '30 minutes')
• '6h' (or '6 hours')
• '9 hours, 15 minutes' (or '9:15')
• '2d' (or '2 days')
• See pytimeparse for more formats

Date/Time: Maximum date/time of the save to restore, e.g., "I want to go back in time to 1:30 yesterday." Most date/time formats are supported. Examples:

• '16:30' or '4:30 PM' (today)
• '2021-01-20'
• 'August 3 2020'
• Most date/time formats are supported; see dateutil for more examples.

Filename: Either a full path or just the filename (relative to the backup dir)

Restore Examples

# Just restore the most recent backup
ssc restore game1

# Restore the backup made 2 backups ago (aka the 3rd most recent)
ssc restore game1 -i 2

# Restore a backup from (at least) an hour and a half ago
ssc restore game1 -a '1:30'

# Restore a backup from (at least) 2 days ago
ssc restore game1 -a 2d

# Restore a backup from 4:00 PM today or earlier
ssc restore game1 -d '4:00 PM'

# Restore a backup from March 22 or earlier
ssc restore game1 -d 'Mar 22 2021'

# Restore a backup by filename
ssc restore game1 -f game1-2021-01-20T00:09:10.zip

Development setup

To set up for local development (requires uv):

git clone https://github.com/JWCook/save-scummer && cd save-scummer
uv sync --frozen

To run linting, formatting, etc.:

pre-commit run -a