A saved game is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a computer or video game. This saved game can be reloaded later so the player can continue where he or she has stopped. Players usually save games either when the player has to interrupt play for some reason or to prevent the lost of the progress in the game (as might happen after a game over).

The use of saved games are very common in modern games, especially in role-playing games (which are usually too long to be finished in a single sitting). In later arcade and video games, there was no need for saving games since these games usually had no actual plot to develop and were generally very short in length.

The relative complexity and inconvenience of storing game state information on early home computers (and the fact that early video game consoles had no non-volitile data storage) meant that initially game saves were represented as "passwords" (often strings of characters that encoded the game state) that players could write down, and input into the game when resuming.

On later cartridge-based console games, such as The Legend of Zelda, saved games were stored in battery-backed RAM on the game cartridge itself. In recent consoles, which use compact disc and DVD technology for storing games, saved games are stored in other ways, such as by use of memory cards or internal hard drives on the game machine itself.

Some games do not save the player's progress towards completing the game, but rather high scores, custom settings, and other features. This is common in older games.

Depending on the game, a player will have the ability to save the game either at any arbitrary point (usually when the game has been paused), after a specific task has been completed (such as at the end of a level), or at designated areas within the game known as save points.

Save points are employed either when a game state is too complex to save at any point or when a game would be too easy if the player was allowed to save the game at any time. Game designers often attempt to integrate the save point into the style of the game. Resident Evil represents save points with old fashioned typewriters, the Grand Theft Auto series uses representations appropriate to the era of the setting: audio cassettes for the mid-80s, 3½-inch disks for the early-90s.

Squaresoft is notorious for commonly treating save points as legitimate objects within the game world. In Chrono Trigger, a save point in a haunted castle will actually attack the character if he attempts to use it. In Final Fantasy VII, there is a save point at an amusement park that forces the player to spend in-game currency to use it (perhaps with a satirical jab towards price-gouging at amusement parks.) In Final Fantasy VIII, the effects of a mysterious magical spell cause one save point to suddenly replicate into dozens of save points when touched. In Chrono Cross, the character's recording of his memories in the game's various save points becomes a plot point later in the game.

Saving games is also possible when playing under arcade and console emulators. These give the advantage of saving games even if the game or the system did not support such feature. This is done by means of a RAM dump, which saves all the RAM data of the emulated console into a computer file for later use. These kind of saved games are usually called "save(d) states". "Save state hacking" is the practice of modifying the data in these saved states to achieve various effects, some of which would be otherwise impossible.