GameSave Manager is a free program for Windows to back up, restore, and transfer game saves on Microsoft Windows devices.
Most computer games save the player’s progress automatically and provide an option to manually save the game progress as well. Those saves are then stored mostly in the My Documents folder, Saved Games folder, a user directory, and to a lesser extent in the program’s game directory.
These saves can be backed up manually by simply copying the relevant files to another location. This requires some research to find out how the save games are named by the game however.
Backing up game saves can be important before moving to a new computer system, or to handle games that are known for save game corruptions. This usually is a problem in the beginning right after release, and issues that corrupt those save games are usually fixed by the developers quickly after the release. It has happened in the past however that patches introduce issues as well.
GameSave Manager
GameSave Manager is a free software program that can automate the backup process. It basically ships with a list of games and the location that these games store their save games in.
The application’s main menu displays options to backup or restore saved games, schedule backups, create custom game entries for games that are not automatically detected by the software or use the options of the program to include Steam support which will also detect games that have been installed in Steam.
A click on the Backup option will initiate a scan of the game saves of the computer system. All games that are discovered are displayed by Gamesave Manager with the option to start the backup right away, or exclude some of the games from the backup first by clicking on Edit List in the top menu. It is also possible to set a password to protect the backup.
GameSave Manager will then displays a save as window to save all selected game saves to a local directory.
The program supports custom game saves which is great for games that are not included in the program’s database. New locations can be added by specifying one or multiple directories, a game name and (optional) an icon. The configured locations will also be scanned by the program during backup and included in it if saves are found.
Closing Words
GameSave Manager is a very comfortable program to backup game sages. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.