How do I exit Journey properly?

I bought Journey today, and when I tried to exit the game I naturally pressed Start to open the menu, but there was no option to quit there. The only thing I could find was to press the PS button and choose Exit Game from there.

I don't like doing that as it's usually a 'hard quit' that doesn't allow games time to save. Is there a better way to quit the game? Does this method save anyway? Or is progress only saved in between levels, in which case quitting at any stage just resets your current level's progress?

Solution 1:

Besides the minimalist aesthetic, the game is incredibly short, so presumably they expected people to complete most, if not all, of it in a single sitting and thus did not provide a means to "save and quit". Instead, Journey auto-saves at the end of each "level" and there is no option to save at will or more frequently. This is similar to other thatgamecompany titles like flOw and Flower.

So you don't have to worry about making sure you quit a specific way: just quit using the PlayStation XMB.

Solution 2:

There is no Save & Quit option in Journey and there is no manual save either. If you don't want to lose your progress you should complete the current level and wait for the game to save before exiting the game. You will see a Saving... indicator when the game saves the progress. It is save to quit the game after the indicator has disappeared. Usually the saving indicator shows up just when entering a new level.