History UnwinnableByDesign / Sierra

* In ''VideoGame/{{Space Quest II|Vohauls Revenge}}'', near the end of the game, walking into the wrong area releases a xenomorph queen who, if she catches you... kisses you. Deeply, with lots of tongue, and with a large red heart appearing behind you implying she's merely amorous and that this is just a joke scene. The chest burster will kill you quite a bit later, after you defeat the villain and make your escape, but just before you end the game. It ''is'' possible to finish the game still, but you have a ''very'' strict 15 minute timer, which means you can't screw around at all.

* Screw up in making the Dispel Potion in ''VideoGame/QuestForGloryI'' (with items like the Magic Acorn, which can be LostForever), and the game is unwinnable.

* ''Space Quest IV'': Unwinnable scenarios return with a vengeance in IV. Forget to write down the time code for SQXII at the start of the game? Well, too bad. In the floppy version (but, mercifully, not the CD remake), the code is randomized -- you can't even look it up. Plenty of plot-crucial items can also be LostForever. And there are GuideDangIt puzzles again.

* Did you wasted your love arrows on random targets? Might as well restart the game 'cause they are needed [[spoiler:to charm the unicorn and kill Lolotte.]]

Ah, Creator/{{Sierra}}. During the heyday of point-and-click adventure games, Sierra was one of the leading names alongside the likes of LucasArts. What truly set them apart was less their stories and quirky humor, which were rather generic in some ways, but their apparent joy in murdering their own pixellated heroes in as many ways as possible. The true enemy for the player and their avatar was less the antagonist and more the developers themselves.

* In ''VideoGame/QuestForGloryIII'', not saving the Meerbat from the Venomous Vine, or eating the Venomous Vine Fruit will make the game unwinnable.

** Did you wasted your love arrows on random targets? Might as well restart the game 'cause they are needed [[spoiler:to charm the unicorn and kill Lolotte.]]

** Even better, in [[AGDInteractive AGD's]] remake of ''King's Quest 1'', you can play a no-dead-ends mode.

* ''VideoGame/RiseOfTheDragon'' can be GuideDangIt. There are many ways of getting permanently stuck: locking yourself out of your home (although in ''this one case'', there is a way to recover), leaving vital items lying around somewhere (thus losing them forever), picking the wrong dialog option and thus permanently pissing off a vital character (especially your girlfriend -- women can be so sensitive...), or letting important events go by unnoticed because you weren't in the right place at the right time. In ''some'' cases, the game will inform you when you've screwed up or are about to so you don't hang around wondering what went wrong.

** This gets parodied (and the trope subverted) in ''Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist''. There's a rickety bridge, and crossing it generates a message saying something like "Wow, that's pretty unstable. I probably only have three crossings left! I should use them carefully." But in fact, you have to cross it something like seven times, and if you want you can waltz across it all day long. Nothing will happen. (And yes, the warning message is generated every time, which is [[OverlyLongGag funny, then annoying, then funny again]], [[OverusedRunningGag and finally annoying]].)

** ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest'' also has a bridge on Kerona that breaks if you cross it too many times.

* The original ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest'' gave you the chance to sell a hovercraft for money, which you will need. If you refuse, then the would-be buyer will come back and offer to throw in a jetpack as well. If you take his first (jetpack-less) offer then, a few hours of play later, you will find yourself in a situation where you need a jetpack, have no way to get one (or do much of anything besides float in space), and have no idea where you missed the chance to pick one up, GuideDangIt...

* In ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestII'', near the end of the game, walking into the wrong area releases a xenomorph queen who, if she catches you... kisses you. Deeply, with lots of tongue, and with a large red heart appearing behind you implying she's merely amorous and that this is just a joke scene. The chest burster will kill you quite a bit later, after you defeat the villain and make your escape, but just before you end the game. It ''is'' possible to finish the game still, but you have a ''very'' strict 15 minute timer, which means you can't screw around at all.

* ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest V'' had a particularly tough scenario. At the Genetix segment you are supposed to look to find an important item. If you leave without it, the game will let you know that '''in bold lettering''' just after you beam out. [[note]]SpaceQuest V gives you maximum points for doing everything ''at the first moment that it can be done''; if you return for something later, then you can still win. You'll just get fewer points.[[/note]] If you don't pay attention, then much, ''much'' later, after having crawled through a complex and stressful series of mazes on the enemy battleship, you confront the BigBad and realize that you're missing that very item. The HaveANiceDeath message then ''once again'' tells you what you should have picked up.

* In ''VideoGame/QuestForGloryII'', there's a [[HorseOfADifferentColor Saurus]] dealer right outside of [[CityOfAdventure Shapeir]]'s main gate, who aggressively tries to sell the player a Saurus. If you repeatedly leave and re-enter the screen, he'll get increasingly insistent that you buy a Saurus, eventually [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall Leaning On]] and later BreakingTheFourthWall. Push him enough and he'll get frustrated and leave, saying he was just trying to help you win the game, and the HaveANiceDeath screen reinforces it by saying that the Saurus you '''should''' have bought went to someone else and you can't progress any further in the game without it.

'''Merciful''' examples:
* In the beginning of ''VideoGame/HeartOfChina'', when you're trying to recruit Chi, you can insult him and have to come back the next day. Fortunately, this ''only'' results in the loss of some promised money, and isn't itself unwinnable.

** Then there's the time you have to save a rat from a cat. This requires a boot (tough in a rare bit of mercy, the boot is exchangeable for the stick, but odds are, you've already used the stick), which is in the middle of the vast, trackless desert, making it ''very'' easy to miss. Much later in the game, you are tied up, unable to free yourself or do anything else. There is only one escape: if you saved the rat, then it will eat through the ropes. If you didn't save it, or if you didn't even know it was there... then there's no escape. And even if you did save it, you need another item to escape the room you are in. If you don't have it, the game [[HopeSpot lets you thrash around for about a minute]] before abruptly crushing your hopes with a GameOver.

* In ''VideoGame/GoldRush'', if you pick mules on the land route,[[TrialAndErrorGameplay then Indians will attack you, making your game unwinnable]]. However, you're directly told that this is the case.
* ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards'' is just as easy to mess up in as its sequels, but the penalties aren't as strict and the unwinnable situations are a little easier to see coming. The most obvious one is having Larry do the deed with a prostitute. Doing this won't render the game unwinnable as Larry simply decides that he needs a woman that would make him feel more fulfilled. However, if Larry forgets to wear a condom during this, then he gets sexually-transmitted disease which wreaks havoc on his little Larry not a minute later. Time to restart!

** And just to rub it in, the final act subverts the usual ''AmateurSleuth'' antics by making you back up your claims with evidence. What, you forgot to find that mastodon hair on the guy covered in alcohol, or cop a feel of the murdered corpse to pilfer through his pockets? Aw...

* In ''VideoGame/KingsQuestVAbsenceMakesTheHeartGoYonder'', in the area near the pie section (see Cruel), you have to use your rope on an outcropping of rock to ascend it. There are two spots you can choose from. If you pick the wrong outcropping, then it will break and kill you. You cannot retrieve the rope after you've set it in place, and so the game can become unwinnable without warning.

* The easiest way to make ''Leisure Suit Larry'' unwinnable is simply by running out of cash and being anywhere but right next to the casino, so you can't pay for cab fare and are basically stuck.

** ''VideoGame/HeartOfChina'', by the same designer, also suffers from this, with several situations that have very specific solutions.
*** In the beginning, when you're trying to recruit Chi, you can insult him and have to come back the next day. Fortunately, this ''only'' results in the loss of some promised money, and isn't itself unwinnable.
*** After crashing in the Himalayas, you're given the option of having either Chi or Lucky trudge through the snow looking for help. If you send Chi, the game lets you do everything else right, but he dies before finding help, resulting in a game over. Even worse, if you actually realize that you need to send Lucky, but don't give the healing herbs he has to Chi before leaving, Kate will die and you'll lose five minutes later.

* In ''LauraBow 2'', if you've done everything you could to outrun the murderer in Act 5, but forgot to pick up the boot before or during the chase, you've officially ran yourself into a brick wall and might as well restart because later on you will be trapped in a furnace room unable to backtrack, and you need to give the boot to [[spoiler: Steve]] or else [[spoiler: he'll step on a piece of coal and be unable to help you to move the slab hiding a secret passage to go on]]. This is especially annoying as said boot appears after [[spoiler: Yvette dies, but only after you've examined her body]] and appears in a room you have no other reason to visit until the chase scene, in which case good luck not being freaked out enough to stop and grab it. It was so bad that some versions of the game fixed this by making the boot reappear in the furnace room beside the coal pile if you didn't grab it beforehand.

* ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest V'' had a particularly nasty scenario. At the Genetix segment you are supposed to look to find an important item. If you leave without it, the game will let you know that '''in bold lettering''' just after you beam out. [[note]]SpaceQuest V gives you maximum points for doing everything ''at the first moment that it can be done''; if you return for something later, then you can still win. You'll just get fewer points.[[/note]] If you don't pay attention, then much, ''much'' later, after having crawled through a complex and stressful series of mazes on the enemy battleship, you confront the BigBad and realize that you're missing that very item. The HaveANiceDeath message then ''once again'' tells you what you should have picked up.

* In ''VideoGame/KingsQuestIQuestForTheCrown'', if you lose '''or drop''' ''any'' of the three treasures (for example, if the magic mirror is stolen by [[BanditMook the dwarf]]), then the game is unwinnable.
** Luckily, in [[AGDInteractive AGD's]] remake of ''King's Quest 1'', you can play a no-dead-ends mode.

* Screw up in making the Dispel Potion in ''QuestForGloryI'' (with items like the Magic Acorn, which can be LostForever), and the game is unwinnable.

* ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards'' is just as easy to mess up in as its sequels, but the penalties aren't as strict and the unwinnable situations are a little easier to see coming. The easiest way to make the game unwinnable is simply by running out of cash and being anywhere but right next to the casino, so you can't pay for cab fare and are basically stuck.

* In ''VideoGame/KingsQuestIVThePerilsOfRosella,'' you can fail to get certain items before night falls, or fail to get a certain item off an island that you can enter only once. If you didn't get them during the day, then you aren't going to get them during the night, and you're stuck as a result. (The magic fruit is the most obvious example, though that gives a BadEnding rather than an unwinnable situation.) And if you didn't get it off the island the first time, then you don't get a second chance.

** Then there's the time you have to save a rat from a cat. This requires a boot (tough in a rare bit of mercy, the boot is exchangable for the stick, but odds are, you've already used the stick), which is in the middle of the vast, trackless desert, making it ''very'' easy to miss. Much later in the game, you are tied up, unable to free yourself or do anything else. There is only one escape: if you saved the rat, then it will eat through the ropes. If you didn't save it, or if you didn't even know it was there...then there's no escape. And even if you did save it, you need another item to escape the room you are in. If you don't have it, the game [[HopeSpot lets you thrash around for about a minute]] before abruptly crushing your hopes with a GameOver.

* ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry 3'' is ridiculous. There is a point where you play Passionate Patti; forgetting even an insignificant piece of attire makes the game unwinnable. (Women have more clothing than you think.)
* ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places)'', aka ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry 2'', is even worse: The entire game is strictly linear from start to finish, with several chokepoints where it's impossible to go back to a previous area. As an example: Larry starts the game in L.A., and later moves on to a cruise boat, where he has to escape to a lifeboat before nightfall. To survive the journey on the lifeboat, he needs to have, among other things, a [[GiganticGulp giant soft drink]] that can only be purchased in L.A. The game needs to be started over if he didn't get one way back when[[note]] To make it worse, you get a one million dollar bill during a certain part of the game. If you go to the convenience store to get the big gulp with the million dollar bill, you will fill it up and stuff it in Hammerspace, but the clerk will tell you that she can't break a one-million dollar bill. You ''do not'' have the option of putting the drink back, and any attempt to leave the store will count as shoplifting, resulting in a game over.[[/note]]. The worst, however, is that there are two items that Larry can pick up on the cruise ship (one of them being a bowl of spinach dip) that count towards HundredPercentCompletion but must be discarded in the few seconds of interactivity you have before your lifeboat goes adrift, which many players might not even realize exist. (Larry will eat the spinach dip automatically and die of salmonella). And this whole process needs to be repeated several times during the game's ''other'' chokepoints.
* In the original Leisure Suit Larry, after cutting yourself free from the rope in the honeymoon suite, if you leave the room without taking the rope then the game becomes unwinnable since you can't go back into the room. Unusually for Leisure Suit Larry, the game gives you no warning about this, and it's easy to miss.

** ''HeartOfChina'', by the same designer, also suffers from this, with several situations that have very specific solutions.

* In ''SpaceQuestII'', near the end of the game, walking into the wrong area releases a xenomorph queen who, if she catches you... kisses you. Deeply, with lots of tongue, and with a large red heart appearing behind you implying she's merely amorous and that this is just a joke scene. The chest burster will kill you quite a bit later, after you defeat the villain and make your escape, but just before you end the game.
** It IS possible to finish the game still, but you have a ''very'' strict 15 minute timer, which means you can't screw around at all.
* ''VideoGame/GoldRush'' can screw you over at any opportunity. [[LuckBasedMission Lethal Diseases and deadly bridges aside]][[note]] the game will literally screw you over with a variety of "random" events that will kill you, without you being able to do anything about it, to simulate the danger of the cross-country trip[[/note]], there are several distinct ways to make the game unwinnable:

** [[spoiler: Pick mules]] on the land route? [[TrialAndErrorGameplay Indians attack, Game Unwinnable]] (but at least you're told that this is the case)!

** Another example from ''VI'': Alexander's gambit to rescue Cassima involves getting Jollo to switch Shamir's lamp with a fake. To do this, Alexander needs to visit a lamp trader in town and exchange an old lamp he finds in the labyrinth for the exact replica of Shamir's lamp. How do you tell which is the replica? By ''watching a cutscene''. And once you trade the lamps, the trader leaves the game permanently, so if you pick the wrong lamp, you won't be able to pull off the plan, and the game is no longer winnable.

** Then there's the time you have to save a rat from a cat. This requires a boot (or a stick, but odds are, you've already used the stick), which is in the middle of the vast, trackless desert, making it ''very'' easy to miss. Much later in the game, you are tied up, unable to free yourself or do anything else. There is only one escape: if you saved the rat, then it will eat through the ropes. If you didn't save it, or if you didn't even know it was there...then there's no escape. And even if you did save it, you need another item to escape the room you are in. If you don't have it, the game [[HopeSpot lets you thrash around for about a minute]] before abruptly crushing your hopes with a GameOver.

** If you fail to save Cedric from the harpies, you can continue playing for almost the rest of the game, all the way through Mordack's lair. But Cedric will not be able to fly through the window and save you at the last second.