History UnwinnableByMistake / OtherVideoGames

Due to the sheer number of examples, they have been sorted by video game genre. If a game falls into more than one genre, be sure to check out all the pertinent folders to see if your example is there.
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[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:[=4X=]]]
* Due to a bug in ''VideoGame/CrusaderKingsII'''s ''Conclave'' DownloadableContent, {{Player Character}}s ruling nomadic realms [[https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/nomadic-conclave-madness.917207/ sometimes end up]] in a Catch22Dilemma where the members of their realm council dislike them because they want more land, then disagree with granting vassal khans (usually including themselves) more land, because they dislike the PC due to wanting more land. The only solution currently is to fire the council altogether.
* In ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'' some scenarios require you to colonise certain systems. Unfortunately, if those systems are already owned by enemies, your bombardment of the inhabitable planet may lead to it being out of your {{Terraform}}able range when the dust clears. To the load screen!
* ''[[VideoGame/VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun Victoria 2]]'' has '''the tutorial''' become unwinnable after expansion packs are installed. A part of the tutorial has you play as Belgium and declare war on France, but expansion packs introduce having to [[PretextForWar justify]] wars, which the tutorial does not account for. Because you have no justification, you can't declare war, and the tutorial cannot continue.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Action Adventure]]
* ''VideoGame/BeyondGoodAndEvil'' is notoriously prone to game-breaking bugs that will end your progress if you save after encountering them.
** The most common is the dreaded "lost partner" glitch, where Jade's NPC ally will either fail to spawn where they need to, or become incapable of doing a certain action that's required for you to continue. In particular, during TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, if you attempt to backtrack right after [[spoiler:releasing Pey'j from his crystalline prison]] but before [[spoiler:spying on the BigBad's meeting with his [[TheDragon Dragon]] and taking a picture of them]], you are guaranteed to get stuck. Definitely make a note of backing up your save data before you fly the Beluga to [[spoiler:the moon]].
** One area has an enemy that drops a necessary key when defeated. However, a bug occasionally causes the key to spawn in the wrong place, making it unreachable. Worse is that the spot where this happens is right next to a save spot. A player unaware that they're supposed to be picking up a key might save after the fight and find themselves stuck.
* ''VideoGame/{{Bioforge}}'': Drain the sweet, sweet alien battery [[spoiler:you got from the first alien leader]] too much (either by healing or firing your arm cannon), and you will not have enough power to [[spoiler:charge up your escape vehicle]].
* ''VideoGame/BlasterMaster'':
** You get a weapon upgrade for your tank which allows you to blow away certain walls, which will respawn after a couple of seconds. Should you get out of your tank and walk through a passage created when your tank blew away a wall, you will have no way to return to your tank after the wall respawns. In some places such as Stage 6, you can blast through the ceiling, but can't get out when the blocks respawn as [[DenialOfDiagonalAttack you can't shoot downwards]], and in other places you can get stuck without Hover power. There are a number of places where you also can't kill yourself, forcing you to reset the game.
** Level 4 has an innocent looking one, until you actually get into it. It's just a smallish dead-end hole that looks like you can jump out of... but it's one tile too deep to make the jump. You need to hover out. If you don't HAVE any hover power left, only one button will save you now, and it's not located on the controller.
* ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'':
** In ''[[Videogame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow]]'', using the infamous [[SequenceBreaking Succubus Glitch]], it's possible to get to some items and rooms long before you're supposed to. Going too far ahead in the plot in this way will remove certain bosses [[spoiler:such as Malphis, who guards the Main/DoubleJump ability]] or break events [[spoiler:such as '''the end of the game''']], potentially making the game unwinnable.
** If, for some reason, the player manages to max-out the in-game clock of ''[[Videogame/CastlevaniaSymphonyoftheNight Symphony of the Night]]'' at 99 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds before obtaining the Echo of Bat relic, the pathway to said item – which only opens on every ''even'' minute of the clock – becomes completely inaccessible, making the place where it's useful nearly impossible to navigate without prior knowledge or an external map.[[note]]It's still technically possible to beat the game without the item that Echo of Bat leads to. However, it requires some tricky exploiting of not-so-obvious game mechanics.[[/note]]
* In ''VideoGame/DawnOfMana'', very rarely while in Chapter 4-3, the enemy needed to give you a special key will not move. If this enemy doesn't come to life, you can't kill him to get the key, thus you can't progress.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fahrenheit}}'' (Indigo Prophecy in the US) is a game that relies on PressXToNotDie gameplay. Towards the last half, there is a timing bug in the PC version (and sometimes the [=PS2=] version) of the game that will cause you to always fail, making it impossible to continue the story.
* The UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance version of the ''Lord of the Rings'' game ''[[Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium The Fellowship of the Ring]]'' has a bug that makes the game unwinnable if you do not save at a specific point '''during a transition between scenes'''. Compounding the problem, saving just an instant too early means you're stuck in a sequence of "Load game -- automatically trigger scene transition - game freezes - turn off game".
* Anne [=McCaffrey's=] ''VideoGame/FreedomFirstResistance'' had a level in which the main character had to cross through a brief hazardous area that would inflict minor damage on her in order to reach a plot critical NPC and finish the mission. Problem is, if she was at nearly zero health and had no healing items, it was impossible to get her across the area. And any other party members with more health couldn't be substituted; the NPC would ''only'' talk to the protagonist.
* In ''VideoGame/GraffitiKingdom'', the fight against [[ThatOneBoss Telepin]] can be literally impossible if you haven't caught on to some completely-unexplained-but-necessary-to-know game concepts (such as swiping monsters with Pixel's wand giving you access to their attacks). Before then, it is difficult, but entirely possible, to get through the game with only the basics. You can technically remedy this by going back into the level to grab some better moves, but it definitely seems impossible on a first playthrough. Many players simply give up and never play again.
* ''VideoGame/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets'' autosaves when you enter the Chamber of Secrets. Problem is, you ''really'' need lots of health potions in there, and you can only get health potions by making them in school ''before'' you enter. Oh, and there's no way out once you're in.
* In ''VideoGame/JustCause1'', the second-to-last mission involves chasing something down and destroying it in a super-fast jet. Some people assume the jet will be useless after this mission and feel free to bail out of their jet as soon as said target is destroyed. The game will then autosave while you're in freefall or parachuting to safety, and you will find out quickly that you needed that jet for the next mission. At best, the jet will be just out of reach of your grapple and zoom away into the distance without you. If you're unlucky, it smashes into the ground in a fireball. You then have no choice but to start the game again, as during these final missions you can't go into free roam and access the mission again that way.
* ''Last Ninja 3'' was pulled from the Wii Virtual Console when an unfixable bug was found that caused the game to freeze after the first level.
* Vorador's Mansion, in ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKainDefiance'', features a stained glass window that Raziel is supposed to blast out with telekinesis. However, in the spectral realm, the window doesn't clip properly when touching it from the outside, allowing a player to accidentally jump through it and into the upper floor when in the spectral realm. Unfortunately, the clipping ''does'' work from the inside and accessing the only exits from the corridor require being in the material realm, for which there are no conduits within the corridor. And the game can easily be saved within.
* ''VideoGame/LegoAdaptationGame'':
** In ''VideoGame/LEGOIndianaJones'', it's possible to make a level unwinnable during certain mounted segments. Riding an elephant into an insta-death pit, for example, causes the player character to die shortly thereafter, at which point he respawns at the last "safe" point - back on top of the elephant, still in the death pit.
** In ''VideoGame/LEGOStarWars II'', the "Jabba's Palace" level has a pit that cannot be escaped. However, there is also nothing to kill you, so you must simply restart the level.
** ''LEGO Franchise/HarryPotter'' has several of these:
*** If you were looking for one hundred percent completion, you need all the character icons, school crests and students in peril. Good luck doing so if you exited the fat lady without grabbing everything, and then tried to reenter as any character other than a Gryffindor by mistake. The portrait glitches and permanently seals, where she will wave at you, but the option to recite the password is lost forever. Extremely annoying if you spent hours collecting every other token before realizing the glitch had occurred.
*** There's an ''entire FAQ'' written specifically to identify and help avoid the heaps of game-breaking glitches in this game. One particular bug occurs in a section leading to some collectibles. At the end of the hallway, a Lego dragon tosses you upwards back into the classroom -- Except, sometimes he misses the throw, at which point you are stuck permanently in that section of the game and cannot continue. If you reset the system, you "only" lose all your progress since your last save. If you instead try to circumvent this by saving, you've just hosed your save file. The game will always load in this corridor with a dragon who will not throw you, and you have to reset your game file to complete the game. Way to go, QA!
*** The game becomes almost impossible to go over 70% completion if you're playing Co-op, at one point in the game you complete a class but never unlock something from the class, you also get no indication that the class was where the unlockable was meant to be unlocked, this leaves you playing the rest of the game assuming that you'll unlock it later only to find that you don't unlock it and simply cannot entirely for the reason that you were playing Co-op.
*** If you simply follow the ghost of Nearly Headless Nick to your main missions in Year 3, the path he'll take you on between levels 1 and 2 will be blocked by a troll that's inexplicably guarding the Lobby Hallway. You actually have to take a completely different route out of the Divination class before it in order to get to it.
** ''LEGO Jurassic World'' has a ''very'' frustrating and easy-to-trigger glitch that can render the Gyrosphere Valley level unwinnable. At one point is a see-saw that, if you drive across and off of it before Gray wanders onto it, [[ArtificialStupidity he'll stupidly wander under it and get trapped]]. You can't get back onto the see-saw, you can't advance without Gray's abilities, and you're forced to restart the level. This is guaranteed to drive completionists bananas since there's several ''[[ThatOneSideQuest very difficult to grab]]'' minikits in the chase sequence prior that will have to be reobtained when you exit and restart.
** Since some late-acquired characters in ''The LEGO Movie'' have [[GameBreaker Game Breaking]] abilities (looking at ''you'', Superman and Green Lantern), they can render some of the earlier levels unwinnable since it's possible to skip {{Event Flag}}s that trigger events that allow you to progress. Most notably is in the very first level: if you just fly or jump onto the roof to fix the speakers rather than do any of the puzzle solving the game expects you to do, the dance off won't start and you can't get the second set of plans. Particularly frustrating because doing the level the "proper" way is tedious and ''nobody'' is going to try it when Wonder Woman can just derp right up there in a second.
** ''VideoGame/LEGOMarvelSuperHeroes'' is ''loaded'' with these, but there's a notorious one in one of the very first missions. Once you get to play as Hawkeye and Black Widow, you're near electrified water. If you fall into it at a certain spot, your character will be killed, revived and instantly killed again constantly, as a glitch makes the electricity ignore your temporary invincibility. Since electricity paralyzes your character before killing them, you can't move out of the way, but you also can't switch to the other character, having to reload a save in order to play the level.
* In ''VideoGame/LittleBigAdventure'':
** You must break into the local museum to steal some items. The regular way of doing this involves using the Red Key Card on the back door to get to the sewers, from where you can access the room with the museum's alarm switch. Turning it on will evacuate the museum, after which you'll be able to enter it -- still from the sewers -- and take everything you need there, with the automatic robot guards as your only obstacle. However, if you're skilled enough, you can skip all this and just go through the front door, [[SequenceBreaking steal the items in broad daylight]] and escape before getting arrested. Performing such a robbery [[ScriptBreaking before obtaining the aforementioned Red Key Card]] will cause the game to assume you already have that item, which means you can no longer get it for real. Since the Card is needed to open a few more doors later on, you can't complete the game without it.
** LBA has a peculiar save system more typical for a console platformer: it keeps the data in a single file which is constantly updated to reflect the stats changes, and also updated whenever you enter a different location. Unless you make use of the "copy saved game" feature, this can get your save file screwed up if you were to, for example, drop into a scene from significant height while having only one HP (which you lose due to hitting the floor) and no extra lives.
* ''VideoGame/{{Messiah}}'':
** On the Conveyor level, you enter a room in order to access a platforming section of conveyor belts. If you turn around and leave the room instead, the door will become locked from the inside and you cannot re-enter.
** At one point on the rooftop level, you're supposed to have Bob crawl into an air vent and get into a control room; a part of the vent collapses under Bob's weight as he enters. However, you can instead [[BodySnatcher possess]] a cop who is standing next to the vent entrance, shoot away the glass that surrounds the control room (it's visible below you), then jump down there. But if you do so, you're stuck, as normally your way back would be through a collapsed part of the vent.
* ''Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves'' for the NES:
** There's an item, The Druid Dagger, which was required to destroy an enemy late in the game. Midway through the game, Duncan The Blind leaves the party and [[SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear takes all his inventory with him.]] If he has the Dagger then, you will probably be unable to get it again and will get stuck just before the final fight with The Sheriff Of Nottingham.... A bug in the character system does create a one-time-only instance of a character with a random name who carries Duncan's things; but once you pass by him, the character disappears, never to be seen again.
** The horrifically broken password system in the game (it was hidden for a reason) would put Robin in the proper place but with a different inventory which is often missing anything of value, including plot-critical items. The password that took you to the final sequence would not give you the Druid's Dagger; the game is unwinnable if you use it.
** A 'hidden feature' allowed rapid fire in the sword duels simply by holding down Start. If a player jumped while holding Start, then Robin Hood would not come down from his jumps, allowing him to spring through the screen vertically and eventually wrap around. It was possible to get wedged into the floor and be unable to jump any more without an apparent reason. The player would now be too low to hit the other sword fighter and too low to be hit themselves, which makes the fight a complete draw. You can't back out of the duel, and so the game has to be reset and started over from the beginning (we did mention that the password system is messed up).
* The first and second games in the ''VideoGame/ShadowOfTheBeast'' series. In addition to having exactly one life, a short (first game) or quick-draining (second game) life bar, and no way to save or continue, you can easily make the game unwinnable by screwing up puzzles and failing to collect necessary items before passing the PointOfNoReturn.
* A nasty GameBreakingBug in ''VideoGame/SphinxAndTheCursedMummy'' will end your playthrough prematurely. In the second Mummy level, you get a cutscene partway through and then find a save point next to an open door. If you save here and then die or quit the game, when you load the save again, the door will be closed. Forever.
* At one point in the original ''VideoGame/StarTropics'', the player was told to dip a letter into a bucket of water, which would reveal a secret code that was necessary to progress in the game. But the catch was that said letter was an actual physical letter that was provided with the game, and not as an in-game item. If you got the game used without the letter, Internet is the only way forward. The Wii and Wii U Virtual Console re-releases got around this by including a snippet of the letter and said code in their digital manuals, but Nintendo Switch Online players are SOL.
* The NES game ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'' includes a portion where the player is told to find Jessica Rabbit's phone number, and call her. Even after finding the number, it's impossible to call her from any of the phones within the game. [[ParadiegeticGameplay You're supposed to call that number from a real phone]] and a recording of Jessica would give you clues on how to continue. Unfortunately, the number now connects to a sex chat line, leaving any players of the game unable to finish.
* ''VideoGame/WizardsAndWarriors III: Kuros: Visions of Power'' can become unwinnable if the player's four-slot inventory becomes too full, since the player can't drop items and there are a few items which have no use until ''very'' late in the game.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Action Games]]
* ''Manga/{{Akira}}'' for Amiga is NintendoHard to the max, but stage 4 is literally impossible due to one of the moving platforms being placed too far away to reach.
* In the first ''VideoGame/BloodRayne'', the final boss fight is a three-way battle with Juergen Wulf and Beliar that lets you save after you kill either. The problem is the Beliar has a time limit and is quite hard to damage, so if you save after killing Wulf you might find yourself without the time to avoid the auto GameOver.
* In the UsefulNotes/GameBoy game ''The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2'', the hammer at the beginning of stage 16 is not needed. But if you miss a key early in the level, you'll need the hammer to get back to it; otherwise, you'll have to find an enemy and kill yourself. But as it's also one of the few stages where you can kill every enemy, it's possible to wind up in an enemy-free stage, with no way to beat the level, and no way to kill yourself to try again.
* In the ''[[WesternAnimation/{{Mixels}} Calling All Mixels]]'' app, sometimes Major Nixel freezes in midair during his jump attack and stays stuck, with no way to reach him to attack him. This makes the level impossible to beat, forcing the player to restart it.
* In ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors 7: Empires'', using the Rock Slide tactic can block a path from enemies and allies alike. However, it can also block supply lines which you need to win. Thus, using this ability too many times can block supply routes entirely. If you're on the defending side, you'll have to wait for the clock to run out to win. But if you're on the invading side...
* The NES game ''VideoGame/HeroesOfTheLance'' was ''especially'' craptacular for one reason: if the [[WhiteMagicianGirl easy-to-die cleric Goldmoon]] ever dies and you don't retrieve her Blue Crystal Staff, then the game is unwinnable. It doesn't help that she's the default character and so, for beginning players, the most likely to die first.
* ''VideoGame/{{Overlord}}'' used to have a bug in the brewery level where, if you left the level by any means before repairing and turning a wheel that activates an elevator to the lower floor, the items needed for it would disappear. Since going down was required, this made it impossible to continue the game. The game autosaves at all level transitions; unless you had multiple saves, it would be impossible to reload. It was fixed in a patch that thankfully also restored already Unwinnable saves.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Adventure Games]]
* Many, many amateurly programmed adventure games, especially using the [=RAGs=] developer, can have this. One example that comes to mind, is one where the person accidentally coded the ending trigger wrong, so a filler conversation would always trigger, as opposed to the actual ending. Checks for Variable: Leaf Fairy, followed by variable: Negotiator Fairy. He coded the variable to become Negotiator Leaf Fairy, so the first part is always triggered! A similar example is in ''My Bloody Fairy Tale'', where you are required to gather a number of magical items and a magic code to activate a transformation spell, allowing you to get into the next area. But the magical items are used up in the spell,and the code is written on each of the items. You are not reminded of this second fact after you've found the items, and in fact, you're only told by a ghost after you specifically ask about it. So if you start the ritual before reading the code, the game is unwinnable.
* The 1997 ''VideoGame/BladeRunner'' PC game is unwinnable on modern computers without special measures because one encounter and one bomb are timed based on the speed of the CPU. Yes, computers are that much faster now.
* The UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance remake of the original ''VideoGame/BrokenSword'' had a couple of these because of {{Game Breaking Bug}}s. If you go to Spain before going to Syria, then it often causes a glitch which prevents you from going to Syria at all. Also, there is a part early on where you have to make a plaster cast; a glitch lets you do that without having picked up the plaster, which you need to get a key later in the game.
* ''VideoGame/BrokenSwordIITheSmokingMirror'' has a particularly nasty bug where Nico is unable to pick up a key item if she has already spoken to a certain character on the screen, rendering the game unwinnable. This one catches many players off-guard as they'd tend to save on this screen to look up a Walkthrough. The worst part? It happens ''very'' close to the end of the game!
* There are many, many versions of the original ''VideoGame/ColossalCave'' out there. They form a convoluted family tree of ports to other platforms, ports to other programming languages, modifications to make the game more "interesting" (which may or may not work), and so on. One particular branch has a bug that makes the game unwinnable: instead of being able to "get spices," you get told "You can't be serious" if you try. Spices are one of the game's treasures. If you can't collect all the treasures, then you can't even unlock the endgame.
* In cult-classic adventure game ''VideoGame/DreamWeb'', during your first mission to kill David Crane, it's possible to get into his hotel without having found a firearm or even starting the series of events to get it. The game won't stop you from getting two screens away from Crane. Without the Gun, though, you can't get past his security guards, and if you've gotten there, the elevator will no longer go back down [[spoiler:because you cut the wires on the control panel to stop it from moving]] and you may have even [[spoiler:already entered the room, which you can't leave without getting shot]]. If you don't have a save prior to [[spoiler:the elevator sabotage]], you can't get out of the hotel and get the gun. Most of the game is designed explicitly to prevent this sort of situation, oddly enough.
* At the end of the first chapter of ''VideoGame/EdnaAndHarveyHarveysNewEyes'', attempting to prepare the second cup of tea in the wrong order will result in this trope: if you grab a new teacup before preparing the replacement truth serum in the teapot, you won't be able to pour the tea. Attempting to give the teacup to Mother Superior will prompt [[spoiler:Gerret]] to tell you to add the truth serum first. You won't be able to grab a new teacup from the table because you already have one, and nothing will happen if you attempt to use the teapot on the teacup in your inventory at any point during the process, not even an ICantUseTheseThingsTogether dialog, which is extremely surprising given the DevelopersForesight from [[VideoGame/EdnaAndHarveyTheBreakout the previous game]]. There's no way to drop items from your inventory, so you're stuck with no way to deliver that cup of tea.
* ''VideoGame/GrimFandango'':
** There's a bug when you are in the elevator in the High Roller's Lounge in Rubacava. On modern computers, the elevator moves too quickly to complete the puzzle, rendering the game unwinnable without patching.
** After you solve the elevator sequence, it is possible to return to the kitchen and have Manny stick his scythe into the pantry door. Now, the first time you do it (as part of a trick to get into said elevator), Manny gets it back automatically. If, for whatever reason, you decide to put the scythe in the door ''again'' and leave it there, the game won't do anything to prevent you from completing the chapter and sailing away from Rubacava without it. This is bordering on UnwinnableByInsanity, since by then you should be very well aware that the scythe is Manny's most treasured item, but this being a Creator/LucasArts game, chances are you didn't expect to be able to screw it up and kept a single save file throughout the game. The kicker? The game has a programmed response for having an empty inventory, even though the only way to make it empty is to get rid of the scythe through the described actions (making the game unwinnable in the process).
* ''VideoGame/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'' was [[NoSwastikas edited in Germany]] to remove Nimdok and his scenario because the scenario was set in a concentration camp. This made it impossible to complete the game -- all five characters' scenarios must be finished to reach the last segment.
* In-universe example: in ''VideoGame/TheLostCrown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure'', Nanny Noah has Nigel playtest a clue-based treasure hunt she's designed for the children of Saxton. There's nothing preventing Nigel from doing so, but later in the game when the kids are supposed to play it, one of the locations they'd need to visit is locked up for the holiday, making it inaccessible and the game unwinnable.
* ''Film/MontyPythonsTheMeaningOfLife: The PC Game'' is a point-and-click adventure through the movie and television show as you search for the eponymous philosophical question. Unfortunately, the game has more than one occasion where you can wind up in an {{unwinnable}} situation by doing exactly what the game has had you doing the entire time -- exploring and clicking on interesting looking junk. It's nearly impossible to reach the last screen because of a fatal glitch that causes a disc swapping menu to fail to appear. As obnoxious as this is, it's almost fitting that something like this would show up in a Creator/MontyPython game. The disc swap bug CAN be worked around, but you have to know at what screen it appears to get around it, which you won't know if [[GuideDangIt you aren't looking at a walkthrough]].
* There's a rather inexplicable case of bad design in the game ''Nancy Drew: Secret of the Scarlet Hand'': at one point, an NPC gives you a phone number which you have to call later. Normally such phone numbers can be seen later either in the chat box when making a call or in Nancy's journal... except for this particular one. If you don't (physically) write down the number or memorize it, it will be [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost for good]]. The game cannot advance without that number, and the only option is to look it up from a walkthrough.
* The indie adventure game ''VideoGame/PleurghburgDarkAges'' attempted to avoid all unwinnable situations; the game is never supposed to be unwinnable under any circumstances. Still, one thing slipped; if you entered the park at night without the whistle and are about to be attacked by the panther, you're stuck.
* ''Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender'' has a well known bug: depending on difficulty level, the game would discourage or prohibit the player from flooding the city unless all necessary items there had been collected. The problem: it was possible to collect a repair item and use it for its intended purpose, whereupon it vanished. The player then couldn't proceed because they didn't have the item, even though it was no longer needed.
* Creator/LucasArts's policy was to be far more merciful than [[Creator/{{Sierra}} its competitor]]. But in ''VideoGame/TheSecretOfMonkeyIsland'', it was technically possible to spend all your money in the grog machine, one coin at the time. It was also possible to burn an item you'd need later, though later versions fixed this. A guide, past knowledge or brute force using player can bypass getting a map, only to be stuck when they are required to use it as a fuse.
** In ''Videogame/TheCurseOfMonkeyIsland'', you must ask Slappy Cromwell about a sticker on his suitcase to proceed, but it's possible to run him off the stage before doing so.
* As with all over day-to-day games, ''VideoGame/ShadowOfTheComet'' can be rendered unwinnable if you fail to meet a certain person on a certain hour of the day, or fail to get an item at the right time. There's little hint of this.
* In the PC mystery game ''VideoGame/SherlockHolmesSecretOfTheSilverEarring'', the action takes place over the course of a few days. The game is rendered unwinnable on the first day if Holmes neglects to pick up a particular clue. This seems to be a glitch, rather than by design, since failure to pick up any other clues will cause the game to prevent him from moving forward. But the game will allow him to go ahead even if he doesn't pick up [[spoiler:the autographed picture in the young woman's dressing room]]. The player will be unaware that there's a problem until the fourth day in-game, when he is supposed to show that clue to someone; his inability to do so brings the game to a screeching halt.
* In ''Super Star Force'', stopping the fountain in DA 0820 before completing the dungeon in DA 0001 makes the latter impossible.
* ''Virtual Corporation'', an old PC game played via voice, will throw you out a window if you get too stressed. The only way to lower stress is to go on vacation. The problem comes where the only two vacations you'll be able to afford, the skiing and wind surfing, have QTE that no key can get past. If you don't complete it, your stress doesn't go down. Luckily, it's simple enough to go into your save file, find the stress value, and lower it, only buying automated vacations for the rest of the game.
* ''[[http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/02/vision.php Vision]]'' is a great escape-the-room game, but some players have found themselves in an unwinnable situation after failing to pick up the desert marble (the one marble that's the easiest to overlook and the least required for puzzle-solving) before [[PointOfNoReturn going down the elevator]] and finding themselves without all the marbles required to complete the final puzzle.
* ''VideoGame/Waxworks1992'' is chock-full of them, often getting you stuck in the game long after you made a mistake, such as feeding the dog without lacing the food with narcotics beforehand, not killing the crocodile at the first (and only) chance you get, lowering a stone pillar from the wrong angle (stranding you in the wrong half of the pyramid), not replacing the screw on the gasoline can preventing you from filling up the drill to give the demolitionist...the list just goes on and on.
* Unusually for an educational game, 1997's ''[[VideoGame/WhereInTimeIsCarmenSandiego1997 Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?]]'' (a.k.a. ''Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time'') can be made unwinnable. Even though a template game (in which the player chooses which levels they want to play) is UnwinnableByDesign, the game tries to make sure that the normal game is winnable. But they overlooked a bug in the Aztec time period. When you finish assembling the Headdress for Montezuma, you have to put it in your inventory. But if you give it to Ann Tikwittee to ask what she says about it, then she'll say, "We must get this headdress back to Montezuma, before he blows his top!" and the headdress will be placed back in the inventory... where it will accidentally spawn ''another'' headdress. Now, you can still complete the level (and therefore the game) by leaving the duplicate headdress there. But if you haven't yet gotten the Carmen note (required to beat each level), then you'll have to take the duplicate headdress and put it in your inventory so you can get the note. You then walk into the throne room and are forced to give the headdress to Montezuma (he does not allow you to leave the throne room with a headdress in your inventory). But, because you accidentally duplicated the headdress, you're still stuck in the room because Ann Tikwittee won't let you leave either; each time, she'll say, "We must get this headdress back to Montezuma before he blows his top!" It's unknown if it's fixed in any later versions.
* ''VideoGame/TheWhiteChamber'':
** The game has the protagonist gathering body parts one at a time in order to reassemble a dismembered corpse. One of those parts only appears during one of the game's nightmare-hallucination sequences, and it's possible to just walk out of the room without picking it up, which takes you back into the "real" world, never to return. It's especially frustrating because the protagonist is actually standing over it, and the player isn't likely to see it at all: she breaks open a pipeline, causing her to put her back to the camera, and comments that an arm came out. It's easy to assume that she just picked it up herself and go on about your merry way.
** One room has a stench bad enough to kill you after some time, which is measured by how many times you've exited and re-entered the room. If re-entering the room one more time would kill you, and you save outside of the room, the game is now unwinnable: you'll die the moment you re-enter it, unable to complete the puzzle within to remove the stench.
* ''VideoGame/ZakMcKrackenAndTheAlienMindbenders'':
** Near the beginning, you pick up a scrap of wallpaper, which you eventually need in order to draw a map. Some time before this, you have to light a bonfire, and can, if you choose, use the wallpaper as kindling. The game doesn't try to dissuade you, and you can continue unhampered until you realise what you were supposed to hang on to the paper for... (You could also have used the crayon on the phone bill, but you could lose that too later on in the game)
** It's possible to slide things you need into the slot at Annie's office before you have the item that motivates her to contact you; since the door doesn't open, you can't get them back, so you're screwed.
* At the very end of ''[[VideoGame/SimonTheSorcerer Simon the Sorcerer 3D]]'' you are presented with the following puzzle: You need to open the CD-ROM drive on a computer in the game, but there appears to be no way to interact with the computer. [[ParadiegeticGameplay The solution is to open the CD drive of your own real computer]]. However, this would not work on all computers even at the time of the game's release, as the game looks for a specific program signal that is normally sent when the CD drive is opened, but not all computer setups are configured to send that signal.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Beat 'em Up]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Battletoads}}'':
** The NTSC version for the NES is just plain impossible when playing with two players simultaneously -- there's a bug in Level 11 in which Player 2's Clinger Winger ''never starts moving'', and so the Hypno Orb runs him over every time. Since the level restarts if either player dies, this will repeat until either player runs out of lives, at which point they need to finish the level on their own if they wish to beat it. Thankfully, it was fixed in the PAL version of the game, the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis port, and most recently, in [[CompilationRerelease Rare Replay]].
** In level 9, [[DownTheDrain Terra Tubes]], in the NES version, normally you would pass the first section of the level by destroying the [[ActionBomb gray, self-destructing robots]] before moving onto the spinning cog section. However, if you don't destroy the robots but rather bypass them by hitting them once and walking by while they're stunned, a glitch can occur where the spinning cog fails to properly render after passing the checkpoint (only half the cog actually appears onscreen). Said cog will not move or kill you, and should you go right and fall down the tube towards the first gate, it's impossible to die or progress further, meaning a reset is necessary.
* The ''Film/CharliesAngels2000'' video game contains a GameBreakingBug in the ship level that traps the player in a loop, booting them back to the start of the level when you complete it.
* In the original version of the first ''VideoGame/SamuraiWarriors'' game, there is a level where you must accompany Goemon to an escape point within a certain time limit. There is a nasty bug in two-player mode: if Player 2 reaches the endpoint before Player 1, then the ending will never trigger and you will be stuck standing at the escape point with Goemon until the time limit runs out, wondering what is going on.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Card Battle Game]]
* The first run of ''VideoGame/SNKVsCapcomCardFightersDS'' was literally unwinnable thanks to a [[GameBreakingBug game-stopping bug]] that causes it to crash when a player fights a certain character. None of the NPC battlers can be skipped. Thankfully for those who want this game, they fixed this with a second print.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fighting Games]]
* ''Franchise/StreetFighter'': Don't try to be very good while playing Arcade mode in Super Street Fighter II Turbo Revival for the Game Boy Advance. If doing so (getting perfects and Super K.O.s, not losing...) you´ll get to fight Akuma instead of Bison in the final stage. Unfortunately, the game has a glitch that freezes the game when the "VS Akuma" screen appears, having to reset it. This game has alot of bugs, but this one is the most annoying.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:First-Person Shooters]]
* ''VideoGame/BioShock'':
** ''VideoGame/BioShock1'':
*** "Welcome to Rapture", the first level, has an event near the beginning where a splicer kills Johnny and tries to break into your bathysphere. Rarely, the splicer may not kill Johnny, leaving you trapped in the bathysphere.
*** Arcadia has a plot-critical item in Langford's safe that you need to take to continue the game. However, at that point you can have the Scrounger Tonic, which re-rolls loot found in containers. This can cause the plot-critical item to disappear, leaving you trapped in Arcadia.
*** If you enter Fort Frolic by bathysphere and then immediately leave by the same bathysphere, the curtain that hides [[spoiler:Sander Cohen's unfinished 'masterpiece']] won't open when you come back. Since you need to have access to what's behind the curtain to progress further in the story, you're stuck here too.
*** In Fort Frolic, if you use a Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid to have him kill [[spoiler:Silas Cobb]] in the Record Store before he performs a scripted action ([[spoiler:summoning his 'cats' to attack you and blowing out the vent that leads out of the store]]), you'll be trapped in the store basement. That said, you can kill yourself to get teleported to the nearest Vita-Chamber - unless you've turned them off to go for the Brass Balls achievement.
*** Also in Fort Frolic, unlike the other targets, Martin Finnegan can be shattered while frozen. If this happens, there will be no body to photograph, and you won't be able to complete the aforementioned masterpiece.
** Near the end of ''VideoGame/BioShock2'', if you have Winter Blast 2 or 3, you can freeze and shatter [[spoiler:Eleanor, while she's offering you the [[EleventhHourSuperpower Summon Eleanor plasmid]]]]. If you do, then you can't leave the room because the door won't unlock [[spoiler:until you take the plasmid, which you just lost]]. While [[UnwinnableByInsanity it takes an active effort (or at least the unintentional firing of the wrong plasmid) to cause this]], it is possible to mistakenly save your game while trying to reload a previous save, leaving your game unwinnable. Also, if you die during a particular boss fight, the Vita-Chamber in which you respawn is on the wrong side of the door that locked you in with the boss.
** ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' has a glitch near the start of the Finkton level: when you get to the basement of the job center with the motorized patriot and enter the elevator, some players will hold back as they press the button so they can stand in the center. However, when you press the button, the game moves you to the center of the elevator and turns you towards the window, so if you're holding back, you'll back out of it just as the doors close, and will be stuck outside the elevator that you need to take to leave. Time to reload a checkpoint!
* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty4ModernWarfare'' has no specifically unwinnable points, but given the way the game sometimes autosaves in the middle of fights, you can come pretty close.
* Unpatched versions of the original ''VideoGame/{{Descent}}'' have a GameBreakingBug that makes the last boss unkillable on any difficulty level except the two easiest ones (out of five).
* ''VideoGame/DeusEx'':
** If you choose to take the subway car back to Battery Park just after reaching Hell's Kitchen, you'll get stuck in a permanent loop where entering the subway back to Hell's Kitchen results in the player being transported to the starting point of Battery Park, ad infinitum. The only way to fix it is to reload a saved game from before the glitch was triggered.
** After clearing out Battery Park, you're supposed to find the Ambrosia canister. If you leave the zone or dawdle around, Anna Navarre will come to you to inform you she found it instead and tell you to proceed to Hell's Kitchen. If this happens when you're in a corner or dead end of a narrow corridor, you can get stuck forever as she will never back up to let you pass through.
** There's an inadvertent bug that can trigger in some playthroughs, where Bob Page simply doesn't appear after you've uplinked Milnet and Daedalus/Icarus [[spoiler:have merged into Helios]]. Unlike the previous example, reloading a saved game doesn't help - ''you'll have to start a new playthrough''. Luckily, this bug was fixed in the ''VideoGame/{{Shifter}}'' mod.
* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'':
** "Pharaoh", the first secret level of ''TNT: Evilution'' (one of the {{Expansion Pack}}s that came with ''VideoGame/FinalDoom''), was rendered impossible to finish because a vital key was erroneously flagged to appear only in multiplayer. The creators of the pack, [=TeamTNT=], quickly released a patch allowing the key to appear in any mode, which also fixed a node-building error that prevented some enemies from appearing. The fixed version was also included in the official [[http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Id_Anthology id Anthology]], but it wouldn't be until the Website/GOGDotCom release of the game, almost ''20 years later'', that this version would be sold by ''Doom'' creators id Software in widely-available form. Not that it stopped people from discovering how to [[SequenceBreaking complete the level without the key]] in the meantime, of course.
** The -nomonsters parameter, which removes all monsters from a level, quite obviously makes it impossible to finish a level that requires a specific monster to die before the exit will open, such as any of the boss levels in the original[[note]]Strangely, [[MookMaker monster spawners]] and John Romero's head-on-a-pike from the final level in ''VideoGame/DoomII'' are unaffected, so a run of that game, skipping the second secret level, would actually be completable[[/note]]. This oversight is fixed in some source ports, which constantly check to see if the monsters are alive rather than only triggering when said monsters die, meaning the exit opens as soon as the level starts.
** [=E2M4=]: In version 1.1, approaching the yellow key, retreating to a different room, and returning causes the crushing ceiling to be permanently lowered and sometimes blocking access to the key. That version forgot the original ceiling height whenever the crusher stopped.
** In the map "Dead Simple" from ''VideoGame/DoomII'', the central staircase raises once you kill all Arachnotrons. If played on Nightmare, Arachnotrons can respawn and be killed off again, allowing you to raise the central stairs out of reach.
** "Even Simpler" from ''VideoGame/Doom64'' is basically a remake of "Dead Simple," only with Pain Elementals thrown in. You have to kill every enemy, including the Lost Souls they shoot out, to advance. If they're killed next to some walls, however, the Souls they are supposed to shoot out get sucked into the walls, making it impossible to kill them.
** In ''VideoGame/Doom3'' a number of doors are supposed to lock behind you once you walk through them. However, it's possible to walk through one of these doors and then back out before they close (usually because an enemy jumped out at you), and end up on the wrong side of the door when it locks, causing you to be unable to proceed further.
* ''VideoGame/FarCry1'' will sometimes autosave in the middle of combat. If you were in a position where you could not win the fight, then your only option is to reload an earlier save.
* ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'':
** A minor one in the first game (that got patched later): the game leaves logs for back story in laptops. One of these laptops is actually a mission objective, which you can see before you're told to download the log. Unfortunately, once you download it, you can't re-download it and you'll get stuck. Fortunately a patch later fixed this so that if you downloaded the laptop earlier, the character in the cutscene will mention that you already have the log, thus preventing you from getting stuck.
** ''FEAR: Project Origin'', unlike the earlier games in the series, doesn't allow for any manual game saving by the player. There's only an automatic checkpoint system which doesn't allow the player to revert to earlier checkpoints. If you find yourself up the creek without a paddle, then you have to restart from the beginning of the level... and some of those levels are long.
* ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'':
** In the museum where you have to deactivate three dark matter generators, the way to one of them goes through a room full of laser beams. As soon as you cross one, the door closes and you get mowed down by turrets. If you throw a painting from the outside corridor through the laser beams, the door locks permanently. Even if you manage to destroy the turrets, the door won't open so you have to reload your game.
** Averted in Episode 2, where the commentary states that they designed the autosave system to not save in dangerous places during the [[spoiler:strider battle]].
** Nova Prospekt has one you may not even notice until it's too late. When making your way through the prison to find Eli, there is a large room with a gate leading to the next area that you must press a switch to open. If anything at all is touching the gate when you press the button - even something small like a broken piece of a box - the gate will remain closed, and pushing the button again will not open it again. The game also autosaves after the button is pushed, meaning the player's only recourse is to retreat to an old save file, or to go to the last autosave and try again. If the player has only been using autosaves and/or accidentally causes the glitch on every untainted save file - which, given the nature of physics in the game, is completely within the realm of possibility - they will have no way to leave the area, and no choice but to start the game over completely. This is a particularly cruel fate, as Nova Prospekt is one of the game's final four chapters.
* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':
** Overzealous speedrunning or SequenceBreaking can cause critical enemies (for example, those who open {{Locked Door}}s) or vehicles to fail to spawn, or other {{scripted event}}s to fail to activate, resulting in a stage being unwinnable. If you saved after a [[PointOfNoReturn Checkpoint Of No Return]], then you're fucked. Restart.
** The series's autosaving also often lands players in unwinnable situations -- for example, without enough ammo or the proper weapons in a battle. A particularly infamous example is on ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved''[='s=] "Truth And Reconciliation", where a checkpoint sometimes activates just as Keyes is being killed.
--->'''Marine:''' "We're screwed! We're screwed, man!"
** In ''VideoGame/Halo2'' and onward, after being stuck in an unwinnable autosave situation for a few deaths, the game will punt you back to an earlier autosave. If you find yourself in a situation that is possibly winnable but incredibly difficult, then multiple suicides to trigger this might be a good idea. Unfortunately, if you get yourself into an unwinnable situation that (if it was by Design) would be Cruel or worse, then you might live long enough for the system to autosave twice after you trigger it. The games' mercy has limits.
** In ''VideoGame/Halo3'', at the end of the game, you have to race to the ship on a Warthog while the Ark is about to explode. There are a few different check points, most of them on the solid parts of the route. But there is one check point right before the final stretch where you can land at an odd angle, just as it is starting to collapse, and you then fall to your death below. The result is that you get stuck respawning upside down over a pit.
** In ''VideoGame/HaloReach'''s "New Alexandria mission", if you stay at the top of the [=SinoViet=] Tower to kill the Drones, then take the elevator back down (or go back up then try to return), the doors at the bottom won't open, forcing you to restart the whole mission, since the game autosaves at the top of the tower.
** In ''madda cheeb adventure'', it's impossible to beat stage one without losing a life if you have two slivers of health left; if you're lucky, one. That is, because the boss shoots whip after whip of bullets ([[AntiClimaxBoss before just going up and down, shooting two bullets in a row]]) and you can't escape. The second stage hints that ''you have to get so many mini-war hogs without getting hit '''once''' or else you will run out of time''.
* ''VideoGame/{{Hexen}}'' version 1.0 had a bug (an error in one of the action scripts -- it checked that the number of Green Chaos Serpents left on the level had been reduced to exactly 3, instead of to the intended less than 4) that caused the Episode 4 end-of-episode boss to sometimes fail to appear, leaving the player stuck in a sealed room with no way forward or back. This was fixed in version 1.1.
* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead2'' has The Passing campaign and a Scavenge Mode where the objective is to fill up a generator with cans of gasoline. Naturally, Valve made it where the cans respawn if they are destroyed. However, if a dropped gas can is near a Boomer that explodes, the can goes sailing high into the air, so it is possible that the flying can may land on a rooftop or some other structure that the survivors can't retrieve it from. Unless you have a molotov to hurl to the lost can to destroy it so it respawns in its original place, the game can't be finished. Luckily, this can rarely happen since the direction of an item that gets thrown from an explosion is pretty random. Dead Center's finale has the same gas can objective as well, but it takes place indoors and the survivors are able to access most of the map, so losing a can here is nearly impossible.
* ''VideoGame/LegendOfTheSevenPaladins3D'' is a ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' clone that is programmed so badly that the game runs insanely, extremely fast. Most of the time, players will only get a short way into the game without dying from enemies that fire at lightning speed.
* ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'':
** One level of the first game has a pattern buffer in a secret room with a one-shot timed door. Don't save here.
** ''Marathon 2: Durandal'':
*** One level has a pattern buffer (save point) over a pit of acid which just so happens to be unescapable.
*** Some levels, such as "Colony Ship for Sale" and "Ingue Ferroque", require you to shoot switches with grenades or fusion overcharge shots. Don't have grenades or fusion batteries? You're stuck for good.
*** Using the "skip to level" cheat may doom you here as well, since starting a level this way only gives you a magnum and no other weapons. (Those trying to [[SelfImposedChallenge beat the game using only their fists]] use Physics Models (mods, in other words) to make magnum bullets activate switches when absolutely necessary.)
*** Some one-shot door switches, such as in G4 Sunbathing and certain {{Game Mod}}s, can accidentally be deactivated before the door is fully open, preventing further progress.
* ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor'':
** In the "Operation Rapunzel" level of ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonorFrontline'', if you happen to backtrack for health items or ammo after rescuing the hostage, he may disappear, rendering the level unwinnable.
** ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor2010'' has [[ObviousBeta many bugs]], some of which can induce unwinnable situations. For example, in Defend The Crash Site, you are defending a crashed helicopter from the Taliban with a minigun turret, and at a certain point, an enemy is supposed to destroy the turret with an RPG. Unfortunately, particularly in the [=PS3=] version, this ScriptedEvent sometimes fails to activate, resulting in the mission continuing indefinitely. Another one happens in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n39Y_8mJ7_8 Belly of the Beast]], where you're supposed to cover fire for your team mates as they advance, but again, the event flag for their advance often fails to activate. The only way around these is to restart the mission from the beginning and hope you don't get screwed again, and if that (god forbid) fails, restart the whole game.
* ''VideoGame/PAYDAYTheHeist'' has a system in place where if a player that is holding a mission-critical item leaves the game, those items are transferred to the next player (bots cannot hold or use said items). However, due to random glitches, the check can fail, causing the critical items to be lost and the rest of the level unwinnable since the crew can no longer progress.
* In games with {{Locked Door}}s that are opened by ScriptedEvent [[EventFlag flags]], notably [=FPSs=] such as ''VideoGame/QuakeIV'', the game occasionally glitches out and fails to register the event, leaving you stuck.
* In one level of ''VideoGame/ReturnToCastleWolfenstein'', you have to avoid setting off any alarms and sneak into a truck at the end without being noticed. This level contains a major [[GameBreakingBug game-stopping bug]], at least in the Xbox version: if you shoot out the last alarm with anything other than the silenced sniper rifle, then the truck driver will still be alerted to your presence, albeit unable to sound the alarm; you won't get a "Mission Failed", but the level will become unfinishable. They should have made alerting the truck driver itself a NonStandardGameOver. Better keep multiple saves; it's a pain to have to play through this level all over again.
* ''VideoGame/SoldierOfFortune'':
** In the Colombia mission in ''Soldier of Fortune II'', sometimes your team will get stuck on an obstacle, making it impossible for you to continue, since [[BorderPatrol if you go on ahead, they will execute you]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Strife}}: Quest for the Sigil'':
** There's one case that only shows up if the player cheats: The Front base's location is dependent on how many Sigil pieces you have. If you have even ONE sigil piece, then the Front base is moved to the castle. Problem? If you cheat to get the Sigil early, then you won't have access to the castle and won't be able to get ANY ending without further cheating because Macil, who gives you all the key jobs (except the first one) until the Front base moves, won't be accessible anymore.
** There's one which can occur without cheating, but it's very rare. The plot path requires that you destroy the computer in the Administration Complex; the plot says that this lowers the forcefields protecting the Administration Complex and the Bishop's Tower, but what it actually does is to unlock the exit back to the Bailey, and a switch inside the door back to the Bailey is what actually lowers the forcefields. Which is fine if the teleport from the Administration Complex takes you to the other side of the door; but if it glitches and sends you back to the Gatehouse where you first entered the Bailey, the forcefields will still be up leaving you stuck. Nor will re-entering the Security Center to get through to the Administration Complex again work, since the bars which opened to let you through have closed again.
* In the virtual reality game ''[=VRPorize=]'', dying and restarting a level doesn't restock your ammunition. Since some levels start off with you almost immediately under attack by fairly damage-resistant enemies, this can easily result in a situation where it's literally impossible to get 100% completion on a level because there's simply not enough ammunition to kill all of the enemies present.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hidden Object Games]]
* ''VideoGame/ImmortalLovers'' can be Unwinnable in a way only a HiddenObjectGame can. One of the hidden object sections has an object that always appears in the lower right corner. On some computers, this object is covered up by the hint button. And no, the object cannot be selected while the hint button is recharging.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Interactive Fiction]]
* ''VideoGame/PaperChase'': It's possible to take the bottle away with you and drink it away from Bluto. If you do this for the second-last possible drink, you won't be able to get an item that's necessary for beating the game.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Maze Games]]
* The coin-op game ''VideoGame/{{Trog}}'' features four cute claymation dinosaurs ([[IncrediblyLamePun Rex]], Bloop, Spike, and Gwen) collecting eggs and trying to get home. It has a complex egg-laying pattern (presumably this means "sophisticated", not "driven by the square root of -1") that sometimes fails to spawn the last egg for a particular dino, making it impossible for that dino to win the round.
* The original versions of ''VideoGame/PacMan'' and ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong'' had overflow errors that made high levels unbeatable. With ''Donkey Kong'', the timer gave you insufficient time to complete the level before it ran out and you were killed. In ''Pac-Man'', [[KillScreen half the screen would be filled with garbage]], and the game wouldn't acknowledge that you've eaten every available dot and power pellet, even if you have, leaving the game stuck until you got killed. Downplayed in both cases, since reaching the levels in question is regarded as a victory of sorts.
* In the ''VideoGame/GameAndWatch'' game ''Squish'', your goal is to avoid getting squashed by randomly generated moving walls whose directions change after a few seconds. If the walls appear across the entire screen, then a miss could be unavoidable.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Minigame Games]]
* Many of the games in the old ''VideoGame/Action52'' compilation (for the NES and Genesis/Mega Drive) are unwinnable because of shoddy programming.
** Two of them, ''Alfredo'' and ''Jigsaw'', are also unplayable (except on a select few emulators).
** To give you an idea of just how bad the situation with ''Action 52'' is, the game's developers decided to include a small contest in the game. They put a secret, personalized code at the end of one of the games, ''Ooze'', which (along with taking a photo of the game screen to show that the player did beat the game) would have made players eligible for a grand prize of $104,000. Unfortunately, there were two versions of the Action 52 cartridge. In the better-known version, "Ooze" inevitably [[GameBreakingBug hangs two or three levels in]], making the game impossible to complete.
** In ''Star Evil'', the boss sometimes fails to show up; and if you beat the third boss if it happens to show up, then the last level is a Gray Screen of Death.
** Some games, such as ''They Came,'' crash when you die or complete a level (again, in the better-known version of the cartridge).
** ''Fuzz Power'' has an insurmountable rock wall in Level 3.
** Active Enterprises was trying to make the Cheetahmen into a CashCowFranchise. They started on a sequel to the ''Action 52 Cheetahmen'' game, ''Cheetahmen II''. They folded before they could release it, but 1,500 prototype copies were discovered in a warehouse and distributed as bootlegs. It's obvious that the game wasn't finished; in addition to the many annoying bugs and glitches and crippled controls, there is a [[GameBreakingBug game-stopping bug]] where the next level fails to load after you defeat the [=ApeMan=] in level 4. You can skip to levels 5 and 6 with a Game Genie, a hacked ROM, or a certain [[GoodBadBugs good bad bug]]; but after you beat the final boss there, the game just stays on the boss screen, [[NoEnding no ending cinematic, no credits, nada]].
** ''Ninja Assault'' is another game with NoEnding. After you play through the glitched-up fourth stage and defeat the glitched-up boss, the game just stops. There's a cave entrance on the boss screen, signifying that there should be more levels, but they didn't bother to program them.
** In the fifth level of ''Atmos Quake'', your ship randomly explodes for no reason, probably due to the glitchy [[CollisionDamage collision detection]], making the level unbeatable.
* In the first ''VideoGame/WarioWare'' game, there is a microgame known as "Right in the Eye" which involves threading a needle. On Level 3 (the hardest difficulty) of this microgame, the needle can be placed too high or low to thread.
** In the UsefulNotes/GameCube port of the game, the microgame "Guy Scraper" can sometimes be unable to complete entirely if the game speed is too fast, due to the animation for the man diving off and bouncing on the trampoline taking too long.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Miscellaneous Games]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Glider}}'':
** The two most common ways to make a game of ''Glider PRO'' unwinnable are to accidentally miss a star (backtracking is sometimes impossible) or to run out of a necessary powerup, especially helium (powerups are in limited supply, ''never'' respawn, are sometimes [[MutuallyExclusivePowerups mutually exclusive]], and can be drained all at once by microwaves).
** There are several vents and transporters in "Slumberland" that let you skip large sections of the house. One of them lets you skip the sewers, which is a great relief except that one of the [[StarShapedCoupon stars]] is down there, and there is no way to go back. It appears that this star was originally supposed to be in the room "You Got It," which is where the sewer route converges with the shortcut.
* Due to the nature of the game, it's possible for players in ''VideoGame/{{HQ}}'' to be eliminated due to technical issues, such as the question failing to appear, or just randomly getting eliminated for no reason despite giving a correct answer.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRyThooixg8 This]] game based on the ''Jeopardy'' game show has a particular question (what does "SWAT" stand for) where the answer is impossible to enter because the game doesn't allow that many letters to be typed in.
* While ''VideoGame/{{Roblox}}'' itself is not a video game, many games on the site are unwinnable. In games where you can save, but you are unable to reset your file, it is possible to make a mistake that makes it impossible to win the game.
* The Subway level in the NES adaptation of ''Where's Waldo'' is a maze that is randomly generated. So randomly in fact that there is no check to make sure the game produces a layout that can be completed and there is a good chance the stage may be unwinnable.
* In ''VideoGame/TheWikiGame'', because the interface does not accept all Wikipedia templates, etc, sometimes you can find yourself on a page which is a DeadEndRoom with no links to click.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:MMORPG]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Mabinogi}}'''s VIP inventory, in which Locks when VIP service ends. You can lock yourself out from various storyline quests by accidentally putting in Key Items. Overlaps with UnwinnableByInsanity.
* This was a problem in the Fist of Guthix minigame in ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}''. Just like the rest of the game, players can only right click to attack other players that have a higher combat level. Because of this, all the hunted players would gather on one spot in the center and stack on top of each other. The lower levelled player would thus be presented with a large list of "Trade," Follow," and "Walk here" when he right clicked, and the option to attack his opponent would be pushed off the screen, making it impossible to click. As a result, a higher levelled player would acquire a large amount of charges that is nearly impossible for the lower leveled player to get. This happens less frequently nowadays due to fewer players in the game and an update to the right click menu.
* ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' features the episode "A Step Between Stars". Early in the mission, there's a point at which the captain of Tuvok's ship is supposed to get killed by the Voth. If you manage to save him, you break the mission progression.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Platform Games]]
* ''VideoGame/TheAddamsFamily'':
** The UsefulNotes/GameBoy game:
*** The only two levels you cannot leave by the same way you came in require items from other levels to reach their exits. When you enter The Toybox, you had better have completed the Boiler Room level to have the Hot Coal weapon; the boss in this level is immune to all other weapons from most directions. At The River, if you didn't bring the fish potion with you, your game is over even if you know the hidden route to walk from one end of the level to the other; the boss is unbeatable without that potion.
*** Two optional levels require you to have completed The River. In The Swamp, you need the Icecube item to float across the swamp sections. In Ice box, you need the icecubes to float across the freezing pools of water or the fish potion to swim across.
** ''Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt'' for SNES: in the level 5 basement, it is possible to duck and go through a wall which leaves Pugsley stuck inside the wall with no way out. If this happens reset the game and be careful not to get stuck again.
* The last level of ''Aladdin II'', a Famicom pirate of ''VideoGame/AladdinVirginGames'', has an uncrossable gap.
* The ''VideoGame/ChipNDaleRescueRangers'' game on the NES had a UsefulNotes/GameGenie code that would make you invincible, but did not prevent you from being stunned by attacks. See, in the game, being stunned and being damaged were two completely different things, and the code caused you to always become stunned instead of taking damage. The result was that if you got caught in certain areas where you were rapidly attacked or if you touched a stationary enemy, you'd be stuck. Interestingly, the Game Genie manual specifically warns you about this in the code's description.
* In the [[UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis Sega MegaDrive/Genesis]] game ''Chuck Rock'', the last level has a rock close to a tall platform with a green dinosaur on top. You're ''supposed to'' jump onto the rock and then onto the platform. However, if you throw the rock on the platform to kill the dinosaur, you're as good as screwed. The platform's too tall to overcome with your normal jump, Chuck can't climb, you can't nudge the rock back down, there are no other rocks to use, and there's no way to jump higher. If the player leaves the screen and comes back, the rock doesn't reset. On top of that, enemies don't respawn so the player can't kill themselves, and there's no time limit either so the player is stuck there, without any choice other than to reset the game. Hope you remembered to write down the password...
* ''VideoGame/CommanderKeen'':
** In ''VideoGame/CommanderKeen Episode I: Marooned on Mars'', if you beat a level with a ship part without collecting it, you're screwed as you cannot re-enter levels in the game.
** If you play ''VideoGame/CommanderKeen Episode V: The Armageddon Machine'' on Easy difficulty, and enter the secret level "Korath III Base", if you're running the original version of the game it will crash as soon as you enter this level. The bug-fixed version does not have this problem, but the fuse which you're supposed to break in order to get the alternate ending to the game is not breakable on Easy difficulty. Either way, if you're planning on visiting the secret level, make sure to play on Normal or Hard difficulty.
** Beating the last level of ''VideoGame/CommanderKeen Episode V'' requires [[spoiler:luring a Shikadi mine (which explodes when Keen gets too close) to the Armageddon Machine's achilles heel and using the mine's explosion to take it out]], however, there are a limited number of these particular enemies in the level, and they don't respawn. While there are in-game hints to help the player figure out what has to be done without making it (what the developers might have considered) too easy, there is nothing telling a player who has purged the area of this enemy without achieving the win condition that the level is now unbeatable.
** To complete the last level of ''VideoGame/CommanderKeen Episode VI'', you need all four gem keys. The blue one is carried by a blue Blooglet in the first (mostly black) room, on a platform just before the portal taking you to the next room, and once you go through that portal there's no return; so if you do so without first dropping down to that platform, stunning the Blooglet and picking up the gem, you've already lost.
* In ''VideoGame/CrystalCaves 3'', one of the levels in the HubLevel is located down a deep pit, too deep to jump out. If you drop down into the pit before completing all the other levels, you're stuck. Thankfully, it is possible to leave via cheat codes.
* There was a video game based on the [[Film/DennisTheMenace Dennis the Menace movie.]] The Amiga version was developed under a severe time crunch - so much so, in fact, that they flat-out ''didn't finish the game.'' The last level - not the actual final level of the game, but the last playable level they made - has an impossible jump. Hacking the game to cross the gap reveals that there is nothing on the other side, and there are no levels after that. [[NoEnding The game doesn't end, it just stops.]]
* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong64'':
** If you choose to save in the middle of Hideout Helm, you will return to find one of the Banana Medals can't be collected. You need all the Banana Medals to see the entire ending. Before Website/YouTube, this was one nasty glitch.
** One of Diddy's Golden Bananas in Gloomy Galleon requires you to enter a mechanical fish and shoot out three lights on its heart (which are blocked by a propeller that spins/stops on a set pattern) within a time limit of 90 seconds. This is normally a fairly easy one to get. However, if you decide to go for it only after getting the Sniper Scope upgrade from Funky, it becomes exponentially harder due to a bug that makes the propeller spin longer than normal. A common strategy to circumvent this is to exploit a glitch that allows you to hit lights that are being covered, but this is difficult to do and doesn't always work. An alternative, glitchless method can be seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQspd_6ppO8 here]].
* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest'':
** The UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance version requires you to play a minigame with Funky Kong in the first world in order to gain access to his flight services. If you're in too much of a rush to bother with this, it's possible to get to the Flyin' Kroc level but be unable to ever return to a previous one, making the pursuit of 102% impossible.
* ''VideoGame/DukeNukemManhattanProject'' has an odd one relating to the autosave, where repeatedly dying in a certain location constantly resaves a fraction of a second later, leading eventually to you starting over a pit and dying every time you load.
* ''VideoGame/DynamiteHeaddy'':
** If you are on the top-right corner of the screen after you defeat Baby Face, and you skip the tally screen as fast as possible, Headdy may not have enough time to get to his spot, and if the tallies are gone before he gets there, the game will lock up. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar7f8bkVCyE Here]] is a video.
** There's a way to lock the game if you land the final blow on Clothes Encounters off-screen, with the Super Head. But if you wait for around 4 minutes, it'll eventually return to normal. Video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElviLLHDY_Y here]].
* In ''VideoGame/EpicMickey'', there's a glitch that can occur late in the game, activated if you ignored the machine on Skull Island. After completing Lonesome Manor and starting the quest "Oswald Needs Help", if you go to Ventureland and then back to Mean Street while that quest is active, the game will skip ahead in the story a bit. Not so bad so far, as you can continue the story like normal from this point. However, if you try to go to Ostown, the conflicting events will cause the game to permanently fade to black when you arrive. And since the game autosaves, you'll be stuck if you try to reset and reload.
* In Stage 3 (prehistory) of ''VideoGame/GarfieldCaughtInTheAct'', the boss, a prehistoric Odie, will sometimes bounce offscreen. If he does, he will never return, and you will have no choice but to reset the game.
* Many levels in ''VideoGame/GeometryDash'' are like this, due to updates.
* ''VideoGame/GettingOverItWithBennettFoddy'': it's possible to [[https://youtu.be/nQaQ59FFDU0?t=16 hook your hammer around the radio tower]] at the final part of the game, leaving you unable to move. This was found before the official Steam release, but because [[PlatformHell the game openly tortures its players]], it was not fixed; instead, a voice line was added for anyone who traps themselves on the tower, saying "You got so close, but this is past mending. [[EarnYourBadEnding You got the bad ending]]." Escaping this predicament is technically doable, but extremely difficult.
* Stage 4 in ''[[VideoGame/GhostsNGoblins Ghouls 'n Ghosts]]'' is a direct cause of this. The fourth boss is a giant worm, and the only way to kill it is by [[AttackItsWeakPoint destroying the five "wounds" located around its body]]. However, they can only be reached by throwing projectiles downward, so if the boss is reached with the sword, the game's sole melee weapon, it becomes impossible to defeat, since its range isn't long enough to hit, and the [[FlunkyBoss smaller worms it constantly spawns]] can't drop weapons. This is merely an annoyance in most versions, since dying to the boss puts you back at the stage's halfway point where a different weapon can easily be acquired from a chest or an enemy, but it's a complete death sentence in the Genesis/Mega Drive port, since dying at a boss will put you right back at the boss, stalling all progress and rendering the entire game unfinishable.
* Downplayed in ''VideoGame/HollowKnight'': In the Fungal Wastes level, there's a large pit just outside of the Mantis Village with quick-moving enemies and a somewhat difficult jump to make if you don't have the Mantis Claw, which lets the player wall-jump. It's possible for the Knight to fall into the pit and keep going down to the bench to rest, which also saves the game. Doing so if you are not yet good at jumping on the SpringySpores to get out, and aren't yet fast enough to deal with the mantis enemies, means you're [[NoobBridge potentially stuck, possibly for good if you can't figure the jumping out and can't deal with the enemies]]. To add insult to injury, there's an NPC and a Charm at the bottom which you need if you're going for [[HundredPercentCompletion 112%]], so you have to go down there. There is a way back out if the Royal Waterways pathway is open, but this doesn't open up until later in the game, past the point you'd have the Mantis Claw. Since you can't just climb out with the Mantis Claw by wall-jumping, the only way out is the mushrooms you have to Nail-Pogo on. Escape requires you to get good, cheat, or start over and hope you don't fall back in again. Fortunately, this spot is early enough in the game that it isn't a major issue unless you're new to the game, but this becomes UnwinnableByInsanity if you somehow manage the incredibly difficult task of getting down here without the Mothwing Cloak, because then you can't even get into the Mantis Village after jumping to get the Mantis Claw in the first place, as the platforming there ''requires'' the Mothwing Cloak to get to that item. Again, the only way out of this situation is to cheat or to somehow manage to jump on the mushrooms well enough to get back up to Greenpath and fight Hornet for the Mothwing Cloak.
* The [[PortingDisaster TurboGrafx16 version]] of the NintendoHard ''[[VideoGame/MontyMole Impossamole]]'' has shoddily placed [[PointOfNoReturn Points Of No Return]] in some levels in such a way that if you missed a PlotCoupon (scroll) beforehand, then it would be [[PermanentlyMissableContent unobtainable]]. Having Monty commit suicide didn't help if you crossed a reload point after the PointOfNoReturn; the mission would be Unwinnable unless you lost all your lives and started from the beginning. Talk about bad level design.
* ''VideoGame/JakIIRenegade'' has a particularly nasty glitch towards the end. There's a kiosk near the racing arena that allows you to replay any of the arena races. Using it puts an icon on your map so that the race can trigger properly. The problem comes in when a late game mission starts in the arena area. If you use the kiosk past a certain point in the game prior to starting the affected mission, the kiosk's mission trigger will override the story mission's trigger, rendering it impossible to start the mission and, consequently, finish the game.
* One of the Dark Daxter levels in ''VideoGame/JakAndDaxterTheLostFrontier'' can end up like this; no idea why, but going through an autosave point at a bad time can result in Daxter finding himself with no spiders to use to clog up holes in the ground, and not enough dark eco to smash through a wall.
* In ''VideoGame/JigglyZone'', there used to be a bug where if you collected just the powerup in a certain area before leaving, the [[MacGuffin medallion shard]] in the other chest would accidentally be registered as collected. As grabbing all the shards forms the main quest, this would have broken the game. The bug has since been fixed, however.
* In a level of ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar'', there is a room you can enter only by breaking blocks on either side of the door with one of Kirby's [[MegaManning powers]]. Standard issue Kirby is completely unable to move or break these blocks, so if you enter the room, clear out the baddies, but lose whatever powers you used to get in (intentionally or otherwise), you won't be able to get back out. Entering and exiting the room causes the blocks to respawn (but not the enemies), and Kirby can't suck in enemies beyond physical boundaries like walls, so you're forced to hit reset. This is probably the highest level of difficulty you will see in the entire game. It was eventually fixed in the DS remake.
* In ''VideoGame/OriAndTheBlindForest'':
** One part of Sorrow Pass requires you to use boulders to block [[LaserHallway death lasers]]. A glitch may cause one of the boulders to disappear upon reloading or backtracking, or you can get one stuck in the wrong place, leaving you unable to progress in both cases.
** A similarly infamous glitch in Moon Grotto may cause Ori to be trapped under the laser in the optional bottom room.
** Ori will sometimes glitch into rocks and get stuck, forcing a reload.
* One area in the final level of ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'' features an AdvancingWallOfDoom that requires you do a lot of fancy jumping to avoid it, using all of your different jump techniques. However, a seemingly random bug can activate in this part of the level, where your [[JumpPhysics double jump]] refuses to work... dooming you to a [[SuperDrowningSkills watery grave]].
* The Commodore 64 port of ''Rastan'' has an impossible jump in the ice level.
* In the first ''VideoGame/{{Shantae}}'', it's possible to reach the fourth dungeon boss early, without having picked up the Harpie transformation dance. Cue HopelessBossFight, as the only way to make the boss vulnerable to attack is to first fly above it as the Harpy and smack it in the head. Dying simply respawns you in the same room, so the only way to get out is to waste all your lives and get a Game Over or reset: both options requiring you to play the whole dungeon again.
* The ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' series has numerous examples.
** ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'':
*** The original release of had several glitches that allowed you to get stuck. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSmXLrkMlOI You can glitch through the roof of the train station at the beginning of Tails's story, and play and finish Casinopolis before the casino area was unlocked]]...only to find yourself unable to leave the area (thanks to the pathways to and from Casinopolis still being sealed shut) and stuck there by the game's auto-saving, permanently ruining the entire save file (which has stories for ''six'' characters). It isn't impossible to leave the area, but it requires pin-precision platforming to the point where those with less patience might not find wasting that time to be worth it.
*** Another interesting example: You can opt to obtain Sonic's optional upgrade in the Last Story and then save and quit. When you load the game, you'll get text indicating what has last happened in the game, just like in any other character's story. When you obtained the Crystal Ring determines what the text says. (For those who haven't played the game, that's not supposed to happen in the Last Story.) When the "previously" text is finished scrolling, the game will freeze. Interestingly, the background art is the CG of Perfect Chaos as he looked ''before'' his final in-game design.
** In ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure2'' for the UsefulNotes/SegaDreamcast, some discs had an error which made you fall through the floor at the beginning of the last level, meaning there's no way to stop it. [[https://tcrf.net/Sonic_Adventure_2_(Dreamcast)#Anti-Piracy The Cutting Room Floor]] speculates this was done [[InvokedTrope intentionally]] for CopyProtection purposes.
** ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2'':
*** In Wing Fortress Zone, there is one point where Super Sonic can jump off a rising platform when at its peak and barely reach the next level up, which looks like a shortcut, except there are walls on all sides, and the way you came was a floor that can only be passed through from the bottom. The only way to continue is to run out the timer. (There's other places like this, accessible mostly via glitch.)
*** There's the infamous "Stupid Pit" in Mystic Cave Zone. It has spikes at the bottom, and is far too deep to jump out of. Get all seven Emeralds, turn Super, fall in, and you now must wait for your rings to run out. An otherwise functionally identical-to-the-original mobile port of the game replaces this spike-filled pit with a spikeless pit [[spoiler:that leads to a redone version of the infamous DummiedOut [[SavedByTheFans Hidden Palace Zone]] if you fall in.]]
** ''VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles'':
*** During either act of Marble Garden Zone, while playing Sonic with Tails following, it's possible to glitch Tails off the screen so you go through the rest of the Zone solo. Doing so prevents Tails from returning to aid you in fighting the Zone's main boss; you're stuck off the screen and out of reach until you reset the game.
*** Also, you'd better not be Super Sonic when you reach that main boss, or Tails will not appear either. A similar thing happens if you replay that level, play as Super Tails, and hit Eggman more than 8 times before he takes the battle into the skies. However, this was fixed in at least one later rerelease. (specifically, ''Sonic Classic Collection'' for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS)
*** Better not screw around playing Tails with the second controller in Hidden Palace, or he may not automatically get into place to fall to the bottom of the level, making it impossible to proceed.
*** In Carnival Night Zone, Sonic can get stuck in a quarter pipe's wall if the player makes him go too fast, and it's impossible to get Sonic out. The dev team evidently knew about this but didn't have time to fix it: the American manual {{Hand Wave}}s it by saying that they are traps that Robotnik lays to take advantage of Sonic's speed.
*** In Launch Base Zone, if you spindash into a ramp, Sonic will glitch through it and get stuck in it until he dies from the time running out.
*** Knuckles normally does not go into Death Egg Zone at all (his game ends at Sky Sanctuary), but if you decide to play as Knuckles in Death Egg via level select, you'll find that Act 1 is impossible to complete because the boss's core is too high for Knuckles's lower jumping height.
** The Past version of Metallic Madness Zone 2 in ''VideoGame/SonicCD'' has a certain area where the player is expected to use a diagonal spring to launch Sonic up to a platform, that of which is needed to order to progress through the rest of the zone. Unfortunately, it doesn't have enough launching power for players to reach the platform with it, resulting in the player being unable to complete the level. The game isn't entirely rendered unwinnable at this point, but this does force the player to have to time-travel into the Present version in order to complete the stage... which is a tall order [[MarathonLevel due to both the structure and the sheer size of the level itself]]. This only exists in the original game, however; the PC port (which is included in ''Sonic Gems Collection'') and the 2011 remake thankfully address this by changing the spring's launching power to be strong enough for the player to access the platform.
** ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogMegamix Sonic Megamix]]'', a hack of ''Sonic 1'' ported to the Sega CD with enhanced graphics and new level design, has a glitch in version 4.0b right at the end of Starry Night Zone Act 2 that can get you stuck in the wall. It's rather consistent if you're moving quickly, and it's a glaring problem in an otherwise wonderful hack.
** ''VideoGame/ShadowTheHedgehog'':
*** In the Hero mission of The Doom, sometimes the Heal Units necessary to save the kidnapped researchers can glitch out and get stuck in midair, making them impossible to use, although the mission can still be completed if the Heal Cannon has been unlocked.
*** There's another one in the fight against Sonic and Diablon. The gimmick of this fight is to bounce off of Sonic in order to reach and attack Diablon. However, if he falls off the arena (say, if he went to attack Shadow near the edge and missed), he doesn't respawn, and Diablon cannot be hit.
** In ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006'', it's possible to glitch past a rock wall early in Shadow's episode, which skips having to get the blue Memory Shard upgrade needed to activate Chaos Boost and break the wall. However, defeating Mephiles Phase 1 requires using Chaos Boost, and if you saved at any point after beating Kingdom Valley without the upgrade, you cannot beat Shadow's episode on that save file.
* ''VideoGame/SpongebobSquarepantsBattleForBikiniBottom'' ''Rehydrated'' had at least three spatulas that could become unobtainable because of glitches: the "Annoy Squidward" one in Bikini Bottom (If you enter Squidward's house, talk to him a few times but not enough to get the spatula and exit, the mission becomes impossible to do), the sandcastle one in Goo Lagoon (sometimes the screen flashes black randomly in any point of the level and from that point on the game will think you already got that spatula) and the slide one in Rock Bottom (touching the spatula in the moment it despawns will make the game think you grabbed it, but it's actually still unobtained). The [[GoldenEnding 100% completion secret ending]] would also become unobtainable if you got the normal ending first, because the final boss could not be re-fought unlike in the original version of the game. These were all thankfully addressed in subsequent patches.
* In the [=PlayStation=] 2 version of ''VideoGame/SpongebobSquarepantsRevengeOfTheFlyingDutchman'', a loading glitch prevents the game from working properly.
* ''VideoGame/SpiderMan2000'' is unwinnable on modern [=PCs=] due to a strange choice in how cut scenes are managed: [=NPCs=]' actions are exactly defined, but Spider-Man himself still uses game engine physics in cutscenes, just with preprogrammed control inputs; and since the game engine is still running for him, he can actually die and end the game. This means that variations in timing - which are 100% certain on modern machines compared to ones from 2000 - will result in moments such as Scorpion's monologue being interrupted by Spider-Man smacking into the window behind him and plummeting to his death (he was supposed to swing in through the window, but timed the controls wrong). Spider-Man will also bang his head on a windowsill and fall to his death while chasing Venom in one of the cut scenes in that level, which makes the game unwinnable; the former scene is skippable, the latter is not.
* The UsefulNotes/GameBoy original version of ''StarWars: Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' included an unwinnable situation in the first level. Near the end of the Hoth caves stage, there was a long jump that needed to be crossed, with a stack of ice blocks on the other side allowing you to reach your destination. However, the ice blocks are [[DestroyableItems destroyable]], meaning that if you accidentally break enough of them (particularly by riding your Tauntaun while attempting the jump--it's weight automatically breaks through ice blocks), you are stuck with no possibility of finishing the level. Possibly UnwinnableByDesign.
* In the UsefulNotes/GameBoy original ''Franchise/StarWars: Film/ANewHope'', you can find each of the main characters from the movie (except Chewbacca and C-3PO) and add them to your party. However, you don't ''need'' to find any of them except R2-D2. Obi-Wan Kenobi is located in the back of a cave out in the middle of nowhere, and is notable in that he provides you with the less than useful lightsaber and also has the ability to heal your party a certain number of times. However, if you left Obi-Wan to rot on Tatooine then you'll quickly regret it upon reaching the trash compactor level of the Death Star. The sewer monster from the movie is seemingly immune to your blaster, and even if it isn't the damaging water rises too quickly for you to kill it that way. The only way to get past the dianoga is with the lightsaber provided by Obi-Wan.\\\
In the NES version, you have to get certain things on Tatooine before leaving the planet in the Falcon. You have to at least get R2-D2, but unlike the Game Boy version, the lightsaber is obscenely useful, so you'll probably get Obi-Wan, and you have to get Han to leave. You do ''not'', however, have to explore all the seemingly useless caves to find the little shield pick-ups. Failure to get ''any'' of these means that the Falcon turns into a one-hit wonder during the piloting sections, which are among the most difficult in a game that's already NintendoHard. Assuming you actually manage to survive the asteroid field that you encounter immediately after leaving Tatooine[[note]]Difficult due to seemingly random, unavoidable asteroids, but not technically impossible[[/note]], then you'll make it through the extremely difficult Death Star platforming sections (including 3 bosses) and immediately run into the TIE fighter escape from the Death Star piloting sequence, in which it is almost impossible to not get hit at least once.
* A rather ridiculous example from the notoriously terrible hack of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'', ''Super Mario Superstar 1'': the final boss does absolutely nothing. Doesn't move, doesn't attack, doesn't take damage, can't die... This obviously makes it completely impossible to win or see the ending.
* The [[PortingDisaster disastrous DOS port]] of the original ''VideoGame/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' is unwinnable due to no fault of the player, since there is a jump in the sewers of Area 3 that is impossible to negotiate due to a low ceiling. Unless, that is, you use a cheat code to walk through walls or skip levels, or [[GoodBadBug take advantage of a particular glitch that also allows you to skip this.]]
* In the UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor pirate ''Thunder Blast Man'', [[PortingDisaster an even worse port]] of the Famicom ''Rocman X'', the "city stage" boss is unbeatable due to a GameBreakingBug.
* In ''VideoGame/TinyToonAdventuresBusterBustsLoose'', there's a part near the end of the second level where the game takes control away from you so that Buster can show off and stand as close as possible to the edge of the roof of a train wagon (which is next to a bottomless pit, naturally) during a AutoScrollingLevel before he dashes off and uses a convenient ramp to make it to the final part of the stage [[LastSecondShowoff right before the screen is about to push him off the train]]. The problem is that the game defaults to R button being set as "dash", and if you've changed it to something else, Buster will just stand there and get killed repeatedly since you can't change controller settings in the middle of the game.
* In order to beat the next to last level of the 1993 Sega Genesis ''VideoGame/XMen1993'' game, you need to destroy a computer terminal and wait for Professor Xavier to tell you to "Reset the computer now!" How? [[spoiler:By pushing the reset button on the console itself.]] This made the game impossible to beat on the Sega Nomad since [[spoiler:that system didn't have a reset button]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Puzzle Games]]
* Some computer versions of the classic 14-15 puzzle have an inappropriate shuffle routine (one which lays down the tiles in just any old order, instead of taking the space on a random walk through the tiles or swapping an even number of pairs of tiles, either of which procedures guarantees a solvable position) and thus generate an unsolvable position in 50% of cases.
* In ''VideoGame/AngryBirds2'', in some of the boss stages, it's possible to knock the boss pig off the left side of the screen, which renders him unbeatable since unlike the original ''VideoGame/AngryBirds'', you can't launch your birds backward (trying to do so resets the slingshot).
* In the iPhone version of ''VideoGame/{{Bookworm}}'', you have to collect words on various lists (body parts, vegetables, pets, etc). The word "Gold" is on the "Colors" list and the "Minerals" list, but you can't collect it from "Minerals" so you can't ever complete all the lists.
* The American version of ''VideoGame/BubbleBobble Revolution'' for the DS has a glitch that causes the boss to not load in Level 30, making the game Unwinnable. The bug was fixed in the v1.1 release.
* In ''[[VideoGame/CandyCrushSaga Candy Crush Soda Saga]]'':
** It's possible (though again very rare) to get a release-the-bears level into a state where the soda level is short of the candy string, but cannot be raised because no more soda bottles are appearing. Careless use of boosters to destroy most of the candy on the level is one way to reach such a state.
** In level 49, the middle of the level (the top when you come in) is filled with locked blue candies alternating with cupcakes. There's also a separate part of the level containing a color bomb (floating) and a wrapped blue candy (fixed at the top). The idea is to raise the soda level enough to get the bomb next to the wrapped candy, so you can match them and blow all those locked candies and cupcakes out of the way; but it is possible for the bomb to go off prematurely, in which case your only hope is to make another one and match it with a blue candy, which is very unlikely.
* Some (but not all) Windows copies of ''VideoGame/ChipsChallenge'' have a bug in Level 88 that effectively renders it unwinnable, due to increased aggressiveness of the walker enemy. This would later become known as the "Spirals corruption". Fortunately, failing a single stage enough times gives you the option to skip it.
* ''Computer Spider Solitaire'' can be rendered Unwinnable if you clear away almost all of the cards before dealing the last set (this is rarely even possible, but it can happen). The game won't deal any more cards unless all the open spaces are covered, and if you don't have enough cards in play to cover them, you're stuck. This can be solved by simply planning ahead, but it's a crushing way to lose, since just moments ago you were doing exceptionally well.
* The ''Crimson Room'' [[RoomEscapeGame escape game]] has the player enter a randomly-generated 4-digit code to open a safe. The code to the safe is provided by a memo, which has the URL to a separate webpage written on it. Now, several sites have made efforts to preserve the original game, but cannot replicate the webpage needed for the safe code, forcing the player to brute-force up to ten thousand combinations to proceed. While some hosts try to avert this with an earlier version of the game that doesn't randomly generate the safe code, learning the code without looking for a guide is still impossible.
* In the version of ''TabletopGame/{{Freecell}}'' distributed with UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows, game 11982 out of 32000 is unwinnable. Windows XP and onward extend this to 1,000,000 games. The same seed-based [[RandomNumberGenerator RNG]] is used, so as earlier, 11982 is impossible. Including that one, there are eight unwinnable deals. 146692 is the second one. Taken even further, 1282 out of the first 100 million deals are unwinnable, which is one out of every 78,003.
* At least one level in the SNES version of the original ''VideoGame/{{Lemmings}}'' was impossible to beat due to the timer being too short to save all the lemmings. The only way past is to use a password.
* If you play ''VideoGame/NullpoMino'' with one of the "Nintendo" rulesets, don't pick modes with a win condition that require you to play at speeds exceeding 1G[[note]]20 grid cells per frame, where 1 frame = 1/60 second. For reference, a standard ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' playfield is 20-22 cells tall.[[/note]] such as any Grade Mania mode. Since the Nintendo rulesets do not have the lock delay necessary to play at higher fall speeds, unlike the "Standard" and [[VideoGame/TetrisTheGrandMaster "Classic"]] rulesets, you'll find yourself in a situation just like Level 29 in NES ''Tetris'', i.e. you can't move pieces all the way to the left or the right, preventing you from making lines. It gets worse if the mode starts in 20G (i.e. instant-fall speed), such as any Speed Mania mode, in which case [[PressStartToGameOver you'll be unable to do anything at all as your pieces helplessly stack to the top for a quick Game Over]].
* The first episode of ''VideoGame/{{Paganitzu}}'' features a mechanic that makes the player's hat fall off at random times. The hat remains in position even if the player dies and restarts the level, which allows it to disrupt your game in multiple ways:
** The hat acts as a path-disrupting obstacle for spiders, so if you are very unlucky, on a level where there is no physical obstacle between you and a spider (eg 14, 17, 20), it is possible for the hat to make a spider immediately come after you and kill you when the level starts. If you're even more unlucky, the spider will come for you faster than you can retrieve the hat, over and over again until you run out of lives.
** If the hat is in the way of another object when the level resets, then that object will not appear. This can sometimes be an advantage, but if the thing it replaced was a critical boulder, too bad. This one at least can be fixed by collecting the hat and then dying again.
** If the hat is dropped in your starting location, then the player's position ''will not be reset'' after dying; you respawn in the same spot you died. This is occasionally exploitable, but can easily lead to situations where a level cannot be finished even by dying, and only the level warp cheat code can save you.
* In ''VideoGame/PuzzleQuest'', it's possible to accidentally make the siege of Silvermyr unwinnable if you spam too many spells; the Magic Node (adds +5 to all skills when enemy uses a spell) will buff its skills to ludicrous levels (Battle 90+) meaning that any damage done to it will do nothing or actually heal it!
* Most implementations of ''VideoGame/{{Shanghai}}'' just lay down the tiles any old how, usually resulting in an unsolvable position. Fortunately, some (most notably Kyodai) are far more considerate of the player.
* ''VideoGame/{{Superliminal}}'': Due to the way the physics & map loading works, there are multiple ways to induce a GameBreakingBug. One example is the bouncy castle & pool room you can break the game by manipulating the castle & your movements in such a way that you can fit through the vent at the top of the map instead of completing the puzzle as expected. This breaks the physics and textures on the map. Fortunately, the game provides a PuzzleReset to get out of such a situation.
* ''VideoGame/TheWitness'' generally makes a good effort to avoid having PermanentlyMissableContent, or letting players get stuck in areas. However, the swamp may be the exception: it's a tricky area to navigate, with several sections involving platforms that move when an associated panel is activated. The problem comes when said platforms can be triggered to move without the player standing on them [[spoiler:(which is actually required for some of the environmental puzzles)]], and the control panel unable to be used to move the platform back. Sometimes, you may be able to cimcurvent this by taking a ride on the boat or using one of the unlockable shortcuts to get to the now unreachable location. If that's not the case, you're going to have a really bad time finding a spot which gives you the perspective to activate a panel from a long distance that doesn't even allow you to see what you're doing (and that's if you can remember what the solution was). [[https://steamcommunity.com/app/210970/discussions/4/458607699622966916/ This]] is a particularly painful example.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Puzzle Platformers]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'':
** It is possible, if you try very hard, to accidentally lose a weighted storage cube to a portal glitch that makes it randomly disappear; this makes most levels unwinnable.
** In the instances of making the levels unwinnable that the developers have figured out, [=GLaDOS=] (your instructor for the game) will practically call the player an idiot, stating that it is no fault of the Enrichment Center that you have managed to trap yourself.
** A much easier way to screw up your game completely is to fall into toxic waste and simultaneously hit one of the badly placed autosaves.
** It is much easier to make the game unwinnable when playing the bonus maps (the harder versions of Rooms 13-18) by, say, dropping a weighted cube in the goo where it cannot be recovered. This is also played with in one of the rooms: [[spoiler:you have to drop the Companion Ball into the incinerator before the timer goes off. This involves moving a lot while a timer is running. If you deliberately make the level unwinnable, [=GlaDOS=] will open an "emergency escape hatch," which means that you have to move about a tenth as far to get the ball into the incinerator]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Racing Games]]
* ''VideoGame/CrashTeamRacing'' has a slight bug with the way carts are reset after they fall off of the track. The game has a set distance that is recovered to place the player's carts, regardless of what section of the track is (or isn't) there at the time. This can be especially bad on some tracks that require a long boosting sequence to clear. Fall short, and enjoy the endless loop of the game resetting your cart in the middle of empty space, or a standing start on a single acceleration panel launching you only halfway ad infinitum.
* ''VideoGame/TheCrew'' can sometimes invert this due to a bug that can make Race Faction Missions impossible to ''lose''. The bug causes AI cars to fall through the map, rendering them unable to finish the race. Since races longer than ten minutes only require the player to finish in the top three and the four longest races only have three AI opponents, completing the mission is guaranteed at that point.
* In the [=PlayStation=] game ''Formula One '98''. Switching on the rules, tire wear and fuel depletion options, and then choosing a full 100% race distance has the potential to render said race completely unfinishable. The reason? A bug exists in the game which means you will more-often-than-not receive a Stop-Go penalty for speeding in the pitlane, and upon leaving the pits, you will instantly be disqualified for not serving the penalty. Since you ''will'' have to refuel the car at some point during the race, you're pretty screwed.
* The original ''VideoGame/FZero'' had a level called "Death Wind" that was impossible to beat with the Golden Fox on Master difficulty. This is because the Golden Fox had the best handling but the lowest top speed, and the AI racers were just too fast for the Fox to catch them. With every lap having an increasingly strict requirement as to what position a player could safely be in, this meant outright failing the course after a certain number of laps had passed. The level has been beaten only once with the Golden Fox on a Tool-Assisted {{Speedrun}}, and that was because the speedrunner had the car in second place "pushing" him.
* In ''VideoGame/TokyoXtremeRacer 3'', to face the last opponent and be able to finish the game, you must defeat the other 599 opponents. But one particular opponent, Whirlwind Fanfare, only appears when you have 100,000,000 CP; All CP needed / earned was divided by 100 for the US release (to reflect dollars rather than yen), but both she and another wanderer who have monetary requirements, Exotic Butterfly, did not have their values adjusted. This would have been merely annoying (You'd just have to grind more), had the US version not also introduced a maximum currency cap as a result, unintentionally or otherwise, of the currency deflation, and cap itself is at 99,9999,990 CP, 10 CP short of the what is needed for Whirlwind Fanfare to appear. As such, the US release is unwinnable without the use of a cheat device.
* There's a bug in ''VideoGame/{{Forza}} Horizon 4'' that affects the Seasonal Playlist. If you visit one of the DownloadableContent expansion areas (Fortune Island or Lego Valley), do not stay there when the season changes if you're going for 100% in a given season. Going to these locales causes the photo challenge (where you need to take a picture with one of your vehicles in a specific setting) to lose its completion mark and if the season changes while you're away from the mainland, it stays incomplete. This is especially annoying if you're trying to max out a series as you have to wait an ''entire month'' for another stab at 100%.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Time Strategy]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Blitzkrieg}}'' 2, it's very easy to break certain scripts and make missions unwinnable by simply getting in the way of AI controlled ally convoys. For example, during the defense of Sevastopol, if you accidentally put your naval vessel in the way of the sail barge as it enters/leaves (Which is a part of a critical defense objective), the barge will remain as it is even when you move the vessel away and the mission's script will break, forcing you to, either, destroy the vessel yourself or restart the mission.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Desperados}} 2: Cooper's Revenge,'' there's a level with a sheriff NPC which you are not supposed to be able to kill; due to a bug, [[LordBritishPostulate you can kill him.]] Speaking to this NPC triggers a mandatory scripted event. But if you kill him before talking to him, then the scripted event will never happen and the level (and thus the entire game) becomes unwinnable. The worst thing about this is that it doesn't become clear immediately; you may play for a long time wondering why nothing is happening and overwriting your save files. If you didn't have a save from before killing him, then you'll have to restart the enormously long level from the start. A published patch is supposed to fix the bug, but it doesn't.
* In one level in ''VideoGame/DesperadosIII'', one of your characters, [=McCoy=], is unconscious and needs to be carried to a boat at the end of the level. One of the other characters can throw bodies he's carrying, with no requirement that he (or, anyone else) be able to reach that location by any other means. The boat has an unreachable roof in throwing distance, but throwing [=McCoy=] on there doesn't count as bringing him to the boat, and the game only tells you this when you've completed all the other objectives in the level. Hope you didn't quicksave in the meantime.
* ''VideoGame/EmpireEarth'': The expansion adds some extremely powerful civ powers that are still available in the campaign menu if you play the original game's campaigns in the expansion. Unfortunately, this also makes several missions unplayable because you can no longer build the required unit.
* In ''VideoGame/TheForgotten'', due to a somewhat fussy mouse control over a secret drawer, the player could end up skipping over a key required to enter a room on another floor. So when they enter the elevator, and use another key they found to release the safety so it crashes into the basement. Well Congratulations, you're missing the key item to end the game and now the elevator's broken, so you can't get back up (yes, there is a reason why this planned 7-part series only got the first game out).
* ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}}'' has potential to become unwinnable. Libra is placed high atop a large cliff side in the Forest Naval. You can get it down without problems most of the time, but there is a small chance that your pikmin will misstep on their way back down, [[PermanentlyMissableContent taking it and them to the abyss below]]. Libra won't respawn in its old spot, and you can't win the game if you save this: you need all the vital parts at least to win, let alone all the ship parts, and Libra happens to be vital.
* In ''VideoGame/TheSettlers'' IV, thanks to later expansions, this happens in the ''tutorials''. One of the tutorial levels instructs the player on the construction of Eyecatchers, decorative items that improve soldier morale. One of the expansions added a gold bar cost, but without modifying the tutorial level, resulting in the player running out of gold bars and being unable to finish. A later tutorial introduces the player to the Viking race, and has the player build a boat. Another expansion-added option is the ability to infinitely produce weapons or tools, and the tutorial starts with it enabled and you can't turn it off, meaning that by the time the average player reaches the point where the boat needs to be built, the AI has used up all their iron bars.
* ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'':
** In the Tribal and Civilization stages, your tribe's/civilization's fall takes you back to the last save point. If you saved at a moment where you didn't stand a chance, then you're caught in a GroundhogDayLoop of defeat. Your only recourse is to reload the creature on a new planet.[[note]]There ''are'' ways to revert to an earlier save, but [[GuideDangIt you have to be savvy in regards to hidden folders and save file locations to pull it off.]][[/note]]
** In the creature stage, your first nest could be in the water. Trying to swim to shore got you eaten by [[BorderPatrol the sea monster]].
** In the tribal stage, your chieftain might randomly float miles up in the air, making it impossible to do mission-critical things that require the chieftain.
** In the space stage, the spaceship you're sent to scan after you leave your planet sometimes failed to spawn. Since you need to scan it to get the Interstellar Drive and leave the star system, proceeding was impossible.
* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'':
** In ''VideoGame/StarcraftBroodWar'', mission 2 of the Zerg campaign, you are given one SCV handling a psi emitter. Your task is to go near stranded zerg units and capture them with the power of the emitter, then build your base with the two initial rogue drones you can mind control. Except, if you order to both drones to start morphing into hatcheries, the game thinks that you don't have no more available (finished) buildings nor builders (since the drones are turning into hatcheries), and awards you with a sudden defeat screen.
** ''VideoGame/StarCraftIILegacyOfTheVoid'' unbelievably has this in ThatOneLevel, ''Templar's Return'', part 2. Accidentally kill off too many of the enemy's mechanical units? You're screwed, there's no way to proceed. Thankfully, the game was merciful enough to autosave for you right before the start of that part of the level.
* Downplayed in ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'' to merely "unplayable the way the devs intended", if you play Reign of Chaos after installing The Frozen Throne.
** The penultimate human level has Arthas sinking his own ships (and blaming the mercenary monsters he hired) to prevent the royal edict from calling his men home. The game recommends using Muradin's Storm Bolt to sink the ships, but the expansion mechanics removed mechanical units from the list of acceptable targets.
** The third undead level has you use goblin zeppelins and [[ActionBomb sappers]] to move around, even recommending you [[DeathFromAbove use zeppelins to drop sappers into unsuspecting enemy bases]]. The expansion forbids sappers from entering zeppelins precisely to prevent such a GameBreaker strategy.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Evil Genius}}'' Katerina Frostonova's ability is Cold Assassin which triggers once she is on the island. This ability makes her choose a target and kills them in one hit, bypassing all security measures in her way since she also turns invisible. She is also immune to physical attacks and endurance attacks, meaning she almost can't be stopped. It doesn't last forever, but guess what this means if her target is the Evil Genius (the player character, whose death causes DecapitatedArmy) and they're in a spot she can reach?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Rhythm Games]]
* ''VideoGame/{{beatmania}} IIDX 9th Style''. The game itself is already buggy, but if the song "General Relativity" is played as the first song after a machine bootup, all note judgements no matter your timing will be [=POORs=], thereby making clearing the chart impossible.[[labelnote:Explanation]]The song uses the timing windows of the last song that was played on the machine. Since playing it as the first song after bootup means no song was played beforehand, the timing windows will fail due to lack of timing data.[[/labelnote]]
* ''VideoGame/DanceDanceRevolution'' ''UNIVERSE 3'' has one mission in Quest Mode that is impossible due to the way the timing windows of notes end up working. It requires you to get all Goods on a small section of the song "Streamline", but you're ''guaranteed'' to get at least one Great because of how fast the notes move; the timing windows overlap each other, making getting all Goods impossible. As a result, a few customization items (and the achievements for both completing all missions and unlocking all customization items) go forever unattainable.
* The specifics of the ''[[VideoGame/RockBand Rock Band 2]]'' star cutoffs mean that the score required to get a 5-star do ''not'' go up in direct proportion to how many notes are added - instead, the cutoffs take what is called a "base score" (every note taken at 1x, all sustains held to full) across all of the parts and multiply them by a number that increases depending on how many players (and which parts) there are. There are also two different challenges that strip overdrive from all songs in the setlist, one of which tasks you with getting five stars on every song in the setlist. Ace of Spades cannot be 5-starred with a full band unless overdrive is used. Biggest Show Ever adds Ace of Spades as an encore, strips away all overdrive phrases from the songs in the setlist, and penalizes you severely if you get a 4 star on any song in the setlist. ''Rock Band 3'' uses a refined method which avoids these problems for stars, but it's occasionally impossible to get 5 spades on a song in the story mode, depending on the song, the number of players, and what you need to do for the spades.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Roguelike]]
* If you make it to the top of the tower in ''VideoGame/AzureDreams'' a second time, the only way out is a Wind Crystal. You could be stuck there forever if you're unlucky enough to never encounter a Wind Crystal or have the last one you'll ever see stolen by a [[BanditMook Picket]].
* Just like its remake, the original version of ''VideoGame/{{Baroque}}'' has voice and item lists, which have to be filled by talking to [=NPCs=] and registering items, in order to obtain 100% completion (and some bonus art). The lists can't be completed in a single game, so you have the chance to restart while keeping your database intact, in order to eventually get everything with repeated playthroughs. However, in what was clearly a design oversight, one of the voices can be missed permanently if you don't get it before registering 20 items. And restarting won't do a thing, since your game data and system data are separate. Your only option is to delete the system data and restart filling the lists from scratch. Made worse from the fact that this mistake is especially easy to meet, because the method of obtaining the voice is rather obscure (you must die three times in a row before talking with the Collector), and because 20 items are usually registered pretty quickly into the game. Good thing you don't actually need 100% completion to see the ending, but still painful for completionists. The problem was fixed in the remake, thankfully.
* ''VideoGame/CryptOfTheNecrodancer'' occasionally creates a "trap" that consists of a valuable item surrounded by four arrow pads. Once you pick up the item, one of the four arrow pads will push you back should you try to leave the square, unless you destroy some of them or have an item that protects you from traps such as the Boots of Levitation or the Heavy Boots. Normally, this wouldn't count as unwinnable, since once the current stage's background music ends, you are forced onto the next level, so you can just wait. However, if you play as Bard, all rhythm-related elements of the game are removed, including the time limit, so if you get trapped between the arrow pads, you have no choice but to quit the game.
* ''VideoGame/NetHack'':
** Version 3.4.3 had [[http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Bugs_in_NetHack_3.4.3 bug C343-424]], which can render one of the {{Plot Coupon}}s permanently unusable if you use it incorrectly. [[spoiler:If the candleabra was lit in the wrong place with one turn of fuel left, it couldn't be refilled.]] [[ScheduleSlip It took 12 years for the release of Nethack 3.6.0 to fix this bug.]]
** It is also technically possible to [[http://tasvideos.org/3080S.html die before even taking a single turn]], though the theoretical odds of this are somewhere around 1 in 3 million.
** If you manage to piss off your Quest Leader before completing the Quest, for example by converting yourself permanently or failing the alignment test too many times, they will not let you into the Quest levels, which house one of the three end-game artifacts you must have to complete the game. The only way forward would be to wish for the Wizards' Quest artifact, which enables you to teleport between level branches. However, you can't wish for your Quest artifact, so if you are a Wizard, the game is unwinnable.
* ''VideoGame/ToeJamAndEarl'': The first game has a random mode where all the levels are randomly generated. On very rare occasions, you'll come across a floor that has completely isolated landmasses from where you start. If an elevator or ship piece is on one of those, you must use a present that allows you access to that area. This trope comes into play if you don't have one or are unable to find to find one on a lower floor.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Role-Playing Games]]
* In ''VideoGame/The7thSaga'', it's possible, after fighting Gariso, to be stuck in an area with monsters too tough for you to handle, so don't fight him until you're at least level 35. This probably weren't so bad in the Japanese version which [[DifficultyByRegion gave better average stat gains per level for party members]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Atelier}}'':
** In ''VideoGame/{{Atelier Iris 2|The Azoth of Destiny}}'', the item "Flay Hammer" is required to proceed at a certain point in the story. If you do not have it already, you cannot learn how to make it at this point, so the game becomes unwinnable. To be fair, it's so difficult to miss that you'd have to go out of your way to avoid having it by this point.
** In ''VideoGame/{{Atelier Annie|Alchemists of Sera Island}}'', events are triggered by entering locations; all but the final assignment, the Cosmic Conis, will be given to you even if you arrive late. The last assignment will only arrive if you leave your lab and re-enter it on a specific date, and if you don't, you'll never get it, even if (because you only have a few weeks left before the contest ends) you spend that day holed up in your lab. You ''have'' to be able to leave, and come back in, in order to trigger the event. Since there's no indication that there even ''is'' a final assignment after the last monthly one, because it's a plot event that's not part of the official contest, it's possible to play through the game several times and never know why you keep getting the bad ending.
** ''VideoGame/AtelierSophieTheAlchemistOfTheMysteriousBook:'' The BonusBoss Tormented Beast can be this. Tormented Beast has a very high HealingFactor, but cannot kill the entire party in one round. If the party have strong resurrection items it is possible to get stuck in a loop where the boss cannot kill the party, but the party cannot harm the boss faster than he heals himself. You cannot run away from boss fights, so the only way out is to force close the game. Hint: level up your weapons first.
* ''Franchise/BaldursGate'':
** ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'':
*** There's a nonstandard game over in which, if you level accusations at the BigBad without the evidence on your person or the person of one of your party members, then you will get called on it and hit with a ''flamestrike'' spell, against which there is no save and which instantly kills you. Since the invitation's icon looks like any of a dozen scrolls you might be carrying around at the time, and since non-magical game items decay after a certain amount of time...
*** When you first enter Baldur's Gate, you meet two rogues, Marek and Lothander, that will harshly threaten you if you don't stop messing with their organization. After some time in the city, Lothander will show up asking to talk. If you agree, he will confess that Marek poisoned your food and that you have 10 days to get the antidote from him. If you refuse Lothander's request to talk, you don't get any warning and Marek doesn't spawn, but the game-flag for the poisoning-countdown still triggers. Even if you agree to talk, Marek still won't spawn until you help Lothander, and Marek's antidote won't spawn if you don't talk first before killing him (it will then be dropped by his corpse). Many players killed Marek before he became hostile and some even killed Lothander before he could explain the situation just to roleplay revenge for the previous threats, only to inexplicably die after 10 days. Without a save from before the dialogue, [[https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Marek_and_Lothander and before the internet could explain what happened]] and offer solutions with cheats, the playthrough was irredeemably screwed.
*** In the initial release of ''Baldur's Gate'', before the first patch came out, it was possible, though very, very rare for Gorion to kill the Armored Figure during the cutscene at the beginning of the game. This caused the game to lock-up and crash. Since there is no plot immortality flag in ''BG 1'', they instead raised the armored figure's HP to 9999 to keep him from getting killed.
*** If you start as a wizard in either ''Baldur's Gate'' or ''Shadows of Amn'' and have only 3 Constitution, then you can't win. You will die in the first in-game cutscenes because enough points of unavoidable damage are dealt to you that your pathetically low HitPoints will be gone. In game terms, this makes sense -- in the tabletop ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', if ''any'' character with a Constitution of 3 ventures out beyond a hermetically sealed clean room, then they're probably not gonna make it.
*** Using Otiluke's Resilient Sphere on [=NPCs=] (to prevent them from getting killed in battle) can sometimes break quests because their triggers can't fire properly.
** ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'':
*** There is a point at which you have to fight Irenicus (and a bunch of minions) in Spellhold. Normally, you just have to get him down to a certain amount of hit points, triggering a dialogue in which he teleports away. You can then exit Spellhold and continue the game. However, if you somehow get extraordinarily (un)lucky and Irenicus fails his save against Disintegrate, then he does indeed Disintegrate - which renders the game Unwinnable, since he's no longer around to trigger the dialogue and you can't move on. Of course, by all in-universe logic, you'll have ''won'' right then because the rest of the game is about chasing and stopping him.
*** One of the designers of the game, Dave Gaider, made a mod for the ''Throne of Bhaal'' expansion pack, making the last battle of the series far more difficult. One of the features is that one of your old enemies, the vampire Bodhi, is teleported in from the Abyss to fight on behalf of the BigBad. The only problem is that, by then, any clerics you may have in your party are so hugely overpowered that, if you enter the last battle with "turn undead" on, she explodes into chunky giblets before she even has a chance to say her menacing dialogue, stopping the game in its tracks.
*** The game can become unwinnable if you accidentally hit a plot-crucial NPC.
* Both ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'' games have remarkably similar situations in which the game can become unwinnable. In the first game, you can't escape the battleship Goldoba until [[ThatOneBoss Giacomo, Folon, and Ayme]] have been defeated, but there's no place to level up on the battleship, meaning you're screwed if you're underleveled. In the second, the [[ThatOneBoss Holoholobird]] attacks after a disk swap and a temporary PointOfNoReturn, which will trap you in the Holoholo Jungle, in an area with no enemies to grind on.\\\
At least the first game has Kalas warn you that you shouldn't leave Mintaka and board the Goldoba until you're absolutely ready. The second game, however, has no excuse.
* The ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' series:
** ''VideoGame/Borderlands1'': While playing through the ''Secret Armory of General Knoxx'' DLC campaign, you eventually confront and defeat the titular BigBad, and his defeat allows access to the nearby Armory. The hallway you enter is set up to look very secure - you make your way down a hallway towards a glass elevator as heavy doors close behind you with a loud slam. As you enter the elevator, you can see rooms on multiple floors packed to the brim with [[InexplicableTreasureChests loot chests]] of the highest quality. You're meant to push the only button in the elevator, descend into the Armory, and [[KleptomaniacHero snatch and grab as much loot as possible]] while a timer counts down. ''However'', the encounter with Knoxx along with the long slog you had to run through to reach him from the closest fast travel station usually left you with a full inventory. If you walked into the Armory's hallway, proceeded to the elevator, and chose to return to town to sell gear, you'd find that you couldn't leave through the entrance you just came from, due to the heavy security doors. If you ''then'' decided to Save and Quit, intending to restart in town and sell your VendorTrash, you could never access the Armory again on your single-player campaign. Many a player 'ported back to town upon seeing the [[TreasureRoom ridiculous amount of loot that they couldn't possibly carry]], and made the long trek back to the BossFight while avoiding loot, bypassing trash mobs and defeating Knoxx ''again'', only to find that the door to the Armory sealed indefinitely. [[spoiler:The game only re-opens the doors to the Armory for future quests '''after''' you've looted it in the first place - ''this will'' '''not''' ''trigger if you don't enter the Armory proper''!]] While you could join an online game and enter the Armory if the host happened to be running through any of the associated quests - which ''would'' actually give you a quest complete, allowing you to [[spoiler:move on to the extra missions]] - there was no way to progress past this point in a single player campaign where you'd locked yourself out.
** The Wilhelm BossFight in ''Videogame/Borderlands2'' takes place in an area enclosed on three sides by ice cliffs and a [[BottomlessPit sheer drop]] on the remaining side. While Wilhelm himself cannot fall off, killing him too close to the edge ''can'' result in the [[MacGuffin power core]] taking a dive, forcing you to exit the game and then reenter it to fight Wilhelm again. [[spoiler:Ironically, the power core turns out to be a trap laid by Handsome Jack. FailureIsTheOnlyOption indeed.]]
* In the third dungeon of ''VideoGame/ByteriaSagaHeroineIysayana'' the heroes have to find a unique item, then run into enemy soldiers when leaving the room. Casting an Exit spell immediately after opening the chest would leave you unable to trigger the cutscene and continue. Later versions fixed this by temporarily disabling the spell.
* ''VideoGame/ChampionsOfNorrath'' has this issue with a boss fight in the first chapter. To reach the Spider Queen boss, you have to [[EscortMission bring a NPC to the door of the boss chamber]]. The NPC opens the door in a cutscene, and once you enter, the door locks you in for the boss fight, also done in a cutscene. Nothing too bad so far. After beating the boss, a door to chapter 2 opens and, like most bosses in the game, she drops equipment, and since there's a good chance you can't wear some it, the logical thing to do is take it and use a Gate Scroll to teleport back to town and sell it. Still not a big deal, since you can Gate Scroll back to where you used the first one. The problem comes when you either use another Gate Scroll out of town or use the teleport pedestal to do some more adventuring. The old Gate Scroll jumping point gets deleted, so you can't Gate back, and since the door to the room opened and closed by cutscene, the player can't open the door to the room, effectively locking you out of chapter 2 permanently.
* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' has a potentially unwinnable BonusBoss with Spekkio, whose final form has 100% Evasion against normal attacks and thus is only vulnerable to magic (he also only attacks with magic). One high-end armor for Lucca completely negates magical damage done to her. Now if you equipped Lucca with a Berserker Band (the character does nothing ''but'' attack, with no player input) to speed up battles, you will be treated to an endless cycle of Spekkio hurling devastating magic that fills the screen to no effect and Lucca shooting/whacking Spekkio to no effect either until eternity's end.
* The golf minigame "Spheda" in ''VideoGame/DarkChronicle'' (Dark Cloud 2 in North America) can be made unwinnable via a bug in the randomly generated dungeons design: after clearing the level of enemies, the game will spawn the sphere and the "distortion" (the hole) at random, then calculate the number of strokes you can make as a function of the distance and the number of walls between one and the other. Unfortunately, sometimes the two objects would spawn close to each other, with a single wall in between... but to get there, you'd have to traverse the entire floor. The game would then give you 1 stroke to sink the ball. It's even worse when Spheda spheres will change color whenever they hit the floor, the ceiling, or a wall, so even if you can make a miraculous U-turn shot, chances are the ball won't be the right color and will bounce off the distortion. Thankfully, ''any'' given level's Spheda can be replayed by beating the level again.
* In ''VideoGame/DarksidersII'' (all versions) there's a bug where one of several energy barriers in certain levels don't open even though they should, making the level and thus the entire game non-completable. (Incidentally, it seems to be a kind of DisasterDominoes of causality. Apparently it happens after having been playing for several hours contiguously, and the reason is that, perhaps due to some overflow or leak, in certain cutscenes a sound fails to play, which in turn causes the cutscene to fail to complete properly, which in turn skips a trigger that would have opened the barrier, and this trigger never happens again because the game assumes it can't be skipped in any circumstance.) In most cases if the player immediately quits and reloads, the game will revert to an autosave from before the cutscene. However, many players, not knowing this, have wandered away and caused the autosave to be overwritten by new ones, after which the trigger that opens the barrier becomes essentially [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost]], rendering the game unwinnable. The only option is to restart the game from the beginning.
* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'':
** Once you obtain the Lordvessel, Ingward gives you the key that allows you to drain the lower section of New Londo, allowing you access to the Four Kings boss fight. Killing him causes him to drop the key, and is often used for SequenceBreaking. However, a rare bug causes him to not drop the key when killed, preventing you from beating Four Kings without further glitching.
** There's an even more infamous [[https://www.youtube.com/embed/5sLV4-MtCAM?start=20138 softlock]] going around, where if you deal enough damage to [[BonusBoss Priscilla]] (typically by means of Red Tearstone Ring, Crown of Dusk, and Dark Bead), her death dialogue might glitch out, preventing you from leaving the Painted World. The only known way to fix this bug is through save file manipulation or by deleting your character entirely, which is incredibly frustrating as the Painted World is a very late-game area. Even more infuriatingly, this bug was never fixed in the Remastered version of the game.
* In ''VideoGame/TheDarkSpire'', it is possible to advance the OneWingedAngel's quest line before obtaining the key item Angel's Bracelet. This causes the player to be unable to obtain the key item Black Orb, rendering the game unwinnable.
* ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'':
** The original game disables the "SAVE" option when you die. However, it does so a few frames late, and during these few frames it's difficult, but possible to save ''already dead'' and watch your character die instantly each time you reload. There's only one save slot. While you ''can'' start the game over with your character's current stats (much like a NewGamePlus, except accessible from the very beginning), you'll lose anything you had left lying around in town (which is likely to be a lot, due to GridInventory and [[EverythingFades Nothing Fades]]). But hey, it's your own damn fault for saving when you knew you were dead.
** You can just plain save while surrounded by monsters and one hit from death. This is obviously user error. Another variant is to save immediately before getting dealt a final blow such as by a projectile, which is more of an accident.
** This can screw up first-time ''Diablo'' players who come from ''Diablo II.'' In ''Diablo 2,'' you CAN save and exit when you die and get away with it. In that game, you will be brought back to town carrying whatever was in your inventory when you died. Anything on the ground or that you dropped(potions, usually), were gone... If you're used to that, the change in save-after-death in the original can burn.
** Multiplayer characters can screw up in a different way: there is no regular save function and dying in multiplayer mode causes your items to fall to the ground. If you die in a place where you can't get them back (there is one notable enemy type that ignores the safe radius around level entrances and is also invisible, so you can die very quickly after entering a level, only to see a mass of hidden ones manifest around the stairs) and have no choice but to leave the game, you lost all of your items permanently. Good luck completing the game after that.
** ''Diablo'' has strong {{roguelike}} influences and can screw you over in numerous other ways. Black Death in particular take away 1 hit point permanently on striking (with no indication that this is the case) and can render the game unwinnable if you are playing very badly and get hit hundreds of times, leaving you with a tiny amount of health. You have to try really hard to make this happen, though.
** Also in ''VideoGame/DiabloII'', if you lose everything, then you can still go back to where you died and pick up your body. Since it's a pain without your best weapons, you may decide to just quit the game and reload it instead. Doing this too many times causes the game to stop at the loading screen with a "Bad Dead Bodies" message. The exact inner workings of this are unknown, but for the most part it happens because of data corruption involving mods.
* ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld'':
** In some PAL copies, there's a glitch which prevents you from accessing a dungeon by stopping you from speaking to the guard who is supposed to run away and let you in. Not being able to get in there has the knock-on effect of barring you from several areas of the game.
** An [[WakeUpCallBoss inordinately tough]] boss battle can be accessed by speaking to a certain character, then leaving his building via the only exit, at which point the boss appears. That building contains the game's only save point, and is where you respawn if you lose a battle. Some versions do reset the event under certain circumstances.
* In ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium'', there is a specific late-game Shivers check that must be passed before you can find where the suspect is hiding. While the odds of passing the check increase the more things you do on the coast (to the point of it having a 97% possibility of success), there is still a 3% chance of doing absolutely everything you can do to re-open the check and rolling snake-eyes. If you don't have any more skill points or any more oppportunities to gain EXP (e.g. due to having done everything else you can possibly do), the game would become impossible to complete. ''The Final Cut'' softened this point by also adding an Encyclopedia check here as well, so you'd have a second chance to get it.
* At the end of ''[[VideoGame/DotHackGU .hack//G.U. Vol. 3]]'', when you're inside Cubia before fighting the final boss, there is a save point. If you save there and aren't strong enough to beat the Anti-Existences and/or Cubia's Core, then you will of course die; when you die, you reload one of your save files. Thus, if your only save is at that point, you're screwed. The game does recommend that you save on a separate save file since you can't return to town, though.
* There is one sidequest in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' in which you escort a blind templar through a building and fight a couple of demons along the way. There is a cutscene that triggers after you kill the first one, but if you get impatient and talk to the templar before it happens, you end up stuck in that room - the only two doors out are both locked and impossible to pick. Luckily, the game autosaves at the start of the area, so you won't lose much game progress by resetting.
* From ''VideoGame/EyeOfTheBeholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon'', in the level with flying cobras and gas spores, you can encounter a priest of Darkmoon lost in the maze and standing on a pressure plate. If you kill him, [[DeadEndRoom the door to the room closes with no way to open it]], forcing you to reload the last saved game. There is a way to keep the door open, however (to get the treasures next to the priest), by luring beforehand a monster into the frame and paralyzing it or turning it to stone; the door then can't close even if the pressure plate is released. This clearly wasn't anticipated by the makers, though, since the whole level gets wonky afterward. Notably, the monsters now all look like priests (but still makes flying cobras sound and can poison you). Not quite a GameBreakingBug as you can still continue playing, but if you've done so before solving the riddle for exiting this level -- which is done by feeding various items to a series of magic mouths in the walls -- then you are stuck because the magic mouths are no longer there.
* ''VideoGame/FableIII'' has a bug that can happen if you access the menu at some areas. Instead of simply opening up a screen with options, Fable 3's "menu system" transports you to your sanctuary, then transports you back when you're done. The bug in question causes you to be transported a few inches below where you should, causing you to fall under the map ''forever''. Worst yet? The game auto-saves every time you leave the menu, and there is no disabling it. Try to re-open the menu to get transported and find another way out? You can't. You're falling, it's an action, and the menu won't open up during actions. Ironically enough, you can open the save/load screen and walk around the save/load room, but nothing else. The game also won't allow multiple save files for a single character. In other words: got this bug at the end of the game? Tough luck.
* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'':
** If you saved the game during the PlayableEpilogue you'd get stuck in it, unable to leave Lalivero and unable to do anything there but view the ending. This wasn't a huge deal if you were completely done with the game, but since you were stuck in Lalivero you couldn't go back and complete the sidequests or find Djinn you missed (and may have wanted to [[OldSaveBonus transfer]] to the second game). The worst part is, many players didn't even realize they were ''at'' the end of the game until the credits started rolling. The story clearly wasn't over -Saturos and Menardi were dealt with, but Felix and Alex escaped, Jenna, Kraden and Sheba hadn't been rescued, and you'd only been to two of the four elemental lighthouses. Many players' first thought after completing Venus Lighthouse would be to save the game... And in doing so, trapped themselves in the epilogue they didn't even know they were in. The sequels fixed this by making it impossible to save after beating the FinalBoss.
** Save after the Mt. Aleph boulder falls and [[spoiler:Jenna's parents, Felix and Kyle supposedly die]], then do the Sanctum cheat, (L, start and select) and congrats, You are in your room, you can't go back to Jenna's house because a boulder is blocking the way, Isaac is on his own, and you can't trigger the cutscene with Saturos and Menardi, and you can save after you do the cheat, and you'll have to restart the game.
** In The Lost Age's Mars Lighthouse, if your inventory is full when given the Mars Star, you won't be able to proceed, thus not be able complete the game. Hope you have an earlier save point beforehand.
* ''VideoGame/{{Gothic}}'', due to its open nature, has the occasional possibility of screwing up if you really go off the rails. For example, you can lure a mid-game boss out of his lair and cause him to fall into a lake, making him impossible to target and thus, impossible to kill for a game-critical item. Luckily there are cheat codes that allow moving [=NPCs=] around.
* ''VideoGame/GrandiaII'': In the first battle against Millenia (a HopelessBossFight), the battle is scripted to end when Millenia casts her Zap! spell. She can get caught in an AI loop that causes her to never use Zap!, and it's impossible to end the battle in any other way (her HP doesn't decrease, and you can't escape the battle).
* ''VideoGame/IcewindDale'':
** In the expansion pack ''Heart of Winter'', there is a scene in which a fight breaks out among members of the tribe the player has been assisting, with the expectation that the player will pile in on the side of the rebels. During this scene, if a friendly tribe member is inadvertently hit (which can easily happen with the mess of area effect spells available to the party by then), all other friendly tribe members will immediately turn hostile. The game will give no indication that this has happened. If this is not noticed and an earlier saved game isn't reloaded, then it is possible to slaughter the entire tribe without realising something is amiss until the NPC who is supposed to trigger the next sequence of events instead attacks and mercilessly butchers the party. If this situation occurs and an earlier savegame is not present, then the game is unwinnable.
** Freeing the salamanders' slaves ''before'' finding and clicking the broken rope bridge to the ice giants' cave means that the only slave capable of teaching you to repair it is gone. You are now unable to get the sixth sigil required to meet the final boss.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Inindo}}'' for the SNES, you eventually reach a point where you must complete a FetchQuest to be rewarded with the key to unlock the door to the rest of the game. When you complete the quest and talk to the person with the key, you are asked if you have space in your inventory to accept it and given a yes/no option. If the first character in your party does not have any free spaces in their inventory when you say yes, then the key disappears. There is no way to get another one. If you save the game before realizing that -- say, you checked your inventory beforehand and saw that the ''second'' character had space in their inventory and assumed that was okay -- then the game is now stuck in an unwinnable state.
* ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'':
** Anyone who doesn't know how to race swoops should never play the first game using autosaves alone. The game autosaves at loading screens at set intervals. It may autosave in a position where your swoop ''is just about to explode''.
** There's an interesting glitch called the "galaxy droid" that gives you access to a debug menu that allows you to reach any area. If you go to areas that you should not be able to reach, then you may not be able to leave.
** Choosing Mission to rescue you on the Leviathan can cause what's known as the Carth Glitch. If Mission is stealthed when she sets everyone free, then the game will hang during a later cutscene while Carth is talking. Carth's mouth will continue to move, but the scene will never move on. This occurs because Mission is supposed to talk after Carth but, since she's stealthed, you can't detect her. If your Awareness is high enough, then you may eventually see her and the game will then continue; but few people choose to level Awareness on the PlayerCharacter.
** Speaking of the Leviathan rescue mission, to break the other party members out you need a certain amount of computer spikes to access the terminal and open the detention bay doors--and the game gives you a finite amount of it during the prison break sequence. Accidentally quitting the hacking interface requires you to access the interface again, which costs more computer spikes re-access it, so you could run out and not have enough to open the detention hall, worse if you've picked a party member with no "computer use" skill points.\\\
This is normally alleviated by freeing a prisoner who will thank you by giving you a single-use hacking device, but if you also accidentally quit the hacking interface while using this device, the device and its benefits are gone as well. Time to load an old save.
* Early in the sequel ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'', T3-M4 must slice a computer. However the number of available data spike is so limited that using too many will result in you being unable to proceed.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Lagoon}}'', it's possible to save virtually anywhere as long as you're not in the middle of a boss fight, even if you're about to fall down a BottomlessPit.
* In ''VideoGame/TheLastStory'', if you initiate a sidequest like the Kraken quest and you're not powerful enough to beat it, you're screwed. There's no way to reset a quest either, so you have to start the game over from the beginning.
* Indie game ''VideoGame/{{Legionwood}}'' can be rendered unwinnable due to how area transitions work on the overworld map. If a tile that transports you to a new location happens to be right on the shoreline of one of the continents, you can accidentally enter it with your ship, and then be unable to access your ship again as it'll be blocked by said tile.
* The final few stages in ''VideoGame/LuminousArc2'' can be cleared quite comfortably with your levels on par with the enemy, with a little intelligent strategy. However, doing so can land you at a FinalBoss that's mathematically impossible to beat with any party combination thanks to its high defenses and HP regen. Fortunately it's easy to revert to a point where you can grind, but that means doing the preceding three battles over again when you want another crack at it. Without any one-use items you ate up the first time, those aren't refunded either.
* If you spend all the money that it's possible to earn in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' before undertaking the Reaper IFF mission -- which is difficult, but not impossible to do if you have few or no DLC packs, and go around splurging all your money on upgrades, probes and fuel -- then you'll have no way to reach the star system where the mission takes place, as it's the only story-critical mission not to take place in a system with a mass relay. Though likely not a problem that a lot of players encountered, enough ran into it that Creator/BioWare made sure it couldn't be repeated in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' (where you get free fuel refills whenever you return to the Citadel) or ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'' (which doesn't bother with fuel at all).
* There are several points in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' that are unwinnable if you're only carrying the [[DownloadableContent Acolyte]] pistol (or a number of other weapons available during a NewGamePlus). For example, during the mission on Mars, the player character is forced to shoot with whatever pistol they have equipped at an enemy who is charging at them in slow motion. Slow-firing pistols or ones with non-standard properties may not be able to kill the enemy in time, resulting in automatic death.
* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'': If you go on a capture quest and run out of tranquilisers, the quest doesn't automatically end in failure, but it may as well do.
* ''VideoGame/MonsterRancher'' has a few:
** It's possible to make ''Monster Rancher 2'' {{Unwinnable}}. You get a GameOver if, at the start of the month, you have less than 100 G and are unable to feed your monster. In normal gameplay, the only way to get this situation is if you saved after the last tournament of the month your monster could possibly enter, you have no items to sell, your monster is too young to sell, all of your monsters in storage are too young to sell, and your monster never brings you any item you could possibly sell for money out of the blue. You can also do this [[PressStartToGameOver at the very start of the game]] by creating and combining monsters before going to the Ranch, resulting in an instant Game Over.
** In ''Monster Rancher 3,'' a minor plot battle in the jungle region of Kalaragi turns into a story-stopper if you lose. Your rival, Gadamon, will (if you lose) demand that you bring her a Dodorin Fruit when next you go exploring. Fair enough, especially when another character tells you where to find them -- except that when you search the spot, the game recycles the dialogue from the end of the conversation telling you how to get it, and you get nothing. Not only can you not progress in the subplot, but this brings the entire story to a halt - no other events are available. If you win, however, you progress as usual through the story. Your reward for the subplot's completion? A Dodorin Fruit.
* In Chapter 5 of ''VideoGame/Mother3'', it's possible for you to get stuck between a moving NPC and a wall inside His Highness' Room. The killer? Said NPC is a Save Frog, meaning the last time you probably saved was ''right after getting stuck'', and due to a programming oversight (combined with the fact that saving the game also saves your exact coordinates within a given room), it will never move out of your way, effectively ending the game and forcing you to start over unless you kept a backup save. Even the fan-made strategy guide for the game advises that you should avoid that save point completely and tough it out until you get to the next one. Fortunately, recent versions of the FanTranslation have fixed this.
* ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'': During Chapter 2 of the original, try not to have a full bag when you get to the Forest of Elrit. The Alchemy system is introduced there, and there are things you'll need to pick up in order to move the game along. If your bags are full when the Tutorial begins, you won't be able to drop excess items to make space since it disables all but the Materials you pick up, effectively casting you into limbo unless you reset the game.
* ''VideoGame/{{Penny Arcade|Adventures}}'' made two otherwise nigh-perfect games, but at one point it's possible to hit an unbeatable snag. After [[spoiler:being forced into the mental institution]], you have to shock your brain back to health. The second and third levels of this mini-game feature unrotatable blocks of damaged tissue; if one of those blocks is at the edge and can't be reached, you have no choice but to quit and reload.
* ''VideoGame/Persona3'': the second boss battle can easily put the game into an unwinnable state. The player has no control over the protagonist for the entirety of the day of the fight, which is ''not'' known beforehand, and the last chance to save is the night before -- and since a boss battle is imminent, saving seems a smart move. Before the battle begins, you're treated to multiple cutscenes and a brief fetch quest, then warped to the dungeon, sans your party members. After battling your way to meet them, you'll be treated to yet ''another'' cutscene before the main battle. Even if you've conserved all your magic points and healing items for the main boss (assuming, of course, that you knew it was coming and weren't sidetracked by the battles to your party members), you're still facing two enemies that can constantly change their weaknesses and strengths. Oh, and you need to equip a different weapon -- the weakest weapon, in fact -- in order to give your party a full spread for physical attacks. As a bonus, only two of your party members are capable of healing spells, including you, and since you're using turn-based tactics, anyone knocked down by the enemy wastes a turn climbing to their feet... only to be knocked down again by the next enemy strike. (Whether or not they fall unconscious depends on whether or not you choose to heal them.) It's an annoying but not ''difficult'' battle, but your non-standard lack of control on the day of events makes it possible to put yourself in a situation in which you're under-equipped and under-prepared but unable to ''fix'' the problems. Given the expected player level, you also don't have the items you need yet -- some healing items work outside of battle, some only work within, but you don't yet have access to the options that restore more than a handful of hit points. You can try consulting a strategy guide, but if you still can't win and your last save takes you back to the day of the battle (''again'' with the goddamn cutscenes), you can either RageQuit or start over. You need a save at least two days in advance of the battle if you've tried and failed.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar'':
** In the original ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarI'', the game can easily become unwinnable near the end; if the player has the bad idea to save in this particular situation, then they will eventually want to destroy the cartridge. Upon landing in the air castle, the player must fight a particularly tough boss after a long and confusing dungeon. Afterwards, there are three ways to leave the Air Castle: the heroine's teleportation spell, a teleportation item, or a magic nut to turn your cat ally into a flying creature. But it is likely that the heroine will have ran out of MP casting her strongest spells against the boss, that the cat will have bit the dust halfway through the dungeon (rendering him unable to use the magic nut), and that the player will have forgotten to bring a teleportation item. Ten bloody hours down the drain!
** Also in ''Phantasy Star I'', it is possible to decline to take plot-important items such as the Amber Eye or Nuts if your inventory is full. If that happens, the item in question will be [[PermanentlyMissableContent inaccessible for the rest of the run]], and you will be forced to start the game over from the very beginning.
** In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIII'', a bit of ScriptBreaking at the beginning of the game can cause you to be unable to leave the starting town: if you use an escape item to leave a jail cell before another character can free you, the event flag to remove the guards at the town's exit will not play, trapping you in the town forever. An NPC even [[BreakingTheFourthWall breaks the fourth wall]] to praise you for your ingenuity before informing you that, regretfully, you will need to start over.
** In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse'', there was a glitch in the MAG event mission at the very end. Each player has to take the warp individually to the final block and then stand at a gate which will only open when everyone is accounted for, letting everyone in to spawn the monsters and smash things up until you kill the final one. The glitch? At times, the monsters would spawn before the gate was opened. It's mostly harmless if you ignore them and take their attacks while waiting for everyone to get to the gate; but if someone kills the monsters with ranged attacks, then the monsters will stop spawning around the third wave or so, making it impossible to finish the mission.
* ''VideoGame/SaintSeiyaOugonDensetsu'':
** The player can make the FinalBoss unwinnable without realizing. The final boss is fought with two characters (Seiya and Ikki), and the player '''must''' use the "Talk" command on him with Ikki before Ikki is defeated. Failing to do that, the final boss will be invincible and no attack from the (resurrected) Seiya will ever do damage to him, eventually leading to his death and a game over.
** The game, as it's an adaptation of a [[Manga/SaintSeiya manga/anime series]], allows the player the choice of doing the battles in the same order that they happen officially. However, one can go outside canon and beat the second-to-last boss Aphrodite with Seiya...which leads to him dying and Shun being the only choice left to cross the Path of Roses (which constantly drains his life). However, the exit at the end of this area (Seiya's mentor) only appears for Seiya, leaving Shun unable to continue until his life drops to 0. Oops.
* In ''VideoGame/SecretOfEvermore'' for the SNES:
** There is one part of the game where a scientist gives you an airplane to use for a fetch quest so he can build a rocket to send you to the end of the game. It is possible, through an obscure glitch, to land back in the scientist's lab ''without the plane''. If the player hasn't completed the fetch quest, then the game is now unwinnable (and it is possible to save, ruining the player's progress about 3/4 of the way through an SNES RPG).
** It's also possible to get stuck in the third part of the game, the medieval land, after defeating the Chess monster and going through a cavern and ending up in the desolate town. You climb a massive bunch of ramps, and at the top you are brought back to the populated town, where you are expected to fight a boss in the castle. Go through the cave again, and you're stuck in the desolate town because your airride won't come back.
** One dungeon is filled with collapsible bridges. This is standard fare for video games; but unlike the standard Magical Self-Repair Bridge, once these collapse, they're gone ''forever''. This leads to unwinnable situations--if you use an item or formula to escape ''before'' defeating the dungeon's mini-boss but ''after'' crossing the bridge to get to the dungeon, you'll be unable to return and thus unable to complete the dungeon. If you're unfortunate enough to save while you're outside, then your save file is rendered unwinnable.
** The area before the Verminator is inescapable and inhabited by nothing but fast-moving rats that are worth a piddly 4 EXP each. If you're underleveled and you saved, then the game is as good as unwinnable. Did we mention that the Verminator is ThatOneBoss and that this area is 3/4 of the way through the game? Ironically, this boss can be avoided altogether by utilizing a glitch in the previous area; but if you ever go into his room, then the game will lock the door and not open it until the code signifying you've beaten the boss goes through. Since the boss doesn't appear after you've used that glitch, it will be impossible to initiate this code, and the player will be forced to reset. Unwinnable revenge!
** The Great Pyramid Extension can only be visited once, but contains an essential scene that is available later. If you go there before visiting Gothica, the game becomes unwinnable.
* Early in ''VideoGame/SecretOfMana'', the player is supposed to go to the Water Palace. At first, there is a Cannon Travel that only goes to the Water Palace. But, if the player [[UnwinnableByInsanity uses Cannon Travel to go to the Water Palace, then walks back to that same Cannon Travel]], then the player can use it to go Gaia's Navel and [[SequenceBreak skip the Water Palace]]. But, the player must go to the Water Palace to [[spoiler:Talk to Luka]] before being called back to [[spoiler:rescue Undine]]. If not, then the [[spoiler:Undine quest]] will not be available. Thus, the player will never get a crucial spell needed to progress. This leaves the game in an unwinnable state.
* ''VideoGame/{{Shadowrun}}'':
** The game on the UsefulNotes/SegaCD can end up being unwinnable as a combination of three factors: the game has only scripted battles, set points where the player characters gain experience and a highly customizable character building system. The end result of this is that it is entirely possible to build up your characters in such a way that they cannot win a mandatory battle, and the game offers no possibility of straying from the main storyline to grind.
** Failing to select the "talk" option in conversations on the SNES (including the first person you talk to at all) can lead you to miss important [[KeywordsConversation "keywords"]] required to advance the plot ''much'' later on. As can visiting the professional doctor first, since he'll fix you up without triggering the cortical bomb in your skull. Meaning that you never learn of its existence and again, can't ask the proper questions to advance the plot.
* The C64 game ''Space Rogue'' was, for all intents and purposes, virtually Unwinnable because the required PlotCoupon item needed to rig your ship to go to the ant invader's home sector cannot be obtained. It is supposed to be a randomly drawn item from Robocrook's chance game (making it a pure luck scenario), but it never drops.\\\
In the PC version, this was fixed, but there's not much in the form of in-game help, and there was no Website/GameFAQs to look this stuff up on back then. After the third or fourth random piece of junk, most people stopped checking with Robocrook and didn't know they had to.
* In the [=DreamForge=] game ''The Summoning'', the door to the final level can only be opened if you possess 5 black and 5 white pearls. But the level before the door contains only 5 black and ''4'' white pearls. The only other white pearl is back near the entrance, 30 to 40 levels previous, and you cannot return there. So if you didn't pick it up, dropped it to save inventory space, or sold it, the game becomes unwinnable.
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfDestiny'', it is possible to equip the Sorcerer's Ring (a puzzle solving device) to a character who leaves the party and cannot be regained until a certain amount of in-story progress has been made. If you give the ring to someone like Johnny or Woodrow, it's not too much of an issue, as you can get them back before you'll need it again, but if you [[{{Unwinnable}} give it to Mary]], or worse, [[PlotlineDeath Leon]]... Later games averted this by making the Sorcerer's Ring a key item that doesn't need to be equipped.
* A certain sidequest in ''VideoGame/TreasureOfTheRudra'' can be done right after a [[BrokenBridge bridge gets broken]]. You're supposed to get on with the plot a bit first, and stumble upon the sidequest location in the process. Doing the sidequest as soon as it's available will land you on the other side of the broken bridge... with no way to get back.
* In ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'', it is possible through a bug that the slowing down effect of the fat Tzimisce things in the sewers of Hollywood will last for the rest of the game. That is not so much of a problem until you have to get out of a cave with a timed explosion, where it will be impossible to even get near your boat.
** Another bug caused the game to crash at the point where the video for said explosion is loading.
** There is a bug that can cause you either to be trapped in the elevator at the Asylum or to be trapped on the second floor, unable to summon the elevator to return to the first floor.
* In ''VideoGame/TheWitcher'', if a quest-critical NPC dies you cannot complete their quest. Well and good, except that it's possible for Vesna Hood to die ''after'' you've completed the EscortMission section of her sidequest[[note]]Specifically, bad luck with the enemy spawning code can cause barghests to appear and kill her between her porch and her house, ''after'' Geralt is done escorting her home.[[/note]], making it impossible to collect her sex card. Then, if Geralt allowed the [[LaResistance Scoia'tael]] to take the smuggled goods in Act I, [[GuideDangIt doing things in the wrong order]] in Act II causes a sidequest target to be assassinated by the Scoia'tael for drug dealing before Geralt can get to him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Simulation Games]]
* In ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing: New Leaf'', bamboo shoots planted in the ground will grow and spread uncontrollably if the player doesn't regularly play. If the town is neglected for long enough, it can block you from being able to go anywhere but your house. Players that are unlucky enough to be there without an axe and shovel are stuck there and have to start an entirely new town.
* A fairly mild case in ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossingNewHorizons'', but still... The game may assign you Nook Miles+ missions that are impossible to complete— for example, asking you to sell a particular item or have fossils assessed when the relevant facilities are closed for renovations. Incomplete Nook Miles+ goals don't leave until midnight, meaning your ability to earn miles may get significantly hampered by impossible quests taking up space in the queue.[[note]]can be mitigated by doing the task on another island, but if you cannot play online or if everyone you know are also undergoing the same renovations (which is very likely because it was launched right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many countries were announcing lockdowns and thus many players started on launch day), you're screwed.[[/note]]
* The trading/combat game ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}'' has one star-system, Oresrati in Galaxy 8, which is over 7 light-years from any other; hence, it is only reachable by Galactic Hyperspace (or the "unlimited hyperspace range" hack). It's of insufficient tech level to sell you another Galactic Hyperspace. If you're not using the "unlimited hyperspace range" hack and don't have a recent saved position, then you're basically screwed.
* ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'':
** In ''[[VideoGame/HarvestMoonAWonderfulLife A Wonderful Life]]'', ordering new machinery can render the game unplayable if the machinery arrives on the first day after a chapter change. The only way around this is to avoid ordering machinery in the last season of a chapter, since the exact date the machinery arrives is random.
** Similarly, in the North American ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonDS'', two glitches caused both the Witch Princess and the Harvest Goddess, and only them, to be ineligible for marriage. You couldn't get the Witch Princess because the game didn't keep track of dead animals; you couldn't get the Harvest Goddess because Buckwheat Flour was on her lists but not in the game itself. Fortunately, you could still finish the game by marrying another girl. The glitches were corrected in an updated version (DS 1.1) and ''Harvest Moon: DS Cute''. Not that you could marry them in the western translations of the latter..
** A similar glitch happens in ''[[VideoGame/HarvestMoonAWonderfulLife Another Wonderful Life]]''. If you woo all three of the bachelors to full hearts and experience all their heart events, then there is a random chance that you will be instantly locked with Rock. Then Rock will be the only one who will propose to you or accept the Blue Feather; Gustafa and Marlin will reject your proposal as if you still lack something, even though your hearts are all accounted for and you witnessed all their heart events. It tends to happen more if you witness Rock's heart event last, but it is not a guarantee.
** ''VideoGame/RuneFactory'':
*** Saving in a cave while poisoned and sealed can render your game unwinnable if you have low enough HP and no cures for the StandardStatusEffects.
*** There's also the issue of entering a cave accessible only during the winter and being in it when the new year starts. At least in this one, the game [[SarcasmMode politely]] [[GameBreakingBug locks up]].
* In the ''Hell's Kitchen: The Game'' version for Nintendo DS, you can't get the 100% in the weeks two and three, making the game unwinnable by the lack of tests during his development.
* ''VideoGame/MechWarrior'':
** The original game for the PC required you to head to a specific planet to begin the sequence to beat the game. But after a certain point in time, going to the planet results in an unceremonious 'Game Over' screen. Typically, by the time you're able to build up your forces to a respectable level, it's too late.
** [[http://lostlevel.wordpress.com/2006/10/ As told here,]] ''VideoGame/MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries'' originally shipped with a [[GameBreakingBug game-stopping bug]] where the dropship fails to land at the end of one of the missions, making the mission and thus the game unwinnable.
* ''VideoGame/TheSims''
** In the console version of ''VideoGame/TheSims 2'', one of your objectives in the alien crash site is to "meet an alien". If you have previously met both of the aliens living here, it is impossible to complete the goal, which is required to progress in the game.
** The Nintendo DS version of ''VideoGame/TheUrbz'' has a mission where your Urb is kidnapped and you control their pet, who has to save them. If your Urb had a hoverboard and you press the button to ride it during this segment, your pet will become stuck forever. It's also possible to save your game in this state, which would, of course, be a very bad idea.
* In ''VideoGame/WingCommander Prophecy'', your carrier is equipped with ImportedAlienPhlebotinum that can be destroyed by enemy torpedoes in the third Hrissith System mission. Nobody will say anything about this at the time, but when you try to fly Mission #5 ("Defend our ImportedAlienPhlebotinum!"), you will lose instantly -- before your fighter has even launched (fortunately, the "Flight History Terminal" makes SaveScumming easy).
* In ''VideoGame/ZooTycoon 2: Endangered Species'', trying to adopt a Galapagos Giant Tortoise would cause the game to freeze or crash for some players. One scenario in the campaign requires the player to adopt and breed these animals. Because of this, said scenario could be unwinnable for those affected.
* ''VideoGame/MotorsportManager'' has some examples of this:
** At the start of each season, you have to choose suppliers for each part of your car. Thing is, once the process is started, you have to finish it before doing anything else, and the usual cash injection you get at the start of the seasons happens after this. This means that if you don't have enough money to choose suppliers, you are forced to quit the game and reload an earlier save.
** You can choose to give your drivers less fuel than required to finish the race... even if the championship your team is competing in bans refueling. You get no warning on whether you are giving them not enough fuel, so you only really find out that you've given away the race halfway-through.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Sports Games]]
* {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''VideoGame/ArcStyleBaseball3D'' in an instance where, if you hit a fly ball to right field and the right fielder dives to catch it, he/she might go inside the wall and no one will come to pick up the ball, leaving all defenders idle and stalling the game. You can get out of this glitch by driving all your runners home (an inside-the-park home run), which will trigger a cutscene and a fade to white that will get things back to normal (your next batter will step to the plate like nothing happened). Now, [[GameBreakingBug what could happen if you were the defense and the CPU was the offense...]] Only JustForFun/TropeTan knows.
* The launch version of ''NCAA Football 12'' somehow managed to omit Boston College vs. Virginia Tech off the playing schedule. However, the game's back end recognizes that it is there, and simulates the game without the player's input when you advance the weeks. Since even a single loss can put a team out of the running for a national championship and injures are FAR more common in simulated games, players can easily lose the game and be eliminated from title contention through no fault of their own. Or, they could win the game but lose several star players, which can have the same effect overall.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Stealth-Based Games]]
* ''VideoGame/MetalGear1'': To progress through Outer Heaven, you have to rescue a number of hostages that will increase Snake's rank that will allow him to contact operatives to pass through certain locations. But if you accidentally kill a hostage (one of which is important to one of the contacts), Snake's rank will decrease and that specific contact will no longer assist him, preventing further access throughout the base and forcing you start all over.
* ''VideoGame/{{Thief}}'':
** The "Killing Time" mission of ''Thief: Deadly Shadows'' consists of a descent from the top of a clock tower into the basement. The highest difficulty requires you to get all three pieces of "special loot" on every level, one of which is a diamond gear, found in the first room. However, unless you're specifically looking for it, it's difficult to spot, and likely to be bypassed on first-time playthroughs. Later on, you find a message that clues you in to look out for that particular gear, thinking that even if you miss it, you can usually just backtrack-- but not in this mission. About halfway through, there is a big vertical chamber which is easy enough to fall down, but once you've done so, explored the rest of the level beyond, and cannot find the last piece of loot, you're better off restarting the mission, as the vertical chamber is virtually impossible to climb back up.
** Several levels in the original game required lighting torches with fire arrows in order to complete. The problem is that fire arrows are rather rare and it was entirely possible to run out of them and be unable to complete the level. In the ''Thief Gold'' UpdatedRerelease, the designers added an invincible "fire ghost" enemy that would drop fire arrows when attacked to these levels.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Survival Horror]]
* ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDarkTheNewNightmare'' has a frustrating glitch where a plot-critical item simply didn't appear. The only option was to grit your teeth and reset.
* ''VideoGame/ClockTower'':
** ''Clock Tower: The First Fear'':
*** There is a possible hiding spot from Bobby that can either turn into UnwinnableByDesign or UnwinnableByMistake depending on [[GameBreakingBug the game's mood at the time]]. Normally, it would be UnwinnableByDesign ([[RandomNumberGod or a chance of such, anyways]]) for Jennifer to climb up the shelves in the garage to evade Bobby, and further kick down the ladder she climbed to keep Bobby from climbing up after her. After you pat yourself on the back for a clever idea, you'll soon realize, oh crap, Jennifer can't jump down, and Bobby further crashes your parade by ''crashing through from the ceiling'' to impale Jennifer, who now can't run away from him, killing her. On the game's bad days, however, sometimes Jennifer can still trigger these events even if she hadn't kicked the ladder down. Worse, sometimes Bobby can crash from the ceiling immediately after, standing between you and the possibly-still-accessible ladder to climb down, and even worse, corner Jennifer by making her back up toward the left of the screen while menacingly following her. The problem comes when the game further gets confused that the boundaries that should've stopped Jennifer to the far left of the screen aren't recognized as such, so instead of have Jennifer stop to be impaled by Bobby, [[AndIMustScream she continues to back away well off the screen while Bobby follows her, neither stopping to do any escaping/killing and forcing you to restart]].
*** There's one escape point on the second floor that involves Jennifer jumping over a hole which Bobby can't make and instead falls. If you do this you have to grab the rope and tie it to the bannister to climb down to the first floor (since the gap is now too wide to jump; Bobby smashes part of it when he tries). However if you instead go into the storage room without using the rope, there's a 50/50 chance that either Bobby or a [[JumpScare harmless cat]] will pop out of the crate. If it's Bobby, you're [=S.O.L:=] you can't interact with the rope in "chase" mode, there's nowhere to run, and when Bobby kills you you'll respawn in the room and ''immediately'' retrigger Bobby coming out of the crate (it's randomly chosen at the beginning of the game; it will ''always'' be Bobby if he popped out once), and your only option is to start your game over.
** In ''Clock Tower: Ghost Head'''s second level, there are several zombies on the map which you can lead into traps that incapacitate them and allow you to escape, but most of them merely cause the zombies to return to the room where they were first encountered, and only work once. Not so with the broom in one of the restrooms, which has unlimited uses and causes the zombies to disappear permanently. However, while a savvy player can certainly use this to their advantage, there is a certain part of the level which requires the player character to change into their alternate personality Bates, and the only way to trigger this change is to get attacked by a zombie and escape. If you only cleaned out the zombies in the most critical areas, good for you, but if you took out every single zombie on the map, you're screwed, unless you're willing to wait a LONG time for a zombie to spawn in and enter the room you're in.
* In ''VideoGame/FatalFrameIV'', the Festival lens unlocks upon completing the Ghost List. But the game has a glitch where six ghosts don't count as having been photographed, leading to the Ghost List being incapable of being completed.
* In ''VideoGame/DeadlyPremonition'' if you happen to replay a previous chapter before you finish the game(common with those who want to complete Emily's sidequests, which require specific circumstances to access) and you complete it(save points are disabled during replays, so you have to finish a chapter to save it), it can cause items you need to progress to disappear, like the key to the diner in chapter 9(it can also happen in chapter 23), once it's gone there's no way to progress through the story any further or get the key back without restarting your game. Fortunately that's fairly early in the game, so it won't take long to get to that point again, but it is infuriating if you've been doing sidequests and collecting trading cards.
* ''VideoGame/EvilDeadHailToTheKing'' contained a particularly frustrating unwinnable glitch. At the start of the second disc, you're supposed to save the game at a save point immediately upon arriving in Damascus, then leave the area, fight some skeletons for the parts needed to open the town gate, and then proceed. If you do this, then reloading the game if you fail triggers the second disc's opening cut scene, and all's well. However, if you run to the area with the skeletons, then turn back around and ''then'' save the game and reload it, the enemies will vanish -- along with the items you needed to collect from them. You're now stuck outside the city with no way to get through the locked gate, and with the game saved at that spot.
* ''VideoGame/TheThing2002'' has a stage where the player descends a long staircase (similar to the staircase sequence in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid''), and has to deal with automatic turrets on every level, scalding steam vents, seemingly endless streams of [[GoddamnBats scuttling creatures]] that pop out of dead bodies (and attack you from front and behind), and the medic, the only hope of surviving the stage, turns into a monster at random points. If the player doesn't have enough health packs, or enough firepower, it's impossible to get through the stage(though there is one way to make it easier, if you leave the medic near the top of the staircase and run back up to him to get healed instead of having him follow you, he doesn't seem to turn into a monster).
* In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil0'', if you fail to give Billy Cohen sufficient firepower before triggering the Centurion boss battle, you're screwed; it's the ''only'' boss battle in the game where you're mandated to fight it with Billy, and you can't exchange items with Rebecca due to it holding her captive during the fight. Fortunately, the only other mandatory boss-fight for Billy, against the Queen Leech, isn't such a big deal, as it's actually just a matter of surviving long enough before it gets killed in a cutscene.
* ''VideoGame/ZombiU'' is notorious for the number of ways you can accidentally glitch your game into being permanently unwinnable, largely due to one of the game's central mechanics: when you die, you will respawn as a new survivor at the Safehouse and your previous survivor will become a zombie at the exact spot where you died. A great concept in theory, but it's one which can cause a whole host of problems. For instance, after completing the tough Arena fight towards the end of the game, you'll be told to "Get to Safehouse". However, if you die before you make it back there, even though you respawn in the Safehouse, the mission will never update because you skipped past the entrance you were meant to use to trigger the dialogue which continues the game. Time to start all over! Another example: there's a rare chance that when you track down your previous survivor, they might have glitched out of bounds where they are unable to be killed. That's bad enough as it is because they'll have all your old supplies on them, but if they had any mission-required items, they're lost forever and the run is dead. The kicker of all this is that when you die, the game immediately overwrites your previous save, so if you now find yourself in an unwinnable state, there's absolutely nothing you can do. The only way to prevent these issues is to just never die in the first place, and good luck with that!
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Third-Person Shooters]]
* ''[[VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2002 Ratchet and Clank]]'':
** Some versions allow the player to skip a vital gadget midway through the game. Planet Orxon is initially played as Clank, as it's polluted by toxic gases that Ratchet can't breathe. As Clank, you're supposed to collect the Magneboots (allowing Ratchet to scale metal shafts), before getting the coordinates to a planet where you can acquire an oxygen mask. You're then supposed to return to Orxon and, as Ratchet, use the Magneboots to complete a mission. If you missed them as Clank, you can't get them.
** The HD remake of ''Ratchet and Clank'' has a save manipulation glitch in which the Deplanetiser can point upwards[[note]]It happens when you beat the final boss, don't do the final requirement to actually complete the game, and load a different save[[/note]], regardless of the boss being defeated or not. This can cause a situation where a player has to beat the boss in a ridiculously narrow timeframe of '''30 seconds'''.
* Due to glaring level design bugs, the final boss in ''VideoGame/SlaveZero'' is unbeatable at Hard difficulty: his HP simply exceeds the combined damage that all the ammo in the final arena plus those in your magazine can do. There are indeed other ammo pickups but they happen to be buried inside a wall, so you can't step on them. There is even a supply flier that drops bullet boxes; however the boxes, once dropped, miss the script that allows to pick them up (you just run through them). So you just unload all of your ammunition in his face, then either settle in the center tower (where his missiles cannot touch you) and wait for the end of the world, or you let him kill you in frustration. He can be defeated if with the Valhalla missile launcher, but the player likely took the upgrade to the highest tier missile a few levels back and a replacement is not provided in the weapon selection area before the final arena.
* In the first three ''VideoGame/SyphonFilter'' games, you can trigger a checkpoint just as you're about to be headshot or otherwise instantly killed, or triggering mission failure, trapping you in a CycleOfHurting. {{Timed mission}}s can also autosave with too little time on the clock.
* ''VideoGame/TrueCrimeNewYorkCity'' has a laundry list of randomly occurring {{Game Breaking Bug}}s that can cause certain missions or the game to become unwinnable, making SaveScumming a necessity. Even worse, the Xbox version has a big bug late in the game that rendered it completely unwinnable due to no fault of the player.
* ''VideoGame/TrueCrimeStreetsOfLA'' has a particularly bad (though rare) bug that can make the game unwinnable. Given that the game is a GTA-type, driving cars is natural. So is blowing them up. Ramming a car enough times will [[EveryCarIsAPinto make it blow up]]. Simple enough? But certain in-game cutscenes do ''not'' make your car invincible, and the idiot drivers on the road do not stop when your car does. If your car has ''just'' enough damage and another car smashes into it during a cutscene, making it explode, then the game will continue after the cutscene on the assumption that you are dead. Add that the game saves after most cutscenes...
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Turn Based Strategy]]
* The random nature of the Item World maps in the ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' series can potentially produce maps that are unwinnable if you're lacking units capable of reaching the exit or the enemies on the map. Random Geo Effect combinations can produce even sillier results, such as a situation where the moment one unit attacks another in melee, they punch each other in an eternal counter loop (Always Counter) yet inflict negative amounts of harm by doing so (Reverse Damage), producing a loop that only ends when you reach for the power button.
* An early mission of ''VideoGame/FrontMission1'' has [[BigBad Driscoll]] hanging around outside the main battle area in his ridiculously overpowered [[HumongousMecha wanzer]]. Normally he just leaves when you rout all the other enemies and you win. However if you make the mistake of attacking him (which is quite easy to do accidentally thanks to the game's dodgy targeting controls, or intentionally as up until now your goal has been to destroy all enemies and he's been established as Royd's nemesis), he'll start coming after you. Once this happens you have no choice but to either fail the mission or reset; he won't stop until all your units are toast and all you can manage back is ScratchDamage.
* In ''VideoGame/UFOAftershock'', it's very easy to render the game unwinnable by simply failing to complete the mission where the [[spoiler:Starghosts]] first appear (either by losing the tactical mission or letting the mission time out in the strategic mode). This mission gives you a research topic which is absolutely crucial for finishing the game and if you miss it, you won't get a second chance.
* In ''VideoGame/UFOAftermath'', one research requirement is to complete a mission on the biomass, so that you can get a sample of it to research (the actual mission doesn't matter, as long as you do something on the biomass). It's possible to let your bases get gobbled up by the biomass, and you can only initiate missions in neighboring territories. If you fail to initiate a mission on the biomass, and let your bases get overtaken by it, then you can't research how to stop the biomass from spreading. It also ''does not'' spread across water: if you're pushed off the continent where it appears (usually Africa/Asia), you'll be unable to progress.
* In ''VideoGame/YuGiOhCapsuleMonsterColiseum'', it's possible, in a match, to end up with pieces that can only move in certain patterns against one that manages to evade them perfectly no matter how hard you try to box it in, and since the A.I. doesn't know when to quit, they'll happily continue to avoid your pieces with it, despite being unable to do anything else. In such cases, the only way to end the match would be to surrender or let the AI destroy your Symbol.
* Due to the random nature of stat increases given in the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series, it's possible for a given playthrough of almost any game to be unusually difficult thanks to important units being crippled (although the series usually drip-feeds you enough new units with fixed starting stats to prevent the game from being completely wedged).
** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'' has a number of scripted battles taking place between enemies and allied [=NPCs=] in several chapters throughout the game, the most popular examples being [[spoiler:Mahnya's fight against Pamela and Andrei's combined forces]] and [[spoiler:Travant ambushing Quan and Ethlyn as they trudge through the Yied desert.]] In most of these examples, one side is destined by the plot to lose, and generally have the odds stacked heavily against them to ensure that happens (i.e. every single character on one side has a WeaponOfXSlaying against the other side). However, it's possible, though exceptionally unlikely, for the "losing" side to end up winning the battle if the RNG favors them; if the player is especially careless or unlucky, this can result in them conquering a castle before the player can, locking the player our of the rest of the game unless they have a save from ''before'' the game engine defied the plot.
** If you are playing Lyn's story in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'' and [[EpicFail somehow get everyone but Lyn killed before chapter 4]], it becomes completely impossible to win, due to the ForcedTutorial moving Lyn away from the [[EscortMission NPC you need to defend]], and with no other units, it beceomes completely impossible to stop the enemies from reaching and killing said NPC.
** In ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem New Mystery of the Emblem]]'', the developers tried their best to ensure you can't lock the game into an unwinnable state when fighting [[spoiler:Hardin]]. He carries the Darksphere item, which prevents anyone not holding the Lightsphere from doing damage to him. You're given the Lightsphere by the plot, so you can't miss it, if a player unit gets killed while holding an item, the item reappears in the convoy at the start of the next chapter, and even if you somehow forget to bring it, Marth can retrieve any item from the convoy at any time--it's still not an ''easy'' boss fight, but it's pretty much always at least ''possible'' for you to beat it, as long as you have a character with more than 30 Attack (which is pretty trivial at that point). However, the developers also made it possible for one recruitable character in an earlier chapter (Sheena) to ''un-recruit'' herself; if you talk her into joining you and then kill one of her soldiers, she becomes hostile. Recruiting her, giving her the Lightsphere, and un-recruiting her results in the Lightsphere being stuck on an enemy unit with no way to get it back, and if you then complete the chapter and proceed to the fight with [[spoiler:Hardin]], you're now stuck in a room with a boss you can't kill.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Turn Based Tactics]]
* ''VideoGame/XCOMTerrorFromTheDeep'' has the Tasoth Commander. Researching one of these makes researching the CoolStarship for the final assault impossible[[note]]The reason is that Tasoths are actually not supposed to have commander units, so when they appear anyway, they make the game act strangely. The only species that are supposed to have commanders are Gill Men and Lobstermen[[/note]]. Thankfully, patches keep Tasoth Commanders from showing up for research.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* The ''VisualNovel/AceAttorney'' series has a save-anywhere system with a single save slot. This is ordinarily not a problem, but in some trial sections, it's possible to advance into a dialogue tree where every possible outcome results in a penalty. If you save in the middle of one of these when you're one penalty away from losing, you'll need to restart the chapter. The 3DS games alleviate this by having regularly-spaced continue points where you can restart with full health (lose in a cross-examination and you'll restart at that cross-examination, for instance), and the 2019 re-release of the original trilogy has 10 separate save slots to use.
* During the second day of investigation in the fangame ''VisualNovel/ApolloJusticeAceAttorneyCase5TurnaboutSubstitution'', it is possible for the game to not add one piece of important evidence to the Court Record, even though it is ''supposed'' to do so. Since that evidence is necessary the following day in the courtroom, when cross-examining [[spoiler:Rhea Wits]], it makes the game unwinnable.
* In the original English release off ''VisualNovel/AnimamundiDarkAlchemist'' there were two major bugs that caused players to be unable to finish it, one sometimes causes the game to not display text late in the game on some routes and cause it to hang, and the other more seriously was it fails to register gaining a key item, permanently locking the player to "A Quiet Corrosion", one of the worst endings in the game [[spoiler:where Lillith rots away due to an untreated infection]]. Thankfully they released a patch to fix both issues.
* In ''VisualNovel/DigitalALoveStory'', there is a story-stopper that can be triggered after less than three total BBS connects. Curiously, [[MoonLogicPuzzle it is almost guaranteed that it will never happen on someone's first playthrough]]. The problem? Using a certain "fix" on your Amie causes * Emilio to stop sending messages to you. Not that big a problem, right? except that all BBS activity up until she disappears is triggered by her conversations with you, so you never get to do long distance calling.
* ''VisualNovel/JakeHunter Unleashed'' has a particularly insidious one in the last chapter. At the beginning of the case, you get an option to pick your partner from three characters: Yulia, King and Sam. Choosing Yulia makes it so you cannot access the critical "deduce" option later, thereby preventing you from finishing the case.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Game]]
* The Cartoon Network website's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odh7qNPmbkM old Shockwave game based off the Big Game XXIX: Bugs vs. Daffy special]] always shows the losing screen even if you beat the game, probably due to the fact that Daffy Duck won in the original special.
* On ''Website/{{Neopets}}'', the flash game ''Meerca Chase 2'' involves avoiding Red Neggs which end the game when touched. The trouble is it's possible for them to spawn in such a manner it's completely impossible to avoid them, such as appearing directly in front of you or forming a blocked in wall with the previous ones spawned. The number spawned increases the longer the game runs, meaning this is more likely to happen after you've been playing for a while.
** Also, it's possible to start a fight in the Battledome with no faerie abilities and only one item with limited uses [[note]]such as a magical snowball (which permanently disappears after being thrown), or a Thistleberry Pingrenade (which can only be used once per fight)[[/note]] equipped. After the item has been used up, you have no remaining available actions and there's nothing you can do aside from going to the "challenges" page and withdrawing from the fight.
* In ''[[Franchise/HarryPotter Pottermore]]'', during the ''Chamber of Secrets'' section, you're supposed to brew some Polyjuice Potion to proceed. To do this, you have to play a potion making minigame, and if you [[CriticalFailure screw up too badly]], your cauldron blows up and you've to purchase a new one. Fair enough, except there's a limited amount of money available to collect in the game, so if you blow up too many cauldrons, you may end up unable to proceed.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Wide-Open Sandbox]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':
** ''VideoGame/Fallout3'':
*** Like ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'', some quest-critical [=NPCs=] are invincible, but some are not and can die when wandering the Wasteland. Especially once you start seeing deathclaws and ''packs'' of radscorpions as random encounters.
*** The infamous Lamplight Vault Access Bug: as the main quest progresses, you discover that a critical Vault's main door is inaccessible (That door isn't even connected to the actual Vault map). Instead, you have to get in via Little Lamplight. But THOSE accesses are blocked until you unlock the proper dialog with the proper [=NPCs,=] even if you find the [=NPCs=] independently. ''Fallout 3'' is so open-ended that it's possible to complete the quest that unlocks one of the dialog paths before you find Little Lamplight, or you might find and talk your way into Little Lamplight before the main quest fires the need to go there. If you do either of these things, then BOTH dialog paths are pre-empted from the game as if they never existed, and you can't complete the main quest at all. You'll likely be hours of gameplay and dozens of saves down the road before this bug rears its ugly head. The only known solution is to fire up the console and use a clipping cheat to move past the barriers.
*** Load up on Rad-X, Radaway and the best hazard suit you can get, then try to get within discovery distance of the irradiated Vault itself (the place it will lead you does unlock a new place on your map). But unless you brought more than 300 Radaways (you'll need three a step even with the strongest hazard suit, Rad-X, and the radiation immunity perks, and it's 50 steps through the toxic area), you're dead. And if you set the game to quicksave when you find a new place, your file is now permanently {{Unwinnable}}. If you happen to try to quicktravel to a less toxic area, then you'll be DOA.
*** At least one NPC in the city of Megaton will occasionally commit suicide while the player is out of town or asleep. He has a tendency to go for strolls on a difficult-to-reach roof area, and will sometimes fall and die, taking his quests and rewards with him.
*** ''The Pitt'' shipped with a bug that froze the game instantly when approaching the Downtown area. This was ''so'' bad that Bethesda ''pulled the content from the Marketplace'' to fix it.
*** There are also numerous physics and architecture glitches, both outdoors and indoors, that can cause your character to become stuck in various places and [[GameBreakingBug rendered permanently immobile]], forcing you to load, quit or cheat and noclip out (if you're playing on PC). It's enough to make you ''[[ParanoiaFuel extra]]'' careful not to run into certain nooks and piles of rubble, especially if you're playing the console version.
*** The game gives you the impression that you can take your time on the "Scientific Pursuits" quest (aka the search for your father) when in fact putting it off after other quests will make the game {{Unwinnable}} due to certain game design glitches and you [[GuideDangIt won't even know it]]. You're asked to "search for info about your father" that will "reveal the location of Vault 112", but the lack of specifics have a high likelihood of throwing you off.[[note]]For example, the quest log won't tell you the specific location of the necessary tape(s) (the Jefferson Memorial) nor will it tell you where to go once you've found the right one (you have to listen to the tape itself, marked only by number, and [[AllThereInTheManual set the quest to "active" to display the marker)]][[/note]] You'll probably end up looking all over the wastes for Vault 112 and/or the necessary resources to find it, including getting the Vault locations from the Vault Tech Headquarters, or getting the Explorer Perk[[note]]which reveals ''all of the game's discoverable locations'' (this Perk becomes available at Level 20, [[AbsurdlyLowLevelCap the base game's maximum)]][[/note]]. Neither of them reveal the location of Vault 112 on your map, and it's easy to look in all the Vaults for more clues since, well, what better place to find info on Vaults than other Vaults? If you go to Vault 87 you can complete a quest that you're not supposed to complete until ''after'' "Scientific Pursuits", and if you do so [[http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-3-Games/Help-me-with-Fallout-3-CONTAINS-SPOILERS/td-p/6067267 you'll end up unable to get inside the Citadel or the Jefferson Memorial rotunda lab]], two locations your quest marker will point you directly towards. And you won't even know until you've spent at least an hour or so rescuing your father from Braun's simulation, taking a round trip through Rivet City all the way to Jefferson Memorial all while rummaging through some story {{exposition}}.
*** It is possible to become permanently sealed in Vault 106 with no legitimate means of leaving. If you close the vault door behind you as you enter there is no option to open it from the inside, causing you to be trapped forever.
*** ''Mothership Zeta'' has a fatal bug that may cause you to get stuck on the Observation Deck: Sally is supposed to crawl through a vent and open the door from behind, but she just stops there, either at the observation window or behind the door. This is because Somah sometimes doesn't teleport up to the deck from the Engineering Core, resulting in the required [[ScriptedEvent scripted dialogue]] failing to activate. This seems to consistently affect a given saved game, so the only solution is to reload an older save and hope it doesn't happen again.
*** Megaton has two significant problems: first is a bug that can cause every NPC to spawn an inch or so higher every time you enter the city. While not immediately problematic, eventually they'll get high enough the whole lot will crash to their permanent deaths. The city map also has several 'gaps' which strolling [=NPCs=] can fall through (and most of them stroll) and out of the world. This won't kill them and any quest markers involving them will point to an area near the School, but they aren't in the School, they're ''under'' it, in an area called "The Void" that the engine recovers terminally falling [=NPCs=] to. This can happen to Walter the maintenance man (obnoxious but not debilitating) and Moriarty (far more problematic, as he's a plot NPC). On PC you can use a console command to warp right to them or put them back in place; on consoles you're out of luck.
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas:''
*** An oversight can cause the House quest line to be stuck at the sixth part if you gain infamy with the New California Republic, and by this time, you'll already be banned from both their and Caesar's main quests. Your only option now is to go Wild Card.
*** Doing the quest "How Little We Know" too early (i.e. before being assigned it by Liza O'Malley) makes it impossible to complete the main NCR quest, "For The Republic, Part 2".
*** It's possible to get trapped in the bunker from which the ''Dead Money'' DLC is accessed, as the door says that a non-existent key is required, even after completing the add-on. The only way around this is to remove the system cache, restart the game, and click "cancel" when asked to update.
*** In ''Old World Blues'', if you choose a certain speech option when talking to [[spoiler:your brain]], you get stuck in an infinite dialog loop.
** In ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', the original game was impossible to permanently screw up because the Minutemen would always be an available option for the player and couldn't be made hostile, and there was solid railroading to keep the player on the plotted path for the first half of the game. However, the designers of the ''Nuka World'' DownloadableContent didn't take that into account. Joining the Raiders turns the Minutemen into enemies, but the Raiders have no victory condition of their own and no way to destroy the Brotherhood of Steel or the Institute, so if you've made enemies of everyone, you can't finish the game.
*** An ObviousRulePatch was released shortly after the launch of the DLC that prevents the Minutemen from becoming hostile to the player. Preston Garvey will chew you out every time you talk to him, but will otherwise continue to act as normal, giving out infinite radiant quests and main story quests as designed.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'':
** ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' has a well-known glitch occurring in the later mission Madd Dogg. You're supposed to line up a truck full of hay under down-and-out rapper Madd Dogg before he jumps to his death, but for still-unconfirmed reasons he can commit suicide as soon as the mission cutscene ends. Fans speculate that this is caused by too many cheats being saved, though this has been mostly discredited. Another theory is that the pedestrian riot cheat has been activated, which makes Madd Dogg walk off the roof to attack the nearest person. There is no way to complete the story mode on the same save file if this happens.
** The worst GameBreakingBug in all of the series has to be the Purple Nines glitch in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII''. If you complete the D-Ice mission Rumble, it clears the existence of an entire gang. The problem occurs that once you save, the bug affects ''all'' saves so the game will never load any more Purple Nines. That makes D-Ice's first mission impossible on any future game saves, as it entails gunning down a set amount of the now non-existent Nines.[[note]]Since the glitch is tied to the save file, it's possible to avoid it on a new game by unplugging the Memory Card prior to starting the game so that it doesn't try to load the glitched save file, then reinserting it once the game's started.[[/note]]
** ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'''s last mission features a jump from a bike to a helicopter. You then hang on the chopper and have to press a certain button to climb into the cockpit. Some copies are affected of being unable to get into the chopper, regardless how often you press, making this an Anti-climax. PC Gamers have the option of changing the button in the options; console users are still screwed as no one from Rockstar Games knows what the bug is or where it came from.
** A semi-rare bug in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIVTheLostAndDamned'' can lead the game to not give you any more missions after the [[spoiler:museum mission]] is finished, meaning the game story can't progress and so the game can't be finished. Nothing appears on the radar, and no amount of calling or driving around will cause a radar blip for any sort of mission to appear - the only real fix is to reload from a save, although even that might not save you.
** In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'', the Prison Break heist in ''Online'' has a bug where you can't lose the cops once you've gotten the prisoner into the plane and taken off. The 5-star wanted level never goes away.
* In ''VideoGame/LegendOfMana'' during the Heaven's Gate event, there are two battle arenas that just barely overlap. If you trigger the 2nd one while the first is still active, the game will lock up.
* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'':
** In order to reach The End dimension, you need to activate the end portal, found in Strongholds, which only spawn 3 times per world. Generation bugs can cause the portals to be incomplete, and if all 3 portals are incomplete, you're screwed. At least, this was the case before an update made it so that there are 128 Strongholds.
** Before the hunger bar was introduced, there's a possibility of getting stuck in a 2 block deep hole in Bedrock. Normally, if you have a supply of blocks this wouldn't be a real problem since you could create a platform under you to escape. However, if you for some reason fell into this hole without any blocks, you better hope there's an enemy mob nearby that can kill you because there's no way you can respawn without death and Bedrock is indestructible.
** At times, it's possible to start a new world... [[EpicFail inside a hill, or in a lava lake (or, in Minecraft 360's case,]] ''[[EpicFail underwater]]''). [[PressStartToGameOver Should this happen on Hardcore...]]
* ''VideoGame/NoMansSky''
** In the beginning, you are normally given a basic ship that doesn't come equipped with a hyperdrive. As a result, you're forced to go through a tutorial section that gives you the blueprints for a hyperdrive and the fuel cells needed to power them so you can craft them when needed. The problem comes if you've purchased the special pre-order ship which comes with a hyperdrive already installed, so players who redeem the ship too early may unknowingly completely bypass the tutorial section and then end up in a situation where they're stranded on a remote planet unable to refuel their ship because they don't know how. Luckily, this was patched after launch to launch the tutorials that unlock the crafting recipe when getting any ship that lacks a hyperdrive.
** It's possible to claim a crashed ship only to discover that the planet it's on doesn't have the required resources to get it fixed and take off. Better not forget where you parked your old ship!
** It's also possible for the game to start you on a planet with extreme conditions, a dearth of the elements needed to restore life support, and place your starting ship miles from your spawn point. It becomes punishing tedious or even completely impossible to get to the ship alive.
** Survey missions from the Nexus run the risk of becoming impossible to complete if the flora, fauna, or minerals were discovered already by a previous visitor. This issue is more common in Expedition mode, which has everyone start on the same planet, as the Space Anomaly offers missions to nearby systems.
* There is one mission in ''VideoGame/SaintsRowTheThird'' where, after a cutscene, you will have to kill a brute. However, if you're playing on a slow computer, the game will fail to load the cutscene, causing the brute to kill you before you can do anything.
* ''VideoGame/SaintsRowIV'' cannot be beaten in co-op, because desynch between the two players will cause them to automatically fail the pre-FinalBoss trench run sequence no matter how well they perform. This bug exists on all versions of the game and was never patched.
* In ''VideoGame/StarfleetAdventures'', a ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' mod for ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity Nova'', the first thing the player does is the ''Kobayashi Maru'', which, true to form, is designed as an UnwinnableTrainingSimulation. Beating the scenario results in you being stuck in the empty sector used for the sim, with no way out.[[note]][[WhatCouldHaveBeen They intended to make it]] so beating the ''Kobayashi Maru'' would result in you starting the game proper one rank higher than normal, but no new versions of the alpha have been released since v0.5 in 2009.[[/note]]
* [=MDickie's=] now-legendary biblical-era ''VideoGame/TheYouTestament'' is very easy to make unwinnable, as discovered during a LetsPlay by Website/SomethingAwful regulars Chip Cheezum and General Ironicus: If you create a very, very short character and step into a pool, you can not climb out, and have to start all over again. [[http://chipandironicus.com/videos/testament/6.html You can see the effect in action in this video, towards the end.]]
[[/folder]]

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-->[-To return to the main page, click [[UnwinnableByMistake here]].-]
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** In chapter 16 of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'', you have allied soldiers fighting by your side. However, if any of them were still alive by the time you beat the boss, an allied soldier might end up occupying the throne before you could have your Lord seize it. Because of the nature of the AI, [[ArtificialStupidity they wouldn't move from the throne to make way for the Lord]]. You also couldn't kill them, essentially making the level unwinnable and forcing you to restart, if you don't have a unit with enough Aid to Rescue them.

* ''VideoGame/SpiderMan2000'' is unwinnable on modern PCs due to a strange choice in how cut scenes are managed: NPC's actions are exactly defined, but Spider-Man himself still uses game engine physics in cutscenes, just with preprogrammed control inputs; and since the game engine is still running for him, he can actually die and end the game. This means that variations in timing - which are 100% certain on modern machines compared to ones from 2000 - will result in moments such as Scorpion's monologue being interrupted by Spider-Man smacking into the window behind him and plummeting to his death (he was supposed to swing in through the window, but timed the controls wrong). Spider-Man will also bang his head on a windowsill and fall to his death while chasing Venom in one of the cut scenes in that level, which makes the game unwinnable; the former scene is skippable, the latter is not.

* ''VideoGame/SpiderMan2000'' is unwinnable on modern PCs due to a strange choice in how cut scenes are managed: NPCs actions are exactly defined, but Spider-Man himself still uses game engine physics in cutscenes, just with preprogrammed control inputs; and since the game engine is still running for him, he can actually die and end the game. This means that variations in timing - which are 100% certain on modern machines compared to ones from 2000 - will result in moments such as Scorpion's monologue being interrupted by Spider-Man smacking into the window behind him and plummeting to his death (he was supposed to swing in through the window, but timed the controls wrong). Spider-Man will also bang his head on a windowsill and fall to his death while chasing Venom in one of the cut scenes in that level, which makes the game unwinnable; the former scene is skippable, the latter is not.

* ''VideoGame/SpongebobSquarepantsBattleForBikiniBottom'' ''Rehydrated'' haves at least three spatulas that can become unobtainable because of glitches: the "Annoy Squidward" one in Bikini Bottom (If you enter Squidward's house, talk to him a few times but not enough to get the spatula and exit, the mission becomes impossible to do), the sandcastle one in Goo Lagoon (sometimes the screen flashes black randomly in any point of the level and from that point on the game will think you already got that spatula) and the slide one in Rock Bottom (touching the spatula in the moment it despawns will make the game think you grabbed it, but it's actually still unobtained).

* The 2000 ''VideoGame/SpiderMan'' game is unwinnable on modern PCs due to a strange choice in how cut scenes are managed: NPCs actions are exactly defined, but Spider-Man himself still uses game engine physics in cutscenes, just with preprogrammed control inputs; and since the game engine is still running for him, he can actually die and end the game. This means that variations in timing - which are 100% certain on modern machines compared to ones from 2000 - will result in moments such as Scorpion's monologue being interrupted by Spider-Man smacking into the window behind him and plummeting to his death (he was supposed to swing in through the window, but timed the controls wrong). Spider-Man will also bang his head on a windowsill and fall to his death while chasing Venom in one of the cut scenes in that level, which makes the game unwinnable; the former scene is skippable, the latter is not.

** In chapter 16 of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'', you have allied soldiers fighting by your side. However, if any of them were still alive by the time you beat the boss, an allied soldier might end up occupying the throne before you could have your Lord seize it. Because of the nature of the AI, [[ArtificialStupidity they wouldn't move from the throne to make way for the Lord]]. You also couldn't kill them, essentially making the level unwinnable and forcing you to restart, if you [[FinalDeath don't have ]] a unit with enough Aid to Rescue them.

* In Stage 3 (prehistory) of ''VideoGame/GarfieldCaughtInTheAct'', the boss, a prehistoric Odie, will sometimes bounce offscreen. If he does, he will never return, and you will have to choice but to reset the game.

* In order to beat the next to last level of the 1993 Sega Genesis ''ComicBook/XMen'' game, you need to destroy a computer terminal and wait for Professor Xavier to tell you to "Reset the computer now!" How? [[spoiler:By pushing the reset button on the console itself.]] This made the game impossible to beat on the Sega Nomad since [[spoiler:that system didn't have a reset button]].

* The first episode of ''VideoGame/{{Paganitzu}}'' features a mechanic that makes the player's hat fall off at random times. The hat acts as a path-disrupting obstacle for spiders, and remains in position even if the player dies and restarts the level, so if you are very unlucky, on a level where there is no physical obstacle between you and a spider (eg 13, 14, 17, 20), it is possible for the hat to make a spider immediately come after you and kill you when the level starts. If you're even more unlucky, the spider will come for you faster than you can retrieve the hat, over and over again until you run out of lives.
* In ''VideoGame/PuzzleQuest'', it's possible to accidentally make the siege of Silvermyr unwinnable if you spam too many spells - the Magic Node (adds +5 to all skills when enemy uses a spell) will buff its skills to ludicrous levels (Battle 90+) meaning that any damage done to it will do nothing or actually heal it!

* Due to a bug in ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings II'''s ''Conclave'' DownloadableContent, {{Player Character}}s ruling nomadic realms [[https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/nomadic-conclave-madness.917207/ sometimes end up]] in a Catch22Dilemma where the members of their realm council dislike them because they want more land, then disagree with granting vassal khans (usually including themselves) more land, because they dislike the PC due to wanting more land. The only solution currently is to fire the council altogether.

* Due to a bug in ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings II'''s ''Conclave'' {{DLC}}, {{Player Character}}s ruling nomadic realms [[https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/nomadic-conclave-madness.917207/ sometimes end up]] in a Catch22Dilemma where the members of their realm council dislike them because they want more land, then disagree with granting vassal khans (usually including themselves) more land, because they dislike the PC due to wanting more land. The only solution currently is to fire the council altogether.

** Also in ''Phantasy Star I'', it is possible to decline to take plot-important items such as the Amber Eye or Nuts if your inventory is full. If that happens, the item in question will be LostForever, and you will be forced to start the game over from the very beginning.

** In ''FireEmblemNewMysteryOfTheEmblem'', the developers tried their best to ensure you can't lock the game into an unwinnable state when fighting [[spoiler:Hardin]]. He carries the Darksphere item, which prevents anyone not holding the Lightsphere from doing damage to him. You're given the Lightsphere by the plot, so you can't miss it, if a player unit gets killed while holding an item, the item reappears in the convoy at the start of the next chapter, and even if you somehow forget to bring it, Marth can retrieve any item from the convoy at any time--it's still not an ''easy'' boss fight, but it's pretty much always at least ''possible'' for you to beat it, as long as you have a character with more than 30 Attack (which is pretty trivial at that point). However, the developers also made it possible for one recruitable character in an earlier chapter (Sheena) to ''un-recruit'' herself; if you talk her into joining you and then kill one of her soldiers, she becomes hostile. Recruiting her, giving her the Lightsphere, and un-recruiting her results in the Lightsphere being stuck on an enemy unit with no way to get it back, and if you then complete the chapter and proceed to the fight with [[spoiler:Hardin]], you're now stuck in a room with a boss you can't kill.

** A good example of "bricking the game by not gaining enough stats" can occur in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade''. There's a certain late-game boss in Hector's route that can ''only'' be damaged by Hector himself. So if your Hector got exceptionally strength-screwed, the chapter will become impossible to beat.
** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'' has a number of scripted battles taking place between enemies and allied [=NPCs=] in several chapters throughout the game, the most popular examples being [[spoiler:Mahnya's fight against Pamela and Andrei's combined forces]] and [[spoiler:Travant ambushing Quan and Ethlyn as they trudge through the Yied desert.]] In most of these examples, one side is destined by the plot to lose, and generally have the odds stacked heavily against them to ensure that happens. However, it's possible, though exceptionally unlikely, for the "losing" side to end up winning the battle if the RNG favors them; if the player is especially careless or unlucky, this can result in them conquering a castle before the player can, locking the player our of the rest of the game unless they have a save from ''before'' the game engine defied the plot.

%%*** There's one notable oversight in ''The Blazing Blade''. Hector Hard Mode is already the most difficult route of the game, and makes one tweak to an already-difficult stage, creating a DuelBoss by flagging one character as arbitrarily only being damaged by Hector himself. In case it's not obvious, if Hector's been RNG screwed, you're hosed.[[note]]There are several steps taken to try and avoid this, such as a weapon effective on the boss being in a chest on that stage along with tons of healing items, but none of it will help if Hector's doing 3 damage a turn with no chance of a CriticalHit against a boss that kills him in one round.[[/note]]

* ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDarkTheNewNightmare'' has a frustrating glitch where a plot-critical item simply didn't appear. This happened way too often for the developers not to know about it. The only option was to grit your teeth and reset.

* In the beginning of ''VideoGame/NoMansSky'', you are normally given a basic ship that doesn't come equipped with a hyperdrive. As a result, you're forced to go through a tutorial section that gives you the blueprints for a hyperdrive and the fuel cells needed to power them so you can craft them when needed. The problem comes if you've purchased the special pre-order ship which comes with a hyperdrive already installed, so players who redeem the ship too early may unknowingly completely bypass the tutorial section and then end up in a situation where they're stranded on a remote planet unable to refuel their ship because they don't know how. Luckily, this was patched after launch to launch the tutorials that unlock the crafting recipe when getting any ship that lacks a hyperdrive.

* In Chapter 5 of ''VideoGame/Mother3'', it's possible for you to get stuck between a moving NPC and a wall inside His Highness' Room. The killer? Said NPC is a Save Frog, meaning the last time you probably saved was ''right after getting stuck'', and due to a programming oversight (combined with the fact that saving the game also saves your exact coordinates within a given room), it will never move out of your way, effectively ending the game and forcing you to start over unless you kept a backup save. The fan-made strategy guide for the game advises that you should avoid that save point completely and tough it out until you get to the next one.

** If you choose to save in the middle of the timed final level, you will return to find one of the Banana Medals can't be collected. You need all the Banana Medals to see the entire ending. Before Website/YouTube, this was one nasty glitch.
** One of the Golden Bananas requires you to enter a mechanical fish and shoot out 3 lights surrounding its heart, which are blocked by a propeller that spins/stops on a set pattern, in a certain amount of time. This is normally a fairly easy one to get. But if you don't do it by a certain point it becomes nearly impossible to get due to a bug that makes the propeller spin longer than normal. The only way to get the banana is to exploit a glitch that allows you to hit lights that are being covered, but this is difficult to do and doesn't always work.
*** Turns out the problem was specifically getting the sniper scope upgrade, and there are ways to get around it without glitches, see [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQspd_6ppO8 this video]] for details.

* There's a bug in ''VideoGame/{{Forza}} Horizon 4'' that affects the Seasonal Playlist. If you visit one of the DownloadableContent expansion areas (Fortune Island or Lego Valley), do not stay there when the season changes if you're going for 100% in a given season. Going to these locales causes the photo challenge (where you need to take a picture with one of your vehicles in a specific setting) to lose its completion status and if the season changes while you're away from the mainland, it stays incomplete. This is especially annoying if you're trying to max out a series as you have to wait an ''entire month'' for another stab at 100%.