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"Ethel! I-I think we're fighting a losing game!"
Lucy, I Love Lucy

"Oops, I stepped on an ant. Better restart the game."
Peter Fox, playing Moral Guardian approved Video Game Nice City.

Unwinnable is a gameplay state in which it is impossible for the player to finish the game. The only options are to reload a previous save (if possible) or start the game anew.

Unwinnable situations are generally the result of either a game-breaking glitch or design oversight, such as a required Scripted Event failing to activate or the good ol' failure of collision detection followed by falling off the planet. Saved games may also be made immediately before imminent death or with too little health to survive the current predicament. Making every save viable requires building the game around it and is not always feasible. Games with save-anywhere systems are particularly susceptible, as emulator users with save states often find out.

Many games urge you to keep and continually update multiple save files should you encounter an unwinnable situation. Autosaves and automated reloads have become more extensive, while save points now tend to heal. Unwinnability is shunned across the board.

Games with poorly placed autosave points can often save the player's position in unwinnable situations, e.g. with too little health or ammo to survive a battle after the Point Of No Return (i.e. you either can't backtrack to pick up ammo, or it disappears from the previous areas). Even worse, they often don't allow you to keep multiple saves, so you are totally screwed over and have to restart the level/mission.

The great exception are Adventure Games, especially Interactive Fiction. These were originally rife with intentionally unwinnable situations, which became a tradition before waning because players still couldn't stand them. An unsolicited theory is that, in comparison to the kill/duck/get/use mechanics of the average game, adventures have effectively been virtual worlds. Colossal Cave Adventure obeyed written commands several years before Space Invaders with its joystick and one button, Monkey Island 2 had digitized oil paintings for backgrounds back when Super Mario World was new. If in your exploration you happened to miss or destroy a vital clue, that was a pity but par the course.

The great Adventure Game companies had the same attitudes to unwinnable situations as they had to sudden character death. Sierra loved them, courted them, became one with them. Lucas Arts rejected them entirely and went off to do something fun instead. The Interactive Fiction producer Infocom was all over the map in its long existence.

Zarf's Cruelty Scale of Interactive Fiction, as lifted (and revised) from here, here and here, divides video game types as follows:

Merciful:
  • You only ever need one save file, and that only if you want to turn the computer off and go to sleep. You never need to restore to an earlier game.
  • Say that there is a large button on the wall, with a sign above it that says 'Inorganic Vaporizer Ray'. When you try to push it, the game says something like 'You'd better not. You'd lose that nifty pocket screwdriver'.

Polite:
  • You only need one save game, because if you do something fatally wrong, it's blatantly obvious and you'll know better than to save afterwards.
  • There is a large button on the wall, with a sign above it that says 'Inorganic Vaporizer Ray'. When you push it, all your stuff gets vaporized, including your clothing, and you catch a draft and die of pneumonia.

Tough:
  • There are things you can do which you'll have to save before doing. But you'll think "Ah, I'd better save before I do this."
  • There is a large button on the wall, with a sign above it that says 'Inorganic Vaporizer Ray'. When you push it, all your stuff gets vaporized, and you can't finish the game.

Nasty:
  • There are things you can do which you'll have to save before doing. After you do one, you'll think "Oh, bugger, I should have saved before I did that."
  • The same as Tough, only there's no sign.

Cruel:
  • You think "I should have saved back in the third room. Now I'll have to start over."
  • The same as Nasty, only you just hear a humming noise when you push the button. Then, fifty turns later, you type 'inventory'... "Hey, where's all my stuff?"

Note that dipping below "polite" is a design flaw in most games. Old-fashioned adventure games and most Sierra games seldom rise above "nasty."

Make this a Guide Dang It, and you're certain to piss a lot of people off.

The spiritual opposite of a Hopeless Boss Fight, where you are supposed to fail to make the game continue. Also (in some cases) the worst-case scenario of Lost Forever. Contrast Kobayashi Mario, for games not supposed to be "won" at all: Games that have a High Scores screen instead of a victory condition.

Examples

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    Sierra 

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