Basic Trope: A situation where Video Game designers deliberately include a way or ways to make the game Unwinnable.
- Straight: Alice has to find the legendary gear of the great hero Sir Bob. It's possible for her to miss collecting the Pendant of Power or Gauntlets of Greatness before the areas where they are hidden are destroyed by Emperor Evulz. If this occurs, the game is rendered unwinnable.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is supposed to gather four other Chosen Ones and all of the legendary equipment in order to face Emperor Evulz. It is entirely possible to miss recruiting Princess Carol or Francis, or to destroy a Load-Bearing Boss without realizing that one of the legendary treasures is still hidden deep inside the dungeon you just wiped out. The player can't continue from this.
- Virtually every action you take in the game can cause an unwinnable state if you do it incorrectly or in the wrong order.
- If you get a certain Non-Standard Game Over, the game will lock itself on a certain screen and not let you start the game over or even interact with the game at all, including going to the main menu screen.
- Downplayed:
- Missing an item makes a whole side-quest unwinnable, but not the main plot.
- Angering Francis into leaving locks you into the bad ending where Alice dies after defeating Emperor Evulz.
- Starting with stats that would be instantly lethal gets an instant game over screen with a custom message depending on what pushed them into death. "<CHARNAME> was stillborn." if caused by base stats, "<CHARNAME> died in their training" if it was a class health penalty, and "<CHARNAME> died of arcane accident/being unable to contain divine power/medical complications." if magical modifications, divine blessings, or cybernetic implants were the ones to push them over the edge.
- Justified:
- The game is one where the point of the game is to deliberately avoid the unwinnable game state.
- It's a Sierra game, or at least pays homage to Sierra.
- It was intended as a Video Game Cruelty Punishment. Instead of getting a Game Over for killing people Alice cannot progress.
- Inverted: Winning the game is inevitable.
- Subverted:
- When a plot item is destroyed, it appears somewhere else.
- You can miss the Ultimate Mon. They're the effect, not the cause.
- If you don't go to the areas where the Pendant and Gauntlets are hidden, they get destroyed by Evulz. However, an explorer, Faye, managed to salvage both from the wreckage, and will sell them to you. So getting those two is just delayed, not completely missable.
- Rendering progression impossible will lead to a Game Over.
- Double Subverted:
- ...except for one.
- They're the cause of something else.
- If you fail to get the Pendant and Gauntlets before Evulz destroys the areas they're in, you get a Hope Spot when Faye salvages them from the wreckage, but they're too damaged to use and the game remains unwinnable.
- The creators were not prepared for some particularly stupid/creative gamers...
- Parodied:
- Charlie is playing Bob's Quest, and his first mission is for Bob to deliver Alice's lunch. He has Bob eat her lunch instead, rendering the game Unwinnable.
- Alternately, the game has an "Impossible" difficulty setting...which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, as described in the main article.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is told flat-out that she needs to recruit the other Chosen Ones and is warned that the legendary equipment is well-hidden and may be "lost forever to the sands of time" if she isn't careful. It's also impossible to miss recruiting Charlie or Belle, and several warnings are given whenever the player is about to potentially bypass a vital item. On the other hand, Carol is difficult to read and doesn't officially join until late-game, and only if treated well, while Francis can be Killed Off for Real without the player realizing Alice can rescue and recruit him, and other equipment can be accidentally missed.
- Averted: There is no way for the player to accidentally miss something important and make the game impossible for them to win.
- Enforced:
- The designers want players to pay more attention to the world they've created, so they make it that a player who isn't paying attention will stumble into one of these traps and screw themselves over without realizing it.
- The betray your team mates for profit path was made to end with the your former team mates murder you ending specifically to teach players about the consequences of not being a team player.
- The programmers were forced to include a Copy Protection routine that removes one of the required artifacts at random if the game doesn't check out.
- The game is an arcade machine, and it was designed this way in order to keep coins coming into the machine regularly and frequently.
- Lampshaded: The game in a bit of niceness, causes the save points to refuse to save for you after a MacGuffin is destroyed, stating "You cannot win, assisting you now would be cruel."
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz is deliberately hiding some of the legendary equipment in dungeons with Load Bearing Bosses so that Alice might accidentally make it impossible for him to retrieve, making the prophecy impossible to fulfill.
- Implied: The source code includes comments around the cause 'You should always be careful with X'. It isn't clear if that was directed to programmers about introducing bugs or players stating that the state was intentional.
- Exploited: Bob torments Alice by forcing her to play the game, knowing she'll find it VERY frustrating.
- Defied:
- The game has entered a known unwinnable state, but some glitch or trick is used to beat the game anyway.
- Alternatively, they made the player able to go back and get what they need.
- All missing plot important items show up at a Fountain of the Oracle and there is always at least one accessible.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "It's from Sierra, half the fun is finding new and improved ways to screw up."
- Implied: Bob is playing a game and an Atomic F-Bomb is heard. The next scene shows him starting a new save file.
- Deconstructed: The game gets panned by critics for its sadistic difficulty, and it suffers a reduction in sales because of it.
- Reconstructed: The game designers are catering to a niche group of gamers that like this sort of thing. Anyone outside of that is a bonus.
- Played For Laughs: You can get a Non-standard Game Over by throwing the key into the lava when you and your party are on the path to the Evulz's castle. Your party members berate you for being mind-numbingly stupid and leave you in a hilarious cut scene. This scene becomes a favorite amongst gamers.
- Played For Drama: Making the game unwinnable requires sacrificing Alice's little sister Beth to get a sword of invulnerability, otherwise known as the Coward's Sword. As it prevents doing and receiving any damage the only thing left to do in the save file is to listen to everyone yell at you in disgust. Even Evulz is appalled.
Did you read this while having more than one tab and/or browser window opened? Really? Now you can't collect the Pendant of Mono-Tab in the Unwinnable by Design page and fight the final boss! Thanks for breaking it... bonehead...
