...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Unwinnable by Design
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There are plenty of difficult games out there, but at least most of them have the decency to kill you off the moment your quest becomes impossible to complete – otherwise you'd end up wandering around looking for a way to progress when none exist. Now, in the case of games that are Unintentionally Unwinnable it's kind of understandable – either a bug or an oversight has rendered the game broken so there's no way for it to tell the player how screwed they are. But Unwinnable by Design is a whole other kettle of fish: This time around, the designers have deliberately made it possible to be permanently unable to progress in the game. The devs, for whatever reason, have decided to set down giant digital man-traps that exist purely to ensnare the unwary. The worst are those that cripple the game from the start, but let the player continue for hours before the fatal error becomes apparent. Adventure Games, and Interactive Fiction in particular, originally were rife with intentionally unwinnable situations, and were usually known as "dead ends" during the genre's prime. Meanwhile, a player continuing to play a game that unbeknownst to them had been rendered unwinnable was referred to as stuck in a "walking dead" situation. A hallmark of the genre once, the tradition has waned in the 1990s because most players can't stand them, with many instances most decidedly cases of Fake Difficulty. |
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Crypt of the Sorcerer follows a VERY narrow path to have even a remote chance of winning. Among other things, you need to smear yourself with a certain creature's blood to avoid death from a huge lizard monster in the middle of the book. The creature is met at the very beginning of the gamebook, and smearing yourself with the blood gives you a random chance of dying. | |
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In Yandere Chan, it's possible to get into a situation where all three of the possible choices lead to Bad Endings. If you ignore Mia and eat lunch with your friends, she'll ambush you in the hallway and commit murder-suicide; if you ignore your friends and eat lunch alone with Mia she'll eventually kidnap you; and if you force Mia to eat with your friends she'll kill you and them with poisoned ravioli that she conveniently had prepared for just such an occasion. The choice that leads to this situation? Not giving Mia her calculator back when you're at the train station. Want the Golden Ending? Better restart. Fortunately, it's a very short game. | |
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Meanwhile has another "Infinite loop" scenario. If you use the SQUID, a device that allows you to experience the memories of whoever you attach it to, on yourself and set it to "Lifetime", you'll see the main character being born, growing up, getting to where the plot takes place and using the SQUID on himself, then since the flashback is part of your memories you'll see it again, and again, and again until you Rage Quit. | |
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Meanwhile (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
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Many co-operative board games like Pandemic as well as some solo games like Patience (a.k.a. Solitaire) have random initial conditions, which can mean that a given game is lost before it has even been begun when the draw is such that no choices the player(s) can make will lead to victory. To a great extent the aim of the game is to find out whether you're in one of those games or not. | |
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Pandemic (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
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In Truth or Dare (2017), when the players start trying to use Exact Words to avoid the dares, the evil presence running the game just either ensures that they fail in those attempts at "cheating" or introduces dares that are inherently deadly. | |
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Truth or Dare (2017) | hasFeature |
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Idiotest: The money clock starts when a puzzle appears. Without completely guessing or being lightning fast in the very first second, there is no way to win the puzzle's full value. | |
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In The Fifth Elephant, The Game has become this under Angua's brother Wolfgang. When their father was still in charge, the human had a chance at winning and gaining a prize of some kind for risking their life, but under Wolfgang, the human always dies. He's got the game set up so he and his pack toy with the human in question; if the human screws up early, they'll get killed by one of them, but if they manage to get to one of the few possible escape routes in the area, one of the werewolves is already there. | |
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Paranoia does this pretty much all the time. The public and private PC goals are routinely in direct conflict, so someone is going to fail at something (cue the Blame Game, which the debriefing is specifically designed to invoke). Occasionally a clever PC will find a way to get credit for appearing to succeed. Individually, goals tend to range from Failure Is the Only Option to merely ludicrously difficult (or "even if the GM can't think of a way to succeed, throw it at them anyway, they might come up with something"). More than one classic Paranoia module doesn't even reach the debriefing stage, with the PCs never even making it back for debriefing. In Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues, the Troubleshooters survive the adventure ... but Alpha Complex doesn't. In the Paranoia XP edition, the sample mission is winnable, sort of. The PCs can deal with the scrubbot virus just by surviving the finale. Problem is, that wasn't the mission they were supposed to go on. The Troubleshooters were actually supposed to go looking for missing nuclear fuel, but they met with the wrong mission officer. And the mission The Quantum Traitor does this even more blatantly; the name of the adventure should be a clue that whatever the players do with the sealed environment they're given, it turns out that what's inside is something that makes their choice wrong. |
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The 2020 run of the Batman: Black and White anthology had "The Riddle", a Choose Your Own Adventure-style comic that had Batman chasing The Riddler through a maze while being guided by the reader. The only winning move is to not play. As one of the routes reveals, the maze is designed so that every single possible outcome results in Batman's death. If ignoring the instructions entirely and read like a traditional comic, the story has Batman find a back door into the maze to chase Riddler through and apprehend him and Killer Croc, remarking that this was never a game to him. | |
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Many street level or carnival games are unwinnable. For example, the classic Shell Game often has the scammer running the game stuff the rock into their sleeves so any choice the person makes will be the wrong one. A lot of governments have taken note and by law, carnival games have to be winnable, but only technically such. So instead of making it outright impossible to win, the game is designed in such a way that unless you're a professional athlete with the right skills, know that there's a tiny sweet spot that lets you win, or basically only under the most absolute perfect conditions, you won't win. |
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Shell Game | hasFeature |
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Moonrunner: If a particular item is not picked up and the Big Bad uses a particular random attack, then the book becomes unwinnable because of a hypnotically implanted cue that turns you into a monster in the final area. | |
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In Spiral (2021), the Jigsaw copycat once again distances himself from John Kramer's unusual M.O. Toward the end, he tells Zeke that it's foolish to try to save anyone. The traps have strict time limits and will kill the victim bar some sort of miracle. Schenk isn't teaching the trap victims a lesson or expects them to succeed, he simply wants the corrupt police officers to die. | |
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Spiral (2021) | hasFeature |
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Goosebumps (1995): Mansion of Terror from "The Haunted House Game" is deliberately rigged against the players. First, they don't know they're agreeing to play it until after they opened the box. If they ever roll a 7 (i.e., the most-common two dice combo), they die. The first stage requires collecting random items in several life or death puzzles to make it through the second stage. Any one of the challenges can kill you and if you miss an item, you're trapped forever because the second stage becomes impossible to complete. If you do somehow make it to the main lobby, the ghosts from the previous challenges reappear to block your path to the front door and kill you; Jonathan and Nadine luck out because they have a flashing camera to scare them off. Even then, the two last ghosts refuse to let them leave, and it’s only when they invoke the roll a 7 rule on them that they are able to escape. | |
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Goosebumps (1995) | hasFeature |
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A MADtv (1995) sketch about a Game Show called "Get Your Land Back" decides to pull this in a lightning round to eliminate all the contestants so that they don't get any land back. The round involves the contestants having to guess the correct word (Alabaster, shown on-screen below) without any hints as to what it is. When the third contestant manages to guess "Alabaster", we see the word change to "Alabama" and he's considered wrong and eliminated. | |
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MADtv (1995) | hasFeature |
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Magical Diary in Wolf Hall has a couple of routes that can be failed by actions that happened months ago (of in-game time) and didn't seem important at the time. In particular, Ellen's route will end abruptly in January if you interfered in Damien's attempt to give her a gift but did not seek her out after the Dark Dance to confess which happened back in October. William's route can force you into the friendship version rather than the romance version based on incredibly innocuous decisions long before that point, such as getting an advance on your allowance and blowing the whole sum early in the game. | |
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Magical Diary (Visual Novel) | hasFeature |
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Trial of Champions contains a luck-based challenge forcing you to choose a chain of maneuvers against a blind kendo master, all of which are essentially random and lead to either total victory or end of game with no use of skill or items. The same book also has a wizard who requires you to have gathered exactly nine gold rings from random places as well as the code numbers to use them. Failure at any point is instant death. | |
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Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: In Kamen Sentai Gorider, Kuroto Dan set up a Locked Room Mystery game, with protagonist Emu and several deceased Kamen Ridersnote Kaoru Kino/Another Agito, Kazuma Kenzaki/Blade, Kaito Kumon/Baron and Yoko Minato/Malika and Ex-Aid's own Kiriya Kujo/Lazer trapped in a Amusement Park of Doom trying to figure out what's going on and how to get out. And simply not playing the game isn't an option, since it's infinitely spawning monsters that will eventually overrun the planet. The main problem is that Emu keeps getting killed and "reset" back to the beginning with his memories of the past loop erased. It eventually turns out that Kuroto made the game unwinnable on purpose, planning to use the despair of the captive Riders to bring himself back to life, manipulating events while disguised as Kenzaki. However, he ended up screwing himself since this draws the attention of the real Kenzaki; once he enters the game, everything comes crashing down because, as established in Blade, if the Joker is the only Undead in the world, the world ends. | |
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Just Roll With It: On a game show, the family have to spin a wheel containing donuts, several of which are packed with disgusting flavors. Each one hopes they get the "good" donut in a spin. It's after each has consumed a horrible treat that they're informed there was no "good" donut at all. Blair has to take part in a "high stakes water gun race" against a sinister gang boss. The real-life mothers of the two actors are placed above water tanks and Kaylin Hayman's mother ends up dunked when she loses. When the actor playing the gang boss remarks "we've been having trouble with the tanks," his mother also gets dunked with both actors apologizing profusely. |
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In an episode of The Raccoons, wanting to improve sales for his line of potato chips, Cyril comes up with a giveaway contest. He distributes pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into bags of chips, offering a grand prize (an expensive bicycle) to whoever completes the entire puzzle. However, Cyril deliberately produced only one copy of a particular piece, with the intent of never distributing it. Bert, not knowing that the contest is rigged, manages to collect all of the other pieces without too much trouble, but ultimately blows all of his money trying to find the final (impossible) piece. Cyril's plan seems to be working, until the pigs accidentally lose the winning piece in the chip factory's assembly line, leading to it getting packaged into one of the bags. | |
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The Raccoons | hasFeature |
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The Price Is Right: The most famous game, Plinko, is technically close to unwinnable because the official rules only consider Plinko to be won if the full $50,000note $25,000 until 1998; $100,000 in primetime specials is won. The only way to do that is to win all four additional Plinko chips (by correctly answering 'either/or' questions), and then to have every one of the five chips land in the center slot (out of nine) at the bottom of the pegboard. Even hardcore TPIR fans consider the game to be won if that slot is hit at least once, but Word of God disagrees. Nobody has won the game since it was introduced in 1983, and nobody is likely to win it any time soon. The closest anyone came to winning was a contestant in 1990 who dropped four chips into the center slot and one into the $1,000 slot. One early pricing game, "Bullseye" (not to be confused with another identically-named pricing game), has the dishonor of being the only pricing game with a "true" 0% win rate. The player had seven chances to guess the exact price of a car, and would be told whether their bids were too high or too low. They tried pretty hard to make the game easier — spotting the contestant a $500 bidding range, rounding the price to the nearest $10 and even playing it for a sailboat instead — but none of the tweaks helped, and the game was gone only two weeks in. Incidentally, if you know what you're doing, you could get the exact price (rounded to $10) if you can guess it within a $1,260 price range. The equally short-lived two-player variant, on the other hand, pretty much forced a win by ending when one of the contestants nailed the price; ironically, at least two games ended within less than seven guesses even though no bidding range or price rounding was used. |
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The Price Is Right | hasFeature |
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xkcd 724, providing the image for Unwinnable Joke Game: a Tetris game where the bottom is curved, rendering it impossible to complete a line. The sequel makes up for it, though. | |
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A Cruel example is found in The Crown Of Kings: At the very end of your adventure, you will be forced to find a safe means of escape from Mampang Fortress, and the only way to do so without using magic is to have much earlier found and befriended the well-concealed Samaritans of Schinn. If you play as a warrior and either fail to find them or fail to earn their trust, you will continue your adventure only to discover at the last that you cannot escape the Fortress. | |
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Sorcery! | hasFeature |
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This was the point of the Dungeons & Dragons module "The Apocalypse Stone". Before the story even starts, the world is irrevocably doomed - the goal isn't to save the world, but to go down fighting a la Ragnarok. | |
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During the first night of the culture festival arc in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, a Phantom Thief steals all the spare heart-shaped balloons from class 2-B and leaves behind a note stating that they'll be taking their next target with a picture of a bunch of clocks. Fujiwara, known for her love of riddles, spends the entire second day trying to figure out the meaning behind it, but can't seem to figure out the answer. Kaguya ends up realizing that this is deliberate: Shirogane just threw some nonsense symbols together to distract Fujiwara long enough for him to put together his Grand Romantic Gesture. | |
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Kaguya-sama: Love Is War (Manga) | hasFeature |
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Stargate SG-1: In one episode, the team is ensnared in an alien device that keeps making them relive the same memory over and over again, offering them the opportunity to "set things right". However, every time they try to, the scenario is changed and forces them to fail. Even if they anticipate the previous change and prepare for it, the machine will create a modified scenario in which they still fail. O'Neill responds with a Rage Quit. There is also an episode where Teal'c is hooked up to a simulator through his mind, and is constantly going through the same base invasion scenario. The other characters realize that because the real Teal'c wouldn't give up, neither will the simulation in trying to beat him. The problem herein is two fold; for one, the machine is based on the alien devices in the former episode, and for two, Teal'c's mission in the simulator is to defeat the Goa'uld trying to destroy the Star Gate Command, but since Teal'c is absolutely convinced the Goa'uld can never be completely defeated, his subconsciousness constantly creates worse and worse scenarios. It's eventually beaten by putting Daniel into it and giving him a 2-second future vision, which eventually pays off and gets them out of the game after finally winning. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_70814599 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_70814599 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Stargate SG-1 | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_70814599 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_719b8df1 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_719b8df1 | comment |
On Minute to Win It, those who make it far enough are subjected to a game they call "Supercoin", where you have to bounce a quarter into the top of a water jug from a few feet away in 60 seconds to win $1,000,000. The producers have allowed people to play it for $1,000,000 after meeting special conditions (either by winning the "last man standing" episodes which award a guaranteed $100,000 to their winners, or being a lucky audience member during their "million dollar mission" during Season 2). No one has won, and of the two times the $500,000 level was cleared, one couple was smart enough to walk away with the half million, and the other attempted the game and failed. A YouTube user has proven that part of the challenge is possible, the part involving bouncing the coin into the jug, but it took much longer than 60 seconds. Thankfully, losing on Supercoin would theoretically only drop you down to $250,000, which is still a good payout for a night's work. Eventually they lampshaded the whole ordeal by putting a safe point conveniently at $500,000. However, there was ONE person who managed to win Supercoin in under a minute – the host of the Turkish version! | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_719b8df1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_719b8df1 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Minute to Win It | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_719b8df1 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_72262aee | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_72262aee | comment |
Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Gaang runs into a man running a Shell Game, propelling the pebble into his sleeve so it won't be found. Toph, being an Earthbender, puts a stop to that very quickly and clears the guy out. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_72262aee | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_72262aee | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Avatar: The Last Airbender | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_72262aee | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_73d7930f | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_73d7930f | comment |
On Deep Space Nine, O'Brien and Bashir often spend their evenings playing a simulation of the battle of the Alamo in the holosuite, with themselves taking on the role of the doomed Texas soldiers. When asked why in the world they keep playing a battle scenario that's literally impossible to win, they explain that it's such an irresistible challenge precisely because it's unwinnable. After their previous simulations of RAF officers in the Battle of Britain and Spartans at Thermopylae, counselor Ezri was getting kind of worried about them. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_73d7930f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_73d7930f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_73d7930f | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_78ae0d07 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_78ae0d07 | comment |
Played for laughs on the short-lived You Don't Know Jack TV series. The "$2 Million Question" starts at $2,000,000 but starts counting down when host Paul Reubens started reading the question, after which something would inevitably interrupt him and stall the question so that the value was down to less than $1,000 by the time he finished reading it. Similarly: Idiotest: The money clock starts when a puzzle appears. Without completely guessing or being lightning fast in the very first second, there is no way to win the puzzle's full value. Divided is a game where three (or four) players must lock in the same answers to multiple-choice questions. The clock starts when the question choices appear and takes away money by the hundredth of a second. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_78ae0d07 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_78ae0d07 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
You Don't Know Jack (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_78ae0d07 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7981ca33 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7981ca33 | comment |
WarGames: The supercomputer used to run the actual US defense network thinks it's playing a game called "Global Thermonuclear War" and is preparing to launch all the nukes once it's done brute-forcing the launch codes as a part of said game. After the protagonists make it play an endless number of Tic-Tac-Toe games against itself and it keeps drawing all of them, it then simulates all the possible nuclear launch scenarios in the game and upon seeing that all of them end with no victor, it finally concludes: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." and aborts its attempts to launch the nukes for real. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7981ca33 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7981ca33 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
WarGames | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7981ca33 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7ff3216c | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7ff3216c | comment |
In one episode of U.S. Acres, Roy was hosting a trivia show entitled You Can't Win. He was offering fabulous prizes to anyone who could win, but only asked questions that no sane individual would actually know the answer to (i.e. the address of a particular dry cleaner in Venezuela). Meanwhile, Orson happens to receive an alien necklace that allows him to read other people's minds. Orson uses the necklace to win at Roy's show, not to claim any prizes, but to get Roy to stop. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7ff3216c | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7ff3216c | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Garfield and Friends | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_7ff3216c | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_81692f99 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_81692f99 | comment |
Star Trek: Command track Starfleet Academy cadets have to go through the Kobayashi Maru simulation, an unbeatable scenario where their ship will inevitably be lost with all hands, in order to graduate. This is not a subject matter exam so much as a Secret Test of Character to reveal command capability and personality traits, in particular how each cadet deals with failure. Many short stories examine how each character handled the simulation. Variations include use of diplomacy (crew still dies but considered a win), cheesing the simulator physics (breaks as more ships will spawn), invoking ritual combat (you die, but everyone else lives), and in the case of Nog, bribery. James T. Kirk was the first captain to beat this unbeatable scenario... by reprogramming the computer the night before. One of William Shatner's own continuation novels had a new character bring up to Kirk about how he was the first to beat the Kobayashi Maru, and then immediately and unwittingly bring him down several pegs by revealing that everyone wins nowadays. It's become a programming challenge rather than test of character. Star Trekker, a parody manga briefly published in the US by Antarctic Press until Paramount came down like a mountain on them, subverts this by having a Japanese captain fire on the freighter loaded with dilithium crystals, with the resulting explosion crippling the nearby Klingon cruisers. The captain is ordering a followup strike when Admiral Kirk himself (who doesn't want anyone else to win) kills the simulation and dresses her down. She explains that since saving the civilian vessel is a clear impossibility, priority has to be given to saving her own ship. On Deep Space Nine, O'Brien and Bashir often spend their evenings playing a simulation of the battle of the Alamo in the holosuite, with themselves taking on the role of the doomed Texas soldiers. When asked why in the world they keep playing a battle scenario that's literally impossible to win, they explain that it's such an irresistible challenge precisely because it's unwinnable. After their previous simulations of RAF officers in the Battle of Britain and Spartans at Thermopylae, counselor Ezri was getting kind of worried about them. The episode "Court Martial" of the original series has a scene where McCoy comes across Spock playing computer chess when he should be busy preparing Kirk's defense for the titular court martial case where the ship's computer records are being used to prove that he was guilty of getting a crew member killed via negligence. Spock reveals that he's doing just that, because he programmed the computer to play chess himself, and thus he should not be able to win against it. Him being able to beat it four times in a row is evidence that the computer has been tampered with. In the Next Generation episode "Thine Own Self", Troi thinks at first that the promotion exam is supposed to be unwinnable, and it's supposed to gauge how an applicant handles a hopeless situation. It's not. Troi finally realizes that the only winning move is to order a subordinate to do something she knows he won't survive, so that the ship won't be destroyed. She gives the order, passes the exam, and makes Commander. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_81692f99 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_81692f99 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Star Trek (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_81692f99 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_84724d58 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_84724d58 | comment |
KaBlam!: One episode of "Sniz and Fondue" involved a gacha dispenser that gave out spiders, considered to be the most popular, as one of the prizes inside gacha eggs. However, it turns out that the company deliberately doesn't put any spiders in the eggs so that kids will keep coming back hoping to get them. After bringing down the guy in charge of the company, Sniz and Fondue make a deal with him and are given dispensers that give out nothing but spiders. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_84724d58 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_84724d58 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
KaBlam! | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_84724d58 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_891b3c34 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_891b3c34 | comment |
Wizards, Warriors and You: When playing as the Warrior, you're limited to choosing three weapons from an assortment before starting the adventure, alongside your trusty magic sword. There are many times where not having the right weapon (And almost as many where having the wrong weapon) will result in an unavoidable death and failure. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_891b3c34 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_891b3c34 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Wizards, Warriors and You | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_891b3c34 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_8b2a9e80 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_8b2a9e80 | comment |
Danganronpa 3 Future Arc's Final Killing Game is implied by the Mastermind's last message to be this, as it was a ploy to wipe out all the leaders of the Future Foundation. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_8b2a9e80 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_8b2a9e80 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
DanganRonpa3 | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_8b2a9e80 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90e2f673 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90e2f673 | comment |
The BattleTech scenario Last Stand of the Black Watch is like this, as evidenced by the title. The Royal Black Watch was an elite unit of the Star League that was destroyed during the Amaris Coup. In the scenario, the last surviving eight Black Watch Battlemechs are defending themselves from an overwhelming array of Amaris-backed coup forces (36 units or more). There are only two possible outcomes: either the Black Watch dies to the last man, or they inflict enough damage that Amaris decides to Nuke 'em (this is the canon outcome). Black Watch players can only hope to die gloriously and take as many Coup forces with them – canonically, these last eight Royal Black Watch units destroyed more than three times their number in enemy Battlemechs and tanks before Amaris finally nuked them. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90e2f673 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90e2f673 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
BattleTech (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90e2f673 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90f42a9b | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90f42a9b | comment |
The Wheel of Time has "Snakes and Foxes", played with dice and tokens on a simple board. Kids grow out of it once they realize they can only escape the titular creatures and win by cheating. The game turns out to explain how to deal with the Aelfinn and Eelfinn, including the fact that cheating is necessary and that they work together to trap human victims. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90f42a9b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90f42a9b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Wheel of Time | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_90f42a9b | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_9108833b | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_9108833b | comment |
Knightmare had a No Backtracking rule, meaning it was easily possible for the teams to miss a vital clue or item. In a few cases, this led to an extremely hard Luck-Based Mission. Usually, it was only a matter of time before their mistake came back to kill them. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_9108833b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_9108833b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Knightmare | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_9108833b | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_91b0824b | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_91b0824b | comment |
"The Last Days Of Dr. Wily" has Mega Man: Wily Does it Himself, depicted as a montage at the end of the video. Dr. Wily makes good on some of his ideas mentioned earlier, such as a Bottomless Pit that's too wide for Mega Man to jump over, or having a level start with Mega Man surrounded by One-Hit Kill spikes. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_91b0824b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_91b0824b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Last Days Of Dr. Wily (Web Video) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_91b0824b | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_93489ff | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_93489ff | comment |
Dungeon Crawler Carl: After the interstellar Syndicate destroys and 'reclaims' every man-made structure on Earth, the surviving humans have a chance to win the planet back by completing the eighteen-floor World Dungeon. However, the levels escalate in difficulty to the point where it's (deliberately) nigh-impossible to do; the all-time record is reaching level thirteen, and the one person who did that survived there for just half an hour. The real purpose of the Dungeon is to be broadcast as a galactic reality TV show, thus extracting even more value from the remnants of Earth. Carl determines that he's going to burn it all down and break the people responsible, deliberately disrupting the intended flow of the game to interfere with their expected income and drive them toward bankruptcy. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_93489ff | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_93489ff | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Dungeon Crawler Carl | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_93489ff | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_97a238c7 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_97a238c7 | comment |
House of Hell: There are areas in the game that are inescapable as soon as you reach them, like the kitchen where every possible action leads to death. Also if you fail to pick up a well-hidden clue, you won't find a secret door that gives the only way to win the game. Also, if you roll low on your initial fear score, the game is unwinnable (you have to take at least 8 fear points throughout the game and when you take as many as your initial score - which can be from 7 to 12 - you die from fear). | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_97a238c7 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_97a238c7 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
House of Hell | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_97a238c7 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_989c429a | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_989c429a | comment |
Amanda, once she was allowed to start designing and implementing her own traps in Saw III, had started designing them all to be inescapable. Whether you think this is because of her misanthropy and distrust of people's ability to change or her desire to put them out of their misery so they wouldn't have to deal with the devastating mental aftermath of a trap is up to your interpretation. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_989c429a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_989c429a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Saw III | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_989c429a | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_99c9c59 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_99c9c59 | comment |
Knights of Doom has an amusing but sadistic example in the form of the Assassin's Dagger. This intangible opponent will plague you for the whole game, and can only be permanently defeated by choosing an appropriate skill before the adventure even starts or by buying a certain item. Otherwise, the book will give you opportunities to trap the dagger and run away, only for it to keep escaping and catching up with you later on. If you don't finish it off, then it finally manages to plunge itself into your back just as you confront the Big Bad... | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_99c9c59 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_99c9c59 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Knights of Doom | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_99c9c59 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0500a06 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0500a06 | comment |
Rugrats: In "Ice Cream Mountain", Stu and Drew Pickles are competing at miniature golf, where the course's final hole, "Ice Cream Mountain", allows a free game to golfers who make a hole-in-one. However, the course owner has fixed it so that nobody would get it. That is, until the babies, who were supposed to be taken out for ice cream, find it, believing it's a literal ice cream mountain, and inadvertently unrig the last hole, to the point of making it impossible not to win, leading to Stu and Drew, along with other golfers, making holes-in-ones and getting free games, much to the horror of the owner. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0500a06 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0500a06 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Rugrats | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0500a06 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0eaffc6 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0eaffc6 | comment |
In the first book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, you have to find keys to retrieve the treasure in the end. If you don't find them or bring along the wrong ones, the game is unwinnable and you lose even though having defeated the final boss. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0eaffc6 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0eaffc6 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a0eaffc6 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a2ae9a81 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a2ae9a81 | comment |
Rebel Planet: At one point, you break into an enemy armoury. There, you get the chance to take 2 out of 4 weapons. You must pick the right ones and guess which order to use them, or you die. There are no clues to help you. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a2ae9a81 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a2ae9a81 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Rebel Planet | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a2ae9a81 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a48db2ae | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a48db2ae | comment |
Another Cruel example comes in Creature of Havoc: your first few "decisions" are determined by dice rolls. Almost from the beginning, getting the wrong roll will make you miss the only item you can use to defeat the main villain. It is possible to play the book until the final confrontation and lose because you missed an item you can only obtain by 50/50 chance near the very start. To make matters worse the game explicitly gives you the option to use it in any battle any time in your adventure, and it is destroyed after one use. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a48db2ae | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a48db2ae | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Creature of Havoc | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a48db2ae | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a506a38b | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a506a38b | comment |
In Wayne's World, Noah Vanderhoff boasts that the most popular game in his arcade is this; in order to reach level two, you have to defeat a certain enemy... which never spawns. Since the players don't know this, they keep feeding the game quarters and play on in the hopes of being the first to beat the level. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a506a38b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a506a38b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Wayne's World | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a506a38b | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a5d64c3b | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a5d64c3b | comment |
In the Final Destination franchise, once you're on Death's list, it will pursue you relentlessly until you're dead. While it is possible to intervene in someone's death so that Death "skips" them, Death will simply continue working its way through the list until it's cycled back to you- ad infinitum. Attempts to subvert the list such as giving birth, resuscitation and suicide have all failed so far, leaving Death unbeatable. Final Destination 5 introduces the new rule that you can kill someone in order to get their remaining lifespan, seemingly offering survivors an out. However the two characters who use this method in the film both inherit short lifespans and end up dying within a fortnight, the implication being that Death will just manipulate you into killing someone with very little time left anyway. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a5d64c3b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a5d64c3b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Final Destination (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a5d64c3b | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a62fd6c7 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a62fd6c7 | comment |
Chrono Clock has an in-universe case in Makoto's route. After losing the pocketwatch (and Cro) to Makoto in a "guess the hand with the coin in it" game, Rei eventually finds out through use of the pocketwatch she possesses, Makoto is able to teleport small objects, and is thus able to teleport the coin between hands, effectively making it so that such a game can't be won regardless of which hand Rei chooses. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a62fd6c7 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a62fd6c7 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Chrono Clock (Visual Novel) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_a62fd6c7 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_aa819c97 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_aa819c97 | comment |
CLANNAD is absolutely rife with this. Misae requires you to choose three answers that specifically advance the plot. None of the nine answers you can give seem like wrong answers, and the last one seems too silly/perverted to be the proper answer. If you fail, you get rejected in the final conversation with zero hints of what went wrong, and considering that some routes in the game require you to advance other routes to properly succeed, you're likely to assume that you just need to do other stuff to advance it before looking up a guide and realizing these three questions are the entire deciding factor. Kyou's route requires that you be going out with Ryou, but making decisions that benefit the former than the latter. Worse yet, finishing Ryou's route does not grant an Orb of Light, something needed to activate the post-game story. Most of the narrative of the story basically requires you to be purposefully breaking Kyou's heart whether you like it or not, and rejecting Ryou at any point instantly grants a game-over.. Tomoyo, Kotomi, and Fuko all have one thing in common: you have to do part of Nagisa's route. The first requires you do enough to meet the girl, the second requires you do enough to get the club started, and the final one requires that you practically play the whole entire narrative through but change gears towards the end. None of these routes make any indication that you cannot win if you don't do this, ultimately ending in either Tomoya dumping the girl, the girl dumping Tomoya, or a nonstandard Game Over where Tomoya goes home and sulks about how there's no love in his life. Tomoyo's route at least helps by having a moment where the game goes "Gee, I wish that girl could help, but I don't know here, if only I did, this wouldn't have happened", but it doesn't say who it is or what you were supposed to do, and the other two are even worse as you can do half the route without any interruption and without doing any of Nagisa's story and suddenly the route ends with a bad ending. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_aa819c97 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_aa819c97 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
CLANNAD (Visual Novel) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_aa819c97 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ab050879 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ab050879 | comment |
Vault of the Vampire: Failing to bring along a magic sword and a wooden stake makes the game unwinnable (although the Count could technically be beaten without a magic sword). Also not clearing enough of the Count's coffins when you have the option to does the same trick. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ab050879 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ab050879 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Vault of the Vampire | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ab050879 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_afc86b0a | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_afc86b0a | comment |
In Ender's Game, the Giant's Drink simulation is unwinnable because it isn't really a game. Its only point is as a psychological gauge for each student. If they try it a few times and give up, good. If they keep on playing, despite having their avatar repeatedly killed, they have to be assessed for suicidal tendencies. Then there's Ender, who breaks the system and takes a third option. Retconned in the sequel, though. Arguably, the only real win is Bean's decision not to play at all, and even that is probably a bad move. He doesn't refuse to play to avoid the scenario; he'd just in the habit of not giving people anything that can be used to understand him or predict his actions. Being unwilling to play a computer game helps lead to his being put in life-threatening danger later. It's also a factor in him not being put in command at the end because the instructors didn't know what he was thinking, what his values were or how he would behave under pressure. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_afc86b0a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_afc86b0a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Ender's Game | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_afc86b0a | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b165d668 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b165d668 | comment |
Scorpion Swamp: If you fail to find a certain berry you still get infinite chances to do so to complete the "good" storyline. However you also have the chance to eat it up, in which case the game is unwinnable. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b165d668 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b165d668 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Scorpion Swamp | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b165d668 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b27fdd6d | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b27fdd6d | comment |
Catch-22 features the eponymous law, or regulation, or whatever. It is invoked by whatever abusive authority needs a heads I win, tails you lose argument. The prime example: Yossarian learns that any pilots who are insane are kept from flying combat missions and because of the extreme danger of flying combat missions all of the pilots are considered insane. But if you ask to be grounded you want to avoid combat, which is a rational decision, which means you are sane, and therefore you must fly combat missions. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b27fdd6d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b27fdd6d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Catch-22 | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b27fdd6d | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3705009 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3705009 | comment |
In Saw X, Mateo is one of a group of phony doctors who had falsely claimed to cure the cancer that was killing John Kramer, the original Jigsaw killer, and got kidnapped when Kramer found out that his treatment was a snake-oil scam. Mateo's trap involves having to perform brain surgery on himself. As seen in the preview, when the surgical implements are wheeled out to him, he barely even recognizes what they are. Even a real brain surgeon would have trouble beating this trap; for a huckster like Mateo who lied about being a doctor, it may as well have been an invitation to brutally kill himself. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3705009 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3705009 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Saw X | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3705009 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3f687d1 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3f687d1 | comment |
In one series of FoxTrot strips, Andy buys Peter some guaranteed non-violent video games. Nice City, which is all about not killing anyone, becomes Unwinnable if you so much as step on an ant. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3f687d1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3f687d1 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
FoxTrot (Comic Strip) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b3f687d1 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b5a087d7 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b5a087d7 | comment |
The Robot Chicken sketch for the Hall of Memory game. The game is only winnable through trial and error, in which every error kills the previous contestant. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b5a087d7 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b5a087d7 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Robot Chicken | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b5a087d7 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9b796cf | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9b796cf | comment |
Fate/stay night: It usually kills you outright when you mess up, but features an example that fits the "cruel" category: refusing to cooperate with Rin during Saber's route will jump you to Rin's route, but won't kill you until more than a day later after you've made several decisions, culminating with the game automatically picking a path that gets you killed. The Tiger Dojo is kind enough to point out how far back the decision actually is, but it's long enough the player might have overwritten any saves early enough, forcing them to start over completely. To make matters worse, there's another example on the "Heaven's Feel" route when Rin asks you to pledge allegiance to her, or else she'll not help you. It looks like an obvious choice, right? it's not. This time you MUST refuse to form a contract with her, or else, when it's decided that Sakura must die, you won't be able to go against Rin and you'll get a Bad End. Luckily, Rin herself states in-story where you screwed the pooch and the Tiger Dojo drills the point even further with a good dose of Fourth Wall breakage, but between the fatal decision and the Bad end there's a LONG day and since nothing seems to indicate you fucked up (aside from Rin looking crestfallen just after the fatal choice) it's very possible you saved the game already. The "Heaven's Feel" route has another one: If you promise Rin that you won't unwrap Archer's arm and later don't do it on your own to test it, Shirou will die roughly two hours of gameplay later, following several other choices, as he gets locked out of a choice to save Sakura that means he won't die. Not only is this just as bad as the Fate example, The Tiger Dojo won't even tell you what you did wrong since not having enough approval with Sakura (from any number of other dialogue options earlier) will lead to the same result. "Heaven's Feel" is littered with these, actually. In one of the most interesting Non-Standard Game Over you can get, after not recruiting Rider's help before going into the final dungeon, Shirou beats Saber at the cost of his mind. To make matters worse, the Tiger Dojo, instead of giving you a hint as what to do, praises you for beating Saber on your own. And that only happens after several other choices are made and a In-Universe day passes. If anything, they made the scene skipping function exactly because there are lots of Bad Endings. And you will either got stuck on one of them (especially the more cruel ones) or going to try to find all of them to complete the Tiger Dojo stamps. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_b9b796cf | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9b796cf | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Fate/stay night (Visual Novel) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9b796cf | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9c76a6e | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9c76a6e | comment |
Some physical challenges in Double Dare (1986) were set up this way. The "Root Beer Relay" challenge involves one contestant filling up a root beer-like substance with a spray tap and sliding it to a teammate who has to fill a bucket across the line with it. At least twice, the bucket was not properly grounded and fell off the stool. The judges would declare this a loss despite such a case being beyond the contestants' control. "High Five", used in Super Sloppy Double Dare, involves contestants breaking balloons that are hanging from a support beam. If a balloon falls off without popping, the challenge is rendered incomplete. This happened at least once, with the team understandably upset at the poorly-designed challenge. Double Dare 2000 has a challenge similar to the one above where a contestant has to put on a hedgehog outfit and crawl underneath a set of balloons. Just like before, the challenge is lost if a balloon falls off without breaking. This once happened, during a Special Olympics episode no less, but thankfully it didn't affect the outcome of the game. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_b9c76a6e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9c76a6e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Double Dare (1986) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9c76a6e | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9dc08f3 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9dc08f3 | comment |
The Thundermans: Games created by Cybron James in the episode "Doppel-Gamers". He advertised that all of his games were unwinnable. They were because he invoked this trope. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9dc08f3 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9dc08f3 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Thundermans | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_b9dc08f3 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ba99ace0 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ba99ace0 | comment |
In Saw 3D, Bobby's final trap is the one that he falsely claimed to have previously survived, piercing his pectoral muscles with meat hooks attached to chains and then pulling himself up to escape. When he tries it for real, the hooks simply tear right through his pecs and come out, showing that it would have been impossible to escape the trap the way he described it. What's more, a canny observer will notice a Cheese Strategy that would've made the trap laughably easy to beat without any self-mutilation required: Bobby could've just stood in the large loops on the hooks, put those loops under his armpits, or hooked the belt loops on his pants and pulled himself up that way. Bobby had no idea what he was actually doing, but Jigsaw certainly did. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ba99ace0 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ba99ace0 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Saw 3D | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ba99ace0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_bd614223 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_bd614223 | comment |
The Shell is a particularly cruel example, as simple oversights during Pixel Hunt segments and apparently innocuous choices can lock you on a bad ending with no indication on what you did wrong. Some of those choices even go against common sense, for instance, if you leave the analysis of a certain piece of evidence found on a crime scene to a forensics team, instead of analyzing it yourself, you will get locked on an ending where the serial killer gets you no matter what you do afterwards. Unless you read this visual novel along with a walkthrough guide expect to hit invisible walls a lot. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_bd614223 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_bd614223 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Shell (Visual Novel) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_bd614223 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ca3edec0 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ca3edec0 | comment |
Dave Morris generally believed that heroes should be heroes, and in most of his books (other than The Fabled Lands and Heart of Ice) he punishes people for trying to play a Sociopathic Hero. In "Down Among The Dead Men", you and a few shipmates escape from an evil captain; later, after going across the ocean to reach civilization and proving your worth to the others, you become captain and lead a ship against the Big Bad... unless you've acted in a blatantly immoral fashion, such as demanding first dibs on food, murdering another captain in cold blood while they sleep (this also earns a What the Hell, Hero? from your shipmates), or letting a crewmate sing a really depressing song when morale is already critically low, just because you're too afraid to make him stop. In any of these cases, the adventure continues, but you have to note down a Codeword, and when you get to civilization, if that Codeword is on your sheet, your crew decides you're not cut out to be a captain and leaves you. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ca3edec0 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ca3edec0 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Fabled Lands | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ca3edec0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_cb6abea3 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_cb6abea3 | comment |
The labyrinth riddle from the Paradox brothers in Yu-Gi-Oh!. They are a couple of liars and in the anime, they change the right answer at will. Yami Yugi figures out the answer because in the standard riddle, the person making the decision finds a sign with the rules but since the Paradox brothers instead told them the rules themselves and indicated there was at least one liar between them, nothing would stop the liar from lying about the rules to begin with. He decides to fight fire with fire and gets the answer out of the Paradox brothers using his own Unwinnable by Design coin game to figure out the way out of the labyrinth. Yami Yugi always sets his Shadow Games like this, as cheating will either send you to an early grave, or your mind/soul is shattered. Since his opponents are always trying to cheat in his Shadow Games, it automatically triggers the moment his hapless opponent realizes they've been caught and gets punished accordingly. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_cb6abea3 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_cb6abea3 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Yu-Gi-Oh! | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_cb6abea3 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_cf6fbefe | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_cf6fbefe | comment |
In the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, Samson challenges his wedding guests with a riddle: "Out of the eater came something to eat / Out of the strong came something sweet." The guests aren't able to guess it, so they resort to cheating by pressuring his wife to extract the answer from him. Samson doesn't take this well at all. (The answer is that Samson killed a lion and discovered that bees had made honey in its carcass.) This riddle is impossible for anyone to solve without cheating, since it relies on knowing about a specific incident where presumably Samson was the only one present. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_cf6fbefe | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_cf6fbefe | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Samson and Delilah | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_cf6fbefe | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_d36419af | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_d36419af | comment |
The Song of Saya: You're given a choice towards the last act of the story, and this choice decides the game's ending. Calling Fuminori can lead to the ending where Koji dies due to Koji's impatience, while calling Ryoko gives Koji an advantage by having an ally. Anyone paying attention to how these encounters have gone, especially considering neither Yoh nor Omi survived their encounter with Saya when alone, knows the choice you need to make to get a good or bad ending, however once you make a choice, your only way to change it is to reload your save. Should you choose to call Fuminori, there is now nothing you can do to stop what will inevitably happen. There's also another choice much earlier in the narrative that is much more innocuous where you choose to have Fuminori's condition healed, however the game doesn't warn you immediately that choosing this option leads to a nonstandard game over, requring you to reload a save or start the game over. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_d36419af | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_d36419af | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Song of Saya (Visual Novel) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_d36419af | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_d81d0106 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_d81d0106 | comment |
Kaiji features an example in its second part: the Man-Eating Bog, a pachinko machine designed to never pay out. The defenses are intricate: first, the balls have to pass through a tight set of pins, followed by a set of flippers (which can be set to block any incoming ball whatsoever), and lastly, the balls have to pass through three trays: one with three holes, one with four holes, and one with five holes. Each tray has only one correct hole. This last one is the kicker: the trays, machine, and even the floor itself are tilted ever so subtly, and there's a slight bump around the final jackpot hole. These circumstances make it literally impossible for a ball to enter the fifth hole. Even if that gets bypassed, there are small air blasters installed around the final hole, able to blow away balls that are headed for the jackpot. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_d81d0106 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_d81d0106 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Kaiji (Manga) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_d81d0106 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_da92c130 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_da92c130 | comment |
Erfworld: Parson creates a turn-based strategy game designed to be unwinnable while following the rules – the only way to win would be to surprise the gamemaster through lateral thinking. Originally Parson wanted to try the game on his friends, until he was teleported into a wargame universe with the same setup but different mechanics... Erfworld's economy is specifically set up so that none of the factions can ever control a large part of the board alone. Cities are the main source of income, but every one you add reduces the income from every city a side controls. Around a dozen cities you start to lose income by expanding further. The biggest side seen in the series so far, Haffaton, turned out to have a negligible defense even against a tiny side (of pacifists) simply because they couldn't afford the cost and upkeep of units. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_da92c130 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_da92c130 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Erfworld (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_da92c130 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e16fa1a8 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e16fa1a8 | comment |
While The Impossible Quiz provides you with skips, the final question is unwinnable without using your skips. All 7 of them. The game gives you no indication that this is what you were supposed to do with them and there are no saves or checkpoints whatsoever in the game. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e16fa1a8 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e16fa1a8 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
The Impossible Quiz (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e16fa1a8 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e241df21 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e241df21 | comment |
Give Yourself Goosebumps: The book Escape from the Carnival of Horrors can be unwinnable. Instead of having a game-over, it causes you to repeatedly jump back and forth between two pages forever to simulate the player being trapped inside a hall of mirrors. Certain bad endings are determined by factors entirely outside of the reader's control. In one Goosebumps book, you are shrunken to a tiny size and have to deal with a (to you) enormous rat. Your decision in the matter is determined by how many letters are in your first name. If your first name has an odd number, you successfully evade the rat and can continue onward. If your first name has an even number? Your attempt to make friends with the rat works a little too well and it takes you back to its nest where you spend the rest of your days raised by a small furry mammal. Game Over. In another book, getting one of the good endings is determined by your height. In the same book, on the path to another ending, you die if you're not left-handed. In some other absurd scenarios, you will be led to a Game Over page if you are not left-handed, if you are reading the book while the weather is rainy outside, or if you are not wearing blue-colored clothes while reading the book. Another one about a Cave Spirit involves far more than remembering stories. You have to select which weapons or spells your character will be armed with. The hunter's path is always the hardest because your weapons have finite ammo or durability. If you use the wrong weapon at a certain time or don't PICK the right weapon to use at a certain obstacle, then the game is unwinnable. To make matters even worse, you can actually lose the one weapon you need for the ending by using it on the wrong obstacle early on. Plus, at the beginning of the hunter's path, there are two weapons you NEED to pick to get a good ending – fail to pick either of them (you can only pick three of four weapons) and you'll meet an untimely end later on. (Hint: the weapon you can use only once is pretty much useless and use of it will spell instant death for you – unless you're on a certain story path, which only leads to two bad endings anyway.) The spellcaster's path is easier, as you can actually choose not to get into any problematic situations until you meet the Cave Spirit again...but you'd better steer clear of the park or else kiss the path's best ending goodbye (because you either will be turned into a frog/snake or destroy the one thing you need to defeat the Cave Spirit to escape). In Inside UFO 54-40, the best ending is deliberately unreachable through regular gameplay (or, as the book puts it, by "making a choice or following directions"). There are cases of the readers having to choose between Choice A or Choice B to get out of dire situations. Choice B would lead to Choice C or Choice D which both ended up in Game Over Page, meanwhile Choice A is inaccessible without getting certain item(s) first that most people would not know without getting some Game Over pages beforehand unless they are psychic. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_e241df21 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e241df21 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Give Yourself Goosebumps | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e241df21 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e2439564 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e2439564 | comment |
Some of the Time Machine gamebooks give you one of several inventory items to pick at the beginning. Pick the wrong one? You're gonna be stuck. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e2439564 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e2439564 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Time Machine Series | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e2439564 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e28481f1 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e28481f1 | comment |
Klondike Solitaire has many possible deals that are unwinnable; in some cases, there may be no valid moves besides dealing. The odds of dealing an unwinnable game are believed to be between 8.5% to 18%. The fact that the exact odds have not yet been determined has been called "one of the embarrassments of Applied Mathematics." In comparison, some 99.999% of the possible FreeCell deals are solvable. Of the 32,000 standard games from Windows FreeCell, exactly one (#11982) is impossible to solve. In addition, entering -1 or -2 as the game number results in an unsolvable deal. XP and onward have 1,000,000 deals. Out of those million, 8 are unsolvable. Vista introduced games -3 and -4, which are very much the opposite. In general, card solitaires often have a high percentage of unwinnable deals, with FreeCell being an unusual exception. Even an Undo button will not save you in many cases. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_e28481f1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e28481f1 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Solitaire (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e28481f1 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e388fcf7 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e388fcf7 | comment |
DSBT InsaniT: Kayla, in a rare moment of brilliance, talks about the reasons arcade games are like this in 'VRcade'. This is pretty much half the premise of 'Carneelval' where its filled with rigged games. Examples include the rings in ring toss being too light, the balloon darts game having darts that are too dull, and the mallet in the bell-ringing game not being heavy enough. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_e388fcf7 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e388fcf7 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
DSBT InsaniT (Web Animation) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e388fcf7 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e3b96a3a | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e3b96a3a | comment |
Yet another Cruel example in Master of Chaos: In order to make it to the end of the game you require a specific item which you can only gain in the first town you arrive in and you can be booted out of town if you take too long to find it or gorge yourself doing high profile things and get tossed out earlier. One long trip and an exploratory hunt in the final city later and only then does the game hit you with that item you needed to collect, fail to get it? Game over. The game doesn't even hint at where you could have gotten it from and you could have missed it taking another path with the person you get it from. At one point you can even lose it by using it as an item in another decision. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e3b96a3a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e3b96a3a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Master of Chaos | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e3b96a3a | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e42697e1 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e42697e1 | comment |
A two-time All That sketch about a Game Show called "You Can't Win!" is all about this. No matter what the contestants do, they'll never get a question right, since the host will do things such as ask a question with a nonsensical answer, ask a nonsensical question, or even announce a question but never actually say it. The 10 second challenges are also this, since they involve doing things that tend to be impossible altogether (such as turning a sheep into a dolphin). One contestant actually completed a 10-second challenge of eating 400 meatballs, but was still ruled as a loss because she actually ate 403 meatballs, which was 3 too many. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e42697e1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e42697e1 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
All That | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e42697e1 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e4fbbcdc | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e4fbbcdc | comment |
In Christopher Manson's Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle, any door in the Maze can be a one-way trip. Usually there's a circuituous way back around, but a small cycle of rooms are cut off from the rest. Enter any of the doors leading into it, and you'll only be able to circle through that tiny loop forever or hurl yourself into Room 24 and game over. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e4fbbcdc | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e4fbbcdc | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e4fbbcdc | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e5964cdb | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e5964cdb | comment |
Chess: Once one player's only left piece is the king, there's no possible way to win the game for this player, because a lone king cannot give checkmate under any circumstances. Even if the opponent runs out of time, it still will only be considered a draw. A draw by insufficient material happens when this occurs for both sides, resulting in a scenario where neither player can possibly checkmate the opponent with their remaining pieces (such as a bare king for each player or each player having a bishop on the same colored squares and nothing elsenote It is theoretically possible to checkmate if the bishops are on opposite colors, but it requires one player to block their own king in the corner using the bishop so the position is almost always drawn in practice). |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_e5964cdb | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e5964cdb | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
Chess (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e5964cdb | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e724e7c8 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_e724e7c8 | comment |
In the City of Thieves gamebook, the player needs to gather a compound to rub into the undead overlord's face, comprised of three items. Just before the final dungeon, you find out you need only two of the three, but you aren't told which ones. The final action in the book is choosing which two you combined. Two combos result in a one line death. The other results in a one line victory. There are no clues to help you. Also there's an inescapable area: if you try to scale a building you're trying to infiltrate, then you'll be faced by a gargoyle. You're told you need a magic sword to beat it. Say you have one, and the game chides you for cheating, saying you can't have one yet. Say you don't, and you're dead. Oh, and the alternative is to approach a guarded door. | |
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City of Thieves (1983) | hasFeature |
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Bleak World has exactly 2 endings for ghosts: the first is walking the Earth as a disembodied spirit for all eternity before eventually turning into a wraith or being killed by a reaper and ending up in the second death. The second is to put all your points into hold at the start of the game (only possible for 2 races) and go through the mind numbing process of causing enough love or human misery to open up a portal to heaven where they will likely be attacked by the final boss anyway. | |
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1.0 | |
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Bleak World (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ea1e0ad2 | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ea4f62db | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ea4f62db | comment |
In an episode of Family Guy, during a game night, the cast plays Cleveland Brown's choice of board game, Two Decades of Dignity, that purports to simulate the experience of African Americans. After being sent to jail for looking at a white woman, Peter asks how one is supposed to win, to which Cleveland replies, "You don't win; you just do a little better each time." | |
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Family Guy | hasFeature |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_ed2a7866 | type |
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Sword Art Online has the Grand Quest in ALO. The enemies spawn endlessly, meaning that no matter how long you fight, you'll eventually be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. The AI is also competent enough to target healers. And assuming that a player can somehow make it past all the enemies and get to the door at the end in one piece, the door is restricted to admins. This is because the door actually leads to where Sugou is holding Asuna and experimenting on the 300 other SAO players' minds. | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ed2a7866 | featureApplicability |
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Sword Art Online | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ed2a7866 | |
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The Amazing Atheist took one of these and tried to do it in the ten minutes one was supposed to solve it. Even as a decently intelligent modern-age guy, he completely failed due to several tiny mistakes and eventually running out of time when he had solved at best 60% of it all. [1] | |
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The Amazing Atheist (Web Video) | hasFeature |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_ef853440 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ef853440 | comment |
In an episode of Alice (1976), Mel sets up a "Spell 'M-E-L-S' To Win" contest for a $500 grand prize. After raising the grand prize to $10,000 (to one-up a competitor who offered $1000 on a similar contest), Mel destroys the only "E" game piece to avoid having to pay. (Even if he did want to pay, he didn't have the money.) Vera reassembled the destroyed piece and discovered that Mel ripped up an "M", not the "E". Cue diner regular Henry finding the "E" piece.note Henry settles for the original $500. | |
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Alice (1976) | hasFeature |
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Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_f15b913f | comment |
Magehunter also involves a ridiculously narrow win path. The plot involves a body swapping mechanic, and in order to get the proper ending you need to get yourself, the Big Bad and your companion back into the correct bodies by the end of the book. Making the wrong decisions right at the start will leave the bodies mixed up in a way that is impossible to fix, with the result that vast swaths of the book are devoted to activities that will never result in a victory. Only by mastering the body swapping magic and switching into the right people at the exact right times can the reader come out on top. | |
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Magehunter | hasFeature |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_f554e011 | type |
Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_f554e011 | comment |
Katawa Shoujo: The prologue can leave you stranded in the bad ending if you make the wrong choices: on the day of the school festival, if Hisao hasn't made plans to attend with one of the love interests, he'll instead spend the day on the school's rooftop drinking himself stupid with his misogynistic Conspiracy Theorist roommate Kenji and ends up falling from the roof and dying. Shizune's route is an interesting case, because unlike many other Visual Novel stories it has very limited interactivity - only a single choice (whether or not to sleep with Misha), towards the end of Act 3 (out of 4). Thus, choosing wrong at this point inevitably leads to the player getting a bad end...a whole act later. Hope you've made a save before. While it's not a "cruel" choice for most players who understand what the choice was asking, as basic decency and game logic would suggest that was clearly a bad choice to make, the vague phrasing has led many less socially-adept players who weren't paying attention to choose to "comfort" a friend in need, only to realise when they see the consequences that they really should have saved first. More diabolical is the case of the Hanako route: towards the end, after Hanako has locked herself up in her room and wouldn't come out, Hisao desperately calls Lilly on the phone and they have a conversation where Lilly basically spells out to Hisao what he did wrong and how he should act with Hanako... except that if you chose incorrectly on a seemingly unrelated decision earlier (opting not to go to town with Hanako after Lilly leaves for Scotland and instead going back to your room) Hisao will simply refuse to listen to Lilly and will go out on his own to do something incredibly stupid that gets you a bad end. If you haven't acted like an idiot, this is where you get an actual choice whether or not to do the right thing. Lilly's is the most ridiculous, though. If you make all the right choices, after she leaves the school to return to Scotland permanently, Hisao has an epiphany and does a Race for Your Love to produce a happy ending. But if you're dishonest about something trivial early in the game, nothing changes until hours later when she leaves and the game abruptly ends, with no hint as to what you did wrong or how things could have turned out differently. |
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Katawa Shoujo (Visual Novel) | hasFeature |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_f6b79960 | type |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_f6b79960 | comment |
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has a fake ending called the Coffin Ending. The Coffin Ending is exactly the same as the True Ending except that it just simply ends before you even get a chance to see the final room. The reason for this is because you are missing one condition needed to reach the True Ending: You need to get the Safe Ending first. There is no indication of this within the game other than getting the True Ending because the game will notify you that you got both after finishing it. | |
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Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (Visual Novel) | hasFeature |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_fb873b86 | type |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_fb873b86 | comment |
Saw: Amanda, once she was allowed to start designing and implementing her own traps in Saw III, had started designing them all to be inescapable. Whether you think this is because of her misanthropy and distrust of people's ability to change or her desire to put them out of their misery so they wouldn't have to deal with the devastating mental aftermath of a trap is up to your interpretation. In Saw 3D, Bobby's final trap is the one that he falsely claimed to have previously survived, piercing his pectoral muscles with meat hooks attached to chains and then pulling himself up to escape. When he tries it for real, the hooks simply tear right through his pecs and come out, showing that it would have been impossible to escape the trap the way he described it. What's more, a canny observer will notice a Cheese Strategy that would've made the trap laughably easy to beat without any self-mutilation required: Bobby could've just stood in the large loops on the hooks, put those loops under his armpits, or hooked the belt loops on his pants and pulled himself up that way. Bobby had no idea what he was actually doing, but Jigsaw certainly did. In Spiral (2021), the Jigsaw copycat once again distances himself from John Kramer's unusual M.O. Toward the end, he tells Zeke that it's foolish to try to save anyone. The traps have strict time limits and will kill the victim bar some sort of miracle. Schenk isn't teaching the trap victims a lesson or expects them to succeed, he simply wants the corrupt police officers to die. In Saw X, Mateo is one of a group of phony doctors who had falsely claimed to cure the cancer that was killing John Kramer, the original Jigsaw killer, and got kidnapped when Kramer found out that his treatment was a snake-oil scam. Mateo's trap involves having to perform brain surgery on himself. As seen in the preview, when the surgical implements are wheeled out to him, he barely even recognizes what they are. Even a real brain surgeon would have trouble beating this trap; for a huckster like Mateo who lied about being a doctor, it may as well have been an invitation to brutally kill himself. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_fb873b86 | featureApplicability |
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Saw (Franchise) | hasFeature |
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Extremely common in Fighting Fantasy books. There are many plot-critical items that are Permanently Missable Content and if you fail to pick them up before the Point of No Return or use them beforehand you are either stuck or cannot defeat the final boss, leading to a Nonstandard Game Over, which you won't be aware of until it's too late. The same thing happens when you have to perform a series of actions whereby one path in the chain allows success whereas the others are failures, often long before your decisions come into effect. Sometimes the book is merciful, such as when it tells you that you need as specific item beforehand or relies on basic genre awareness (bringing a stake and garlic along in a vampire-themed book should always be a good idea), thus setting you looking for those things. Other times, the things you need to progress are totally arbitrary. In the first book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, you have to find keys to retrieve the treasure in the end. If you don't find them or bring along the wrong ones, the game is unwinnable and you lose even though having defeated the final boss. In the City of Thieves gamebook, the player needs to gather a compound to rub into the undead overlord's face, comprised of three items. Just before the final dungeon, you find out you need only two of the three, but you aren't told which ones. The final action in the book is choosing which two you combined. Two combos result in a one line death. The other results in a one line victory. There are no clues to help you. Also there's an inescapable area: if you try to scale a building you're trying to infiltrate, then you'll be faced by a gargoyle. You're told you need a magic sword to beat it. Say you have one, and the game chides you for cheating, saying you can't have one yet. Say you don't, and you're dead. Oh, and the alternative is to approach a guarded door. House of Hell: There are areas in the game that are inescapable as soon as you reach them, like the kitchen where every possible action leads to death. Also if you fail to pick up a well-hidden clue, you won't find a secret door that gives the only way to win the game. Also, if you roll low on your initial fear score, the game is unwinnable (you have to take at least 8 fear points throughout the game and when you take as many as your initial score - which can be from 7 to 12 - you die from fear). Scorpion Swamp: If you fail to find a certain berry you still get infinite chances to do so to complete the "good" storyline. However you also have the chance to eat it up, in which case the game is unwinnable. Moonrunner: If a particular item is not picked up and the Big Bad uses a particular random attack, then the book becomes unwinnable because of a hypnotically implanted cue that turns you into a monster in the final area. Crypt of the Sorcerer follows a VERY narrow path to have even a remote chance of winning. Among other things, you need to smear yourself with a certain creature's blood to avoid death from a huge lizard monster in the middle of the book. The creature is met at the very beginning of the gamebook, and smearing yourself with the blood gives you a random chance of dying. Magehunter also involves a ridiculously narrow win path. The plot involves a body swapping mechanic, and in order to get the proper ending you need to get yourself, the Big Bad and your companion back into the correct bodies by the end of the book. Making the wrong decisions right at the start will leave the bodies mixed up in a way that is impossible to fix, with the result that vast swaths of the book are devoted to activities that will never result in a victory. Only by mastering the body swapping magic and switching into the right people at the exact right times can the reader come out on top. Rebel Planet: At one point, you break into an enemy armoury. There, you get the chance to take 2 out of 4 weapons. You must pick the right ones and guess which order to use them, or you die. There are no clues to help you. Trial of Champions contains a luck-based challenge forcing you to choose a chain of maneuvers against a blind kendo master, all of which are essentially random and lead to either total victory or end of game with no use of skill or items. The same book also has a wizard who requires you to have gathered exactly nine gold rings from random places as well as the code numbers to use them. Failure at any point is instant death. The Big Bad confrontation in Return to Firetop Mountain requires the player to have gathered gold teeth with numbers written on them (Hope you don't have to forfeit a gold item in the eyeball-eating contest!), a series of tiny book pages saying how to use them, a magnifying glass to read the pages, a throwing knife to throw at a rat to avoid it stealing the tooth, and a successful skill roll to hit the rat. After all this, you finally get to fight Zagor, who may kill you if the print-based Quicktime Events didn't already. Knights of Doom has an amusing but sadistic example in the form of the Assassin's Dagger. This intangible opponent will plague you for the whole game, and can only be permanently defeated by choosing an appropriate skill before the adventure even starts or by buying a certain item. Otherwise, the book will give you opportunities to trap the dagger and run away, only for it to keep escaping and catching up with you later on. If you don't finish it off, then it finally manages to plunge itself into your back just as you confront the Big Bad... In order to defeat the Big Bad in Armies of Death, you need the Crystal of Light. You learn about the Crystal from an Oracle, who will only give you the information in exchange for a golden brooch. The brooch is obtained early on in the game by winning a bar bet. The chance of winning the bet is 50/50. Thus, even if you do everything right, win every battle and succeed at every other test, you have a 50/50 chance of losing the game less than a quarter of the way through and not even knowing it. Vault of the Vampire: Failing to bring along a magic sword and a wooden stake makes the game unwinnable (although the Count could technically be beaten without a magic sword). Also not clearing enough of the Count's coffins when you have the option to does the same trick. A Cruel example is found in The Crown Of Kings: At the very end of your adventure, you will be forced to find a safe means of escape from Mampang Fortress, and the only way to do so without using magic is to have much earlier found and befriended the well-concealed Samaritans of Schinn. If you play as a warrior and either fail to find them or fail to earn their trust, you will continue your adventure only to discover at the last that you cannot escape the Fortress. Another Cruel example comes in Creature of Havoc: your first few "decisions" are determined by dice rolls. Almost from the beginning, getting the wrong roll will make you miss the only item you can use to defeat the main villain. It is possible to play the book until the final confrontation and lose because you missed an item you can only obtain by 50/50 chance near the very start. To make matters worse the game explicitly gives you the option to use it in any battle any time in your adventure, and it is destroyed after one use. Yet another Cruel example in Master of Chaos: In order to make it to the end of the game you require a specific item which you can only gain in the first town you arrive in and you can be booted out of town if you take too long to find it or gorge yourself doing high profile things and get tossed out earlier. One long trip and an exploratory hunt in the final city later and only then does the game hit you with that item you needed to collect, fail to get it? Game over. The game doesn't even hint at where you could have gotten it from and you could have missed it taking another path with the person you get it from. At one point you can even lose it by using it as an item in another decision. |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_fcf43f47 | featureApplicability |
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Fighting Fantasy | hasFeature |
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Unwinnable by Design / int_fe30da6 | comment |
In an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where Johnny incorrectly announces the prize for a "guess the songs" contest ($5000 instead of $50.00) he and Venus try to make the contest unwinnable, but the second person who calls in ends up winning it. | |
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WKRP in Cincinnati | hasFeature |
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Unwinnable by Design | |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ff9ab17f | comment |
In the Next Generation episode "Thine Own Self", Troi thinks at first that the promotion exam is supposed to be unwinnable, and it's supposed to gauge how an applicant handles a hopeless situation. It's not. Troi finally realizes that the only winning move is to order a subordinate to do something she knows he won't survive, so that the ship won't be destroyed. She gives the order, passes the exam, and makes Commander. | |
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Star Trek: The Next Generation | hasFeature |
Unwinnable by Design / int_ff9ab17f |
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