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Unwinnable is a state in many text adventures, graphical adventure games and computer role-playing games where it is impossible for the player to win the game (not due to a bug but by design), and where the only other options are restarting the game, loading a previously saved game, wandering indefinitely, or a game over (negative game end such as death). It is also known as a walking dead, dead end or zombie situation.

Unwinnable should not be confused with "unbeatable," which is used to describe a character, monster, or puzzle that is too powerful or difficult to be overcome by the player or character at a lower standing, and is normally found in computer role-playing games. This state is not unwinnable because it can be solved by leveling up (unless, of course, the player is unable to reach any sufficiently weak monsters at all, which occasionally occurs).

General example

A very general example of a "walking dead" scenario: a game starts in, or at one point the player must enter, a cave. As soon as the player leaves the cave, it collapses and can not be reentered. Later, the player finds a house with a locked front door. The key to the house is in the cave — but if the player did not search the cave thoroughly before leaving, the door can never be unlocked.

The player, not knowing this, will think that he will find a key or some way to enter the house so he will keep looking until he reads a walkthrough, restores a saved game before leaving the cave, decides to restart the game, or quits playing.

Occurrences

Walking dead situations occur due to an earlier mistake or oversight by the player that cannot be corrected (compare with point of no return), for example the player has lost or destroyed an essential object, became trapped in a place with no exit, failed to complete a puzzle within a time or turn limit, or failed to interact with a non-player character to meet a subgoal. Other ways to enter such a state include exploiting a cheat that changes the game mechanics, or upon finding a bug in the map continuity.

There is no hope for an optimal ending (or, in many cases, any ending), and there is no indication that the game is now unwinnable since the player is still in control and a Game Over has not occurred. Thinking that the game is not advancing because of a puzzle that he hasn't solved yet, he is reduced to exploring and even trying increasingly outlandish actions to find a way out of this 'trap': hence the term zombie or walking dead. The player rarely knows exactly what caused the dead-end situation, which can cause severe frustration. Some players prefer to either cheat or rely on walkthroughs in order to finish games that can result in dead end situations.

In some cases unwinnable scenarios are intentional, whereas in other cases they may have been overlooked by the designer. In cases where the designer wishes to include an unwinnable scenario, they may choose to make it less frustrating by warning the player about it while it is still correctable. For instance, in our earlier example, if the player attempts to leave the cave before getting the key, it may say, "You feel like you may have forgotten something. Perhaps you should search the cave some more."

Reasons

The early generations of text adventure games tended to have a lot of chances that could lead you to unwinnable states, as a way to make a game deeper and more challenging; this kind of game design was not yet considered unfair. It was usually considered a product of the game's difficulty rather than poor design and encouraged (or, as its critics would say, forced) replayability. Veteran players created save files before every major action to avoid making the game unwinnable. Some games let the undo command take back an action or event, including the player's death, but many designers considered this cheating. Other games limited the use to one undo over a certain number of turns. In the case of unlimited undos these could be used instead of multiple save files.

The undo/save features, however, did little good in cases where the player had to replay half the game in order to correct a mistake he made much earlier.

Infocom's Zork was particularly notorious for leaving players in unwinnable situations without cluing them in. Many other early Infocom games deliberately had the same issues, as a means of extending playing time to justify their cost. Mike Dornbrook, Infocom's head of marketing, conducted a customer survey in late 1984 which showed a distinct correlation between the Infocom games players considered their favorites, and the games they had actually finished. This piece of marketing intelligence led to the more foolproof design of Wishbringer and later games.

Some work has been done on automatically verifying winnability and losability in interactive fiction by the gr@m group at McGill University.

Modern graphical adventures are much more resource-intensive, and it can be an arduous task to search through earlier parts of such a game for a missed object. Therefore, 'dead ends' have recently come to be equated with design flaws that designers overlooked, bugs or poor game design.

As a generalization, Sierra's graphical adventures during the '80s and early '90s tended to contain walking dead situations, whereas LucasArts often boasted that most of their games could not result in a dead end. Although some die-hard adventure purists scorned such practices as "dumbing down games for the masses", more game companies adopted the approach over time, like Sierra, whose previous games e.g. King's Quest V and Codename: Iceman are rather notorious for their sheer amount of zombie situations. Space Quest V marked a departure from Sierra's traditional zombie situations and deliberately contained only one, which informed the player when it was triggered in order to give them a fighting chance to reload and try again without excessive wandering.

In text-only interactive fiction, unclued unwinnable states have also gone out of fashion, and are now considered apt only for games specifically designed to be difficult and unforgiving (such as Varicella).

Notable examples

• Colossal Cave Adventure: If you drop the vase in a room not containing the pillow, it will shatter and the game cannot be won because not all the treasures can be found. Also, if you use the coins to buy new batteries for the lamp from the vending machine, the game cannot be won for the same reason.

• Amazon: Guardians of Eden: After 10 levels which stop the player from leaving without taking all possible items, level 11 lets the player leave without finding and taking two essential items. This situation is immediately followed with a canoeing sail in which one has to randomly pick 1 out of 2 possible fork paths. There are 5 forks, which gives the player a 1/32(=2) chance to finish the sail. With that said, the paths are predefined and thus can be taken from walkthroughs.

• Oregon Trail: If you lose all your oxen to thieves, you cannot progress because you need oxen to pull your cart.

• Castlevania 64: In the Castle Center, taking the Mandragora before taking the Nitro will prevent you from using the Mandragora, since the Nitro must be used first. Since the Mandragora is vital to completing the level and cannot be dropped or placed and cannot be carried along with the Nitro, it is impossible to continue on.

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Early on in the game, the player character is presented with the opportunity to pick up a massive pile of junk mail while in his house. Later on in the game, the player must use the junk mail in the notorious "Babel Fish Dispenser" puzzle, and the need for the junk mail arises only after testing it several times. The junk mail is, at that point, inaccessible, as it has been destroyed along with the rest of the planet Earth. Also destroyed are the screwdriver and toothbrush from the very first scene, which are necessary to finish the final puzzle at the very end of the game. Also, you need to give a dog a sandwich during the early stage of the game, or the game will become almost unwinnable. This is not evident until the very last part of the game, although this particular situation, unlike the others, can be rectified later in the game. Also, when Ford Prefect is offering you the towel, taking it from him results in an unwinnable game.

• King's Quest IV: Rosella is stranded on an islet. Behind a rock there is a bridle (which is not visible, nor hinted at, and can be found only by explicit searching) which she will use to ride the Unicorn later on after she leaves the islet. There is no way to return to the islet after she has left.

• King's Quest V: Early in the game a rat may be eaten by the cat simply by walking past the bakery. Through no action of your own the rat may die and the game will become unwinnable because the rat must be alive later in the game to progress. Even more confounding is the fact that in order to save the rat, you must have found a boot in the desert, which you are unlikely to find unless you are deliberately searching for it. Also, you are given a pie at one point in the game. If you eat the pie or feed it to a starving vulture, you are unable to defeat a later enemy. Also, the player must retrieve all the items that he/she can find, or else the game is unwinnable (example: If King Graham ignores the piece of Cheese in the mousehole that is located in a cell that the blue beast puts him in, he will not be able to escape the cell again when he returns to get it). Finally, If Graham does not save Cedric after both of them are attacked by the harpies, Graham is killed by Mordack after the former tries to convert power from the latter's wand into Crispin's.

• Leisure Suit Larry 2: Before the player leaves the cruise ship, Larry must obtain several items - including a soda, a wig, and some thread - in order to survive on the lifeboat. Later in the game, he must obtain a knife, a pin, a parachute, and a bottle before boarding an airplane, all of which are needed later.

• Phantasy Star III: It is possible to render the game unwinnable right after the opening scene. If the player purchases an Escapipe (dungeon escape item) in Landen just prior to the wedding scene, and uses it to escape the dungeon before being released by Lena, the player will be forever locked in town and the game's plot will not progress. The king, when spoken to, will instruct the player to hit the reset button on the console and try again.

• Space Quest I: At one point, someone offers to give you money as a trade for your skimmer. You need to refuse his deal, leave, come back, and accept his new offer in which he offers both money and a jetpack. If you take his original offer, later in the game you will die at a point in which you must have a jetpack. In the original AGI version, if you decline both offers or leave the screen without first removing the key from the skimmer, you will remain stranded in that location and therefore be unable to proceed further in the game. This was slightly changed in the VGA remake, in that there is another way to find money if you decline both offers, however the jetpack remains essential to finishing the game.

• Space Quest II: There are two ways to put the game in an unwinnable state based on the same item. On the space station you can obtain an order form which is necessary to beat the game. If you don't have the order form by the time you reach the planet's surface, the game becomes unwinnable since you can't return to the space station. Also, if you don't mail the order form before climbing down into the chasm, the game becomes unwinnable because you can't return to the mailbox.

• Tass Times in Tonetown: There is an innocuous item right near the start of the game in Gramps' cabin, a book, that is used almost literally right before the game's end to complete it (one of the last three steps). Gramps' cabin cannot be revisited after warping to Tonetown, thus the player could play through almost the entire game before realizing that the book is needed to finish it.

• Return to Zork: If the player commits murder on any non-player character, steals an item without its owner's permission, or reads a private letter, the game still continues, however at some point soon thereafter a character called the vigilante appears, chastises the player, and takes all items in the player's inventory. This renders the game unwinnable, however the player may continue in a "walking dead" mode if he/she believes the vigilante simply hid the items somewhere (similar characters steal items in games such as Colossal Cave Adventure, yet the player is usually able to retrieve them).

• Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic: At the very beginning of the game you are required to pick up a photo showing the sky above your in-game house. This photo is used in the final puzzle of the game, so if the player is careless with the picture and inadvertently loses it in the Succ-U-Bus system then the game is unwinnable.

• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: There are severals actions that can lead to a game that cannot be finished. For instance, if Gorrister kills Harry before he can tell all necessary information, the game becomes unwinnable.

• Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders warns players that if anyone dies, it will be impossible to win. A player can die if they wake up the guardian of The Sphinx, drown in the Atlantic Ocean (after jumping off the plane going to Bermuda/falling from the Caponian spaceship, and using the parachute) after one hour of not doing anything, or falling from a great height (after being transported there by the Caponian spaceship, a location meant for the biplane), or die from running out of oxygen on Mars. You can also get stuck by running out of funds in your cashcard when you need to leave an area, by allowing Melissa and Leslie to leave Mars prior to obtaining the white crystal, or by burning a necessary item.

• Pokémon Colosseum If you don't take the jail key when Chief Sherles isn't in his office at one point in the game, you won't be able to take the secret key (which takes you to "The Under"), because it is located in the pocket of a person who is sleeping in the cell.

• Pocket Monsters Red & Green (Japan-only) If you evolve your starter Pokémon before you get your Pokédex, the game will not give you a Pokédex, which is required be able to go past the old man in Viridian city and to get Pokéballs.

• Operation Stealth has quite a few unwinnable situations, the most memorable of which was an elastic strap at the bottom of the ocean about halfway through the game. The plot gives a sense of urgency, and the player is encouraged to act quickly and explore the ocean to find the secret entrance to the villain's hideout. In the screen at the bottom of the ocean that is the least likely to be visited by the player, there is a hard-to-see elastic strap. If it is not picked up, the game unfolds without any problem except for the very last action where the elastic strap must be used to win the game. Between the appearance of the strap and the ending, there is an arcade sequence with a maze, so this feature needs to be replayed when/if the player must restore their game.

• Tombs and Treasure: A player can combine two key items, the small rod covered in iron sand and the small bowl, to create a compass. This will result in an unwinnable situation since you need the small rod to get a key. You can also trap yourself in the room with the Akbal Jewel by not opening up another exit beforehand before taking the Jewel. The game will, however, tell you that you are trapped and you should hit the reset button.

• The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind has main story characters that are killable. Killing one of them gives you a message as you can not gain a piece of armor needed to use two weapons to complete the main story. A slightly longer and more dangerous contingency plan does exist which would allow you to gain this piece of armor even if key characters are killed.

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade leaves you and your father tied to chairs facing back-to-back in the Nazi castle, with seemingly the only way to escape being a battle axe held by the suit of armor. However, knocking the axe loose always results in a black "censored" box covering your characters, with a trickle of blood emanating from the bottom. Frustrated determination eventually leaves you convinced there must be one perfect position for your chairs which will allow the axe to fall safely between them, and you go back to a previous save game, before you were captured, intending to mark for yourself precisely where the axe will fall. It is only then that you realize the axe leaves a mark in the carpet, and you had been meant to knock it over accidentally before being captured. Playing forward as usual will allow you to position your chair correctly and escape the trap.

• The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening carries two design flaws. In the fourth dungeon, the Angler's Tunnel. With practice it is possible to jump over a large pool of water that should only be possible to traverse with the Flippers. Afterwards you will see two blocks which need keys to open, yet at this point you should only have one key. Opening a block will lead to an unwinnable game, since you need a second key to open the second block, but the first key should have been used elsewhere in order to get more keys. This flaw was fixed in the Game Boy Color version of the game, by making the pool of water wider and impossible to jump over. The other is in the second dungeon, Bottle Grotto. In the dungeon you are one key short of the number of locked doors in the fist hal of the dungeon. complicating this is the fact that it is mandatory you open the last door so you can obtain the Power Bracelet. If you don't save one key to open this room you will be permanently stuck because in order to progress you need the Power Bracelet to move Bottles blocking your path. Because the last door must be opened it is easy to waste all your keys beforehand, especially if this was the first time the player entered the dungeon. If you do use up all the keys, the dungeon will become unbeatable as well as the rest of the game. The player will either have to delete their file and begin a new game or face having to roam the map forever.

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess can become unwinnable if the game is saved while you are inspecting the ancient cannon immediately after opening the passage leading to it. Normally, Shad would follow you to the cannon, and you would progress by talking to him. However, if the game is saved and reloaded, then the game forgets that Shad followed you down. In order to speak with him, you would need to go back through the passage, but attempting to leave causes him to ask where you're going (which he would normally say after you followed him to the cannon). You cannot warp out, either, since Midna thinks you would be seen by Shad. Nintendo did fix this glitch, and allowed players to trade in their glitched copy for a fixed one if they became stuck by it. Another unwinnable situation can occur when you cross the Bridge of Eldin for the first time. After the bridge is made impassable, if you save the game and quit before entering the Twilight Realm the game becomes unwinnable. When you start up again to resume play Link ends up on the side of the bridge away from the Twilight Realm. The game remembers the bridge being destroyed and it is impossible to reach the Twilight Realm. This requires a complete restart of the game to fix.

• Broken Sword 2 has a puzzle near the end of the game that can render it unwinnable if not completed properly. When in the jungle you must blow a poison dart at a wild boar blocking your path, causing it to charge you. If you do not click the tree branch above you at the right time or at all, the boar will run in the wrong direction instead of opening a new path in the underbrush that you need to finish the game. There is no suggestion that the game is unwinnable after this.

• Any Paper Mario game except Super Paper Mario if all your stats are at their max, you cannot upgrade them. But you must upgrade one to continue.

• Trilby's Notes: Near the end of the game, the player must type "move" or some similar term in order to break Trilby's limbs. At a certain point after that, you must then type "die" in order to kill Trilby. However, if Trilby's limbs are not broken before a certain point, then Trilby will not be weak enough to die when the time comes - and if the player saves in this situation, it makes the game unwinnable and the player must restart the game from the beginning.

• Dead Rising: If you wait around the main entrance of the mall in the beginning of the game until around 7 PM, You will trigger a different Cutscene than the one relating to the Storyline after the zombies get in. You will not be able to do any storyline missions, or be rescued by the Helicopter.

• I.M. Meen: If I.M Meen defeats you, you will lose all your inventory, including Writewell's Book of Grammar that is needed to defeat him, making the game unwinnable.

• Metroid: Other M: If you backtrack to the room before the room wherein you fight the Rhedogian boss of Sector 3's Desert Refinery just after beating the boss, a door that was supposed to have unlocked during the fight will have locked again, with no way to re-open it other than to start the game over.

• Amazon Trail 3rd Edition: If you take a wrong turn at somewhere in the far middle of the Amazon River, you will be stuck because if you turn back, the Indian will only say "You should go back to the Amazon River. Now," and the Continue button isnt avalible, making the game Unwinnable unless you start at a place

above or below that river, or restarting the whole game.

• Halo Reach: The final level "Lone Wolf" is a level solely based on surviving as long as possible, and then dying. Upon taking a set amount of damage, cracks will appear in the player's helmet, making it impossible to see how much ammunition is remaining, another will appear in the center. Upon death, the final cutscene will play, showing Noble Six's inevitable death.

See also

• Guess-the-verb
• Hunt-the-pixel

• Articles lacking sources from July 2008
• Video game culture
• Interactive fiction
• Adventure games
• Video game gameplay