Unwinnable By Design / Infocom

With a hefty amount of text adventure games under its belt, Infocom would naturally have some rather nasty ways to make your save into a useless file with no way to win. It almost makes one wonder why they didn't take Sierra's infamous catchphrase, "Save early, save often, and don't overwrite saves."

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

• Merciful: You only ever need one save file, and use that only if you want to turn the computer off and go to sleep. You never need to restore to an earlier game, because there's no way it ever becomes unwinnable.
  • Say that there is a large button on the wall, with a sign above it that says 'Inorganic Vaporizer Ray'. When you try to push it, the game won't let you. Instead it says something like 'You'd better not. You'd lose that nifty pocket screwdriver'.
• Polite: You only need one save game, because if you do something wrong, you won't be given a chance to overwrite it. Either you just died, or the save function has been disabled.
  • There is a large button on the wall, with a sign above it that says 'Inorganic Vaporizer Ray'. When you push it, all your stuff gets vaporized, including your pacemaker, and you promptly suffer cardiac arrest. The game then mocks you for being stupid enough to press it.
• Tough: There are things you can do which you'll have to save before doing. But you'll think "Ah, I'd better save before I do this." While it's possible to save the game in an unwinnable state, it's very unlikely to happen.
  • There is a large button on the wall, with a sign above it that says 'Inorganic Vaporizer Ray'. When you push it, all your stuff gets vaporized, and you can't finish the game. Restore that save you just made, and try something else.
• Nasty: There are things you can do which you'll have to save before doing. After you do one, you'll think "Oh, bugger, I should have saved before I did that." The game still makes it clear it's probably unwinnable before you try to save.
  • The same as Tough, only there's no sign. You will only find out what the button does upon pressing it and being told that your inventory is now gone. That's obviously bad, so restore your most recent save, and make a new one when you get back there so you will lose less progress next time.
• Cruel: There is no immediate indication that your game has become unwinnable. You think "I should have kept the save I overwrote three hours ago. Now I'll have to start over." Keeping multiple saves is required to avoid this.
  • The same as Nasty, only you just hear a humming noise when you push the button, and there are two buttons beside it that do other, plot-important things. Then, a while later, you need to solve a puzzle and check your inventory... "Hey, where's all my stuff?"

It says a lot about the guys at Infocom that the overwhelming majority of the examples here are Cruel- and the only one rated less than Tough is being Played for Laughs.

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Polite examples

• Return to Zork can be made unwinnable in so many ways; that said, the game will outright warn you if you have locked yourself out of finishing the game, making it one of their most merciful examples of using this trope and almost putting it in line with Non-Standard Game Over if it weren't for the fact the game lets you keep going anyway:
  • Visit Witch Itah without Ben's love note.
  • Give the token to the ferryman on the way to Canuk's island (unless you are carrying the whistle).
  • Turn Canuk back into a duck before you've gotten the disc piece from the bottle. If you leave the bottle without the disc piece, Evil Canuk will just grunt, but he won't try to duck you, and you can ask (sweet) Canuk about the bottle again.
  • Without asking Canuk about the bottle, threaten him while holding the mirror.
  • Get in trouble with the Guardian and lose your items. Even if you avoid losing items by dropping them first, you can still render the game unwinnable if you kill or anger a character who still serves some purpose. This can be achieved in the following ways (to name a few):
    • Harming any character with your knife or sword.
    • Taking the bra box from in front of Pugney's Ranch before he tells you that you can "take that ludicrous box out there too."
  • Lose important items by chucking them in the incinerator, although that ought to be an obvious don't (except for the one item you DO need to chuck in there!).

Tough examples

• Planetfall:
  • Entering the rad labs turns the game unwinnable. That's fair, since the game explicitly tells you not to do so. But it also taunts you by having important-looking items in there. These items could be useful, but you won't live long enough to use them.
  • Slightly worse: keeping a magnet close to any of your cards longer than absolutely necessary will blank the cards without warning.

Nasty examples

• In Zork Zero, the player must cast a spell on an item and then has exactly 18 turns to use the item before it changes back. Once it is restored, the item cannot be transformed again.
  • You must let Gumboz cast the hunger spell on you BEFORE turning yourself into a flamingo to eat the flamingo food. You can't "prepare" yourself for Gumboz by solving the flamingo food puzzle first. That makes the game unwinnable.
  • Most Flathead relics are safe to toss into the cauldron as soon as possible after they're found, except the sailor's cap and the brass lantern. You need the sailor's cap to sail the yacht and the brass lantern to provide light in the Icky Cave. These should be the last two relics to go in the cauldron before the endgame.
• Tombs & Treasure on the NES:
  • Walk into a cave from the Ball Court. Hey, that's a nice jewel on that pedestal, I think I'll take it... oh no, the door closed and I'm trapped! That's it, game over, better reset! (The game tells you this in pretty much those words.) You can get that jewel, but not right then.
  • Usually, there's no penalty for combining objects ASAP, and you'll want to do so... except in one case. Inside the Warriors' Temple, there's a hole in the wall behind the jaguar statue which has a key stuck inside (it's explicitly too small for your fingers), and you need a magnetic rod in order to get it out. However, you might have already combined the rod with a small bowl to make a makeshift compass used in a later puzzle, and if you've done that, you need to go back to an earlier point.
• In Enchanter, the KULCAD scroll can only be used once. It cancels magic. Since every puzzle you encounter is basically a magical trap, the spell allows you to "cheat" your way past any one puzzle in the game. Except that at the endgame you need the KULCAD spell to win. There is a slight warning when you do use it at the wrong time at least—you get a headache, then Belboz appears and warns you about the consequences of such careless use of this powerful scroll. The warning is what makes this example not Cruel.
• Starcross
  • If you give the chief alien your space suit before going down the yellow airlock, then you can’t get into space to get the pink rod. This dead end seems Nasty rather than Cruel, only because the pink rod puzzle seems easier than the weasel alien puzzle. You’re also likely to be leery about giving up your space suit before exploring all possibilities of needing it.

Cruel examples

• Even their EASY difficulty games can do this, like Wishbringer. Fail to pick up your 3D glasses that are always the first item tossed on the floor by your captor before you even get the chance to give him the violet note to make him leave, before pulling the lever to send the princess back home like she's begging you to? The 3D glasses get sent back with her, and you are then trapped, in one of the most ridiculous puzzles ever created. The room you saw when you watched the 3D movie earlier with those glasses is just as fuzzy when you are there for real as it was before you put the glasses on in the theater, and requires those 3D glasses to see anything in it, or even leave at all! You don't know this at the time the glasses vanish, but you will find out very soon. The good news is you DO know where you went wrong. The thought process goes "Okay. I'm in Fuzziness. I can't see anything. I can't go back up. Hmmm. Oh yeah. The theater screen was fuzzy without the glasses. I'll just put them on. Uh-oh, I don't have them. Well, I'll just restore my save and pick them up... They aren't there... They vanished when I pulled that lever? and I saved after there... What? SERIOUSLY?!?! And this is Easy?" Bad news, well, you might have to start all over because you overwrote your save. The other way most experimenting adventurers would make the game unwinnable (disturbing the trap that later traps the princess) the game is kind enough to warn you before you try it, and afterwards tells you that your score went DOWN (yes in all caps). That one is merely Tough, bordering on Polite. Realizing you even need the glasses there is a bit of a Moon Logic Puzzle, and you might have discarded them after you watched the movie, rendering the game Unwinnable long before you realize it (there's no way to get back to where you put them after your capture). The princess/lever/3d glasses problem was rectified in Version 69 though.
  • The game does warn you at a few specific points that it might be a good idea to save your game, but the reason for the warning (that you are approaching a point of no return and there may be an item you need that you will be unable to get if you go on) is never told to you, so it's easy to dismiss it, or overwrite the save if you think you have made progress. It never tells you that you should keep the save file that you just made because you are approaching a Cruel situation.
  • If you shortcut through the fog, down the mountain, wishing for rain with the umbrella, then you must open the can too early, to get the stone, and you lose the snake and can't get past the troll, unless you have the horseshoe, wish for luck, then give the coin to the troll. But then you can't get into the theatre, which absolutely requires the coin. No theatre, no 3d glasses. No 3d glasses, the game is Unwinnable. (Unless you're aware of the Wish for Darkness workaround, and you have the grue's milk with you: Sneak into the theatre lobby without the coin, drink the grue's milk, wish for darkness, then sneak into the theatre from the dark lobby. When you return to the lobby, though, the gravedigger will angrily toss you out and you'll finish the game with only 94 points.)
    • If you do that, then you have to use the arcade game to bypass the hellhound, and if you mess that up the game is again unwinnable, because you already used up the alternate solution.
  • If the Boot Patrol captures you twice, and you don't have the chocolate, then you can't eat it and wish for freedom to escape the now sealed jail cell. You're trapped there until the Boot Patrol comes for you and escorts you to your doom.
    • If you DO escape a second time, if you didn't save the seahorse earlier, you will lose immediately if you get captured again. They will give up for the rest of the game if you manage to survive the third capture.
• The text adventure The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984) contained some deliberate, devilish cases of obscure things that needed to be done within a certain time frame. They're so devilish that Douglas Adams once gleefully described the game as "user-mendacious". For instance, at the end of the game, Marvin will ask you for a specific tool to repair the ship with. The tool required is randomly selected from a pool of ten—except that if you are missing any one of those ten items, then the game will always choose that one. So, if you left the toothbrush in your bedroom at the beginning of the game, then you'll be forced to start over completely.
  • If you miss your appointment with Marvin by failing to work out how to get into the niche in exactly twelve turns? Then you're stuck. If you're too early or too late, he refuses to help you. If you're too early, just wait until the 12th turn.
  • Even if you have all ten tools and reach Marvin on time, there are two points at which the game can determine which tool is required: in a premonition of the future, or if you enter the niche without triggering the premonition first. There's no way (short of using an undocumented property of an unusual inventory item) to bring all ten tools into the niche, and he'll always pick one you don't have on you if you've failed to trigger the premonition. There isn't time to go get it and bring it back.
  • If you drink the tea without showing up at the screening door with both the tea and no tea, then you can't get into Marvin's pantry.
  • Even more infamous — if only because it's early enough in the game that more people see it before giving up — is the notorious "Babel Fish Dispenser" puzzle, wherein the player must use a pile of junk mail picked up at his doorstep back on Earth. By then, the planet Earth has been blown up, forcing players who forgot the junk mail (which is likely — if they take too long trying to pick things up, then they'll be flattened by a bulldozer) to restart their games for any chance of a satisfactory ending. What makes the puzzle even more ridiculous is that in order to obtain the Babel Fish, the items available must be used in a variety of ways, each way non-obvious until you dispense another fish, and the latest method of failure gives you a hint for a new necessary step — but if you proceed step-by-step according to the hints (using the items in the right manner), the dispenser will run out of fish at the last (otherwise successful) attempt. At least here you can reload and use what you've learned.
  • If you forget to retrieve the gown (with the pocket fluff) and the towel, after obtaining the Babel Fish, or if you forget the plotter, then you can't go back and get them after you leave the Vogon ship.
  • Most infamous of all is the cheese sandwich puzzle, in which failing to feed a random stray dog early in the game while you're rushing urgently on a timer will cause the game to be Unwinnable much later. You get a second chance at that puzzle (you relive that portion of the game as Ford and can have him do it), but there's no clue to do it then, either. The only clue is in an apparent throwaway joke triggered by typing an invalid command after you leave earth.
  • If, as Arthur Dent, you buy the cheese sandwich but forget to feed the dog, the game's unwinnable. This is different from the recovery procedure, if you, as Arthur, don't buy the sandwich, then, as Ford, you buy it and give it to Arthur to feed to the dog.
  • One more: When Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz has you strapped down and is reciting Vogon poetry to you, you have to enjoy the poetry before he completes the first verse, which makes him continue on to the second verse. You must hear that verse to get the password to open a display case containing a Plot Coupon which you may not need until hours later. And you can't use a guide for this, because not only does the case not always ask for the same word, the second verse itself is usually randomized and changes with every game. And don't think you can restore and keep guessing, the game knows you don't know it, and will fatally tell you that you are wrong with an explosion. And oh, said verb is one of those commands that is only relevant in this part of the game and nowhere else, and by the time you get the hint ("You don't look like you enjoyed that at all.") it's too late and you need to restore. Trying to smile or laugh DOES result in the game telling you "If you want to enjoy the poetry, just say so.", but you aren't going to do that either unless you've already figured out the puzzle, and if you believe what you've read up till that point, you will think Vogon poetry is impossible to enjoy.
  • Leaked design notes for the unfinished Hitchhiker's Guide 2 game suggested including a puzzle whose solution causes the game to become essentially Unwinnable (ignoring a one-in-a-million random chance). Only by not solving the puzzle and losing the points could the player have won the game. This is just how the people at Infocom used to think.
• Journey is the epitome of Cruel. It won't inform you of your mistakes until the very end of the game, long after you have made them. And it won't tell you all of them either. forcing you to replay over and over until you get it right. At least it does warn you of this fact. Hopefully you have a save from before your earliest mistake?
• Beyond Zork has innumerable dead-end possibilities, but here are just three:
  • If you rescue the baby hungus before trying to solve the crocodile's tear puzzle, you're stuck. Since the baby puzzle is much easier than the tear puzzle, it's easy to make this mistake. You need the mother hungus to help you get the crocodile's tear. When you rescue the baby, both he and his mother disappear into the jungle, so if you rescue the baby first, you can't get the tear.
  • If you give the sea chest to the monkey grinder before letting him squash the warning nymph, you can't get into the guild hall to get a wand (unless you are aware of and exploit the Rug Bug).
  • If you eat the spenseweed, you can't heal the pterodactyl, which you need to get into the castle courtyard.
• Earlier Zork games were no different. In Zork I, any number of actions could render the game unwinnable (by either destroying or preventing you from getting any of the treasures, all of which are necessary to win). The game stubbornly refuses to alert you to when you've put it in an unwinnable state and many are very difficult to predict, believing you should be able to figure out if you screwed up. Some highlights:
  • If you eat the garlic in the first room of the white house, one of the very earliest locations, you can't ward off the bat outside the Coal Mine that will instantly grab you and take you to a random location nearby, thus forever preventing you from retrieving the jade statue. The fact that you never actually get hungry or thirsty is the only hint that you shouldn't eat it.
    • There are other things you can eat or drink as well. Again, because you never actually get hungry or thirsty, you shouldn't eat the sandwich or drink the water. Those two actions won't make the game unwinnable though, as there's an alternate solution to the puzzle requiring them. The existence of alternate solutions actually makes the game more cruel overall, because it's impossible to know if your mistake is recoverable or not.
  • If you fail in the exorcism twice, you can't try again—or if you let the candles burn out, you're out of luck. And they burn out VERY rapidly if you are holding the torch, which you almost certainly got just before you got the candles. This would be Nasty, except you don't know that getting into hell is required without a walkthrough, and that it's not a red herring (something that seems to be a puzzle, but is just there to waste your time and drain your lamp).
  • If you puncture the boat, you can't get the large emerald. You can repair it once with the gunk, if you have it, but if you puncture it again, unwinnable. Again, this would be Nasty, except that there's an alternate way to get to the end of the river, so you don't know for sure that the boat is actually required.
  • If you didn't solidify the rainbow using the scepter, then you are going to be stuck if you go down the river to retrieve the scarab and emerald. And you cannot carry the scepter onto the raft, as it will puncture the raft. There's a way around this. Go down the river and get only the emerald, then go west to White Cliffs Beach, then go back to the Living Room. Come back later for the scarab by climbing down from the Canyon View with the scepter, solidify the rainbow, cross it, then go north and get the scarab. You can also carefully PUT the scepter into the raft so you don't poke it while climbing in, then take it back out and wave to solidify the rainbow.
  • If your lantern runs out before you reach the Coal Mines, the room full of gas will explode (as it's the only non-flame-based light source). If it runs out and the candles burn out and the thief steals the torch, you will lose due to having no light sources to repel the grues. Again, it's obvious that you had a setback, but not that you can't still win.
  • If you push the wrong button and fill up the maintenance room at the dam with water, you can't retrieve the wrench and screwdriver, thus preventing you from getting the treasure chest and the diamond. You don't find out until much later that the screwdriver is required.
  • If you try to force the jeweled egg open, you will destroy it instead—with no way to restore it. Game unwinnable, because all treasures are required to win. Trying to just open the egg informs you that "You have neither the tools nor the expertise." This is the hint for the true solution.
  • If you kill the thief in his treasure room (to stop him from stealing your treasures), you can't get him to open the jeweled egg for you. The hint above implied that someone else could open the egg, and the troll clearly doesn't have the tools, so it must be the thief, revealing another treasure. It's easy to fall into this trap if you're new to Zork I since the egg is found above ground, "safe" from the thief.
  • The Zork II hint book indicates two ways to move the menhir. It doesn't mention that one of those ways makes the game unwinnable. If you ask the demon to move the menhir, then you can't get the Wizard's magic wand, which is required to win the game. Although this only applied to later versions of the game, and in the earlier ones getting the demon to move the menhir was a valid solution.
  • In Zork III, the slot in the puzzle room is a trap. Putting the lore book in the slot is the "easy way" out of the puzzle room. Neither Zork III nor the Dungeon Master tells you that you cheated your way out of the puzzle room by putting the book in the slot instead of pushing many sandstone walls until a ladder is beside the hole through which you entered the puzzle room.
  • Also in Zork III, if you eat the waybread, then you can't get the old man in the engravings room to show you the secret door which ultimately leads to the Dungeon Master's lair. This puzzle's "don't" clue is similar to the Zork I garlic-bat puzzle.
• Stationfall:
  • It feels like the boots will scramble your card in a single turn.
  • Putting the explosive in the thermos doesn't stop that item from evaporating; it merely slows it down by a factor of four while silencing the messages you would otherwise get about it. This is no fun if you decide to stash your safecracker tools in one location one by one as you get them; when you've got them all some hundred turns later, you'll find out that one thing has silently evaporated on you.
  • The large drill bit in the vending machine is a trap. If you buy it then you can't get the timer. You must let Floyd help you get the medium-size drill bit in the Robot Room instead.
• Sorcerer:
  • There's a puzzle in a coal mine at the very end of the game. You can only breathe for two turns unless you have an obviate-breathing potion. But the only way to get that is to send in a matchbook at the beginning of the game, before the mailman leaves for the first time. If you don't, you can get through the rest of the game—but you always die in the coal mine, because you can't hold your breath long enough to solve the puzzle.
  • If you take too long (more than a day) to do everything required in the Hall, you're stuck. Also, you're stuck if the mailman arrives before you put the depleted matchbook in the receptacle.
• Spellbreaker:
  • Fail the copy protection. The game lies to you and tells you that you passed it. Many hours later, at the very end of the game, you will be killed while attempting to use a vital object, with no warning as to why, what you did wrong, or when.
  • If you eat both the leftover fish and bread found in the Guild Hall, you can't get the Liskon spell scroll in the bottle in Mid Ocean. And you certainly can't get the "light" cube on the Ocean Floor later in the game. This puzzle's "don't" clue is similar to the Zork I garlic-bat puzzle, which is even more unfair, because eating and drinking WERE required in Enchanter, the first game in the Enchanter trilogy!
  • You MUST visit the Roc's nest BEFORE climbing the mountain to visit the hermit in his flimsy hut since you can only ascend the mountain once. Otherwise, the game's unwinnable. You must get the caskly spell scroll from the Roc's nest so you can magically rebuild the hut so you can get the cube which supported the hut before you cast caskly on it. It's easy to get this wrong the first time you play the game since Spellbreaker intimidates you on your first attempt to enter the Midair room, which leads to the Roc's nest (unless you are aware of and exploit the Fill Bug).
• Then there's Dungeon, the precursor to the Zork Trilogy. In version 32b, you use the rope in two different locations. Here's the rub. When you tie the rope to the railing in the Dome Room, then slide down into the Torch Room, (you can't get back up the rope) the thief can (but doesn't always) steal the rope right off the railing, then, after you've left the Torch Room via the one-way hole, he can drop the rope in the Torch Room, Tiny Room, or Dreary Room, where you can't retrieve it. In other words, you'd need the rope to get to the rope. So if this happens, you can't re-use the rope in the Slide Room, and you can't get the red sphere. You're stymied. This one might be Unintentionally Unwinnable, though.
• Infocom's Suspended:
  • The game can be made unwinnable before the first move. Setting "Impossible" difficulty makes the player's Sun go nova a few minutes into the game, so there's not much point trying to find the right-length wire to fix the complex's systems, is there?
  • More generally, the game as a whole is on an extremely strict timer with a very rigid schedule of events that will happen at specific times, rendering parts of the map inaccessible. Spending too many turns doing the wrong things can render the game unwinnable with no indication that it has happened or what you did wrong.

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