unwinnable en · ADJ
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Germanic *un- Proto-West Germanic *un- Old English un- Middle English un- English un- English winnable English unwinnable From un- + winnable.
Meanings
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(not-comparable) Unable to be won.
This does mitigate the problem of the game playing itself, but it doesn't change the fact that at higher levels a lot of the games are either unwinnable or unloseable depending on the luck of "obey" or "disobey".
2009 December 10, joye, “Obey the Game”, in Jay Is Games, archived from the original on 14 Feb 2025:The “Zarfian Cruelty Scale” rates games as Merciful, Polite, Tough, Nasty, or Cruel. The scale describes how works of IF become unwinnable, especially how and when the interactor (here a player, and one trying to win) learns this.
2007, Jeremy Douglass, Command Lines, page 88:
Deriveds
Synonyms
walking dead · softlocked · softlock
Translations (12)
ja 得られない (unable to be won) · cmn 一場無法取勝 /一场无法取胜 (unable to be won) · ru заведомо проигрышную (unable to be won) · it impossibile da vincere (unable to be won) · de ungewinnbar (unable to be won) · de nicht zu gewinnen (unable to be won) · fi voittamaton (unable to be won) · de nicht zu gewinnend (unable to be won) · da umulig at vinde (unable to be won) · hu megnyerhetetlen (unable to be won) · es inganable (unable to be won) · tr kazanması imkânsız (unable to be won)