death loop

plural death loops

1. video gamesA situation in which a player respawns and inevitably dies, only to respawn in the exact same situation, causing the game to loop indefinitely.

   However, upon being resurrected I found myself in the morning of a groundhog day fighting the scorpion I had just killed, exiting the room, feeling woozy, eating chocolate, falling to the ground. I was stuck in a death loop.

   2012, Olli Tapio Leino, “Death loop as a feature”, in Game Studies, volume 12, number 2, Game Studies, →ISSN

   1 more example

   The death loop represents a limit of the game system as well as the pleasures associated with fort-da present in the playing of digital games. Rather than the player failing, the machine has failed. As a type of bug, the death loop is not the only deadly, and deathly, reference to game-halting system failure. There is also the kill screen.

   2015, Emily Flynn-Jones, “Don't Forget to Die”, in Torill Elvira Mortensen, Jonas Linderoth, Ashley ML Brown, editors, The Dark Side of Game Play: Controversial Issues in Playful Environments, Routledge, →ISBN