permadeath

plural permadeaths

1. countableslanguncountablevideo gamesPermanent death, where the player cannot continue but is obliged to restart the game from the beginning.

   I don't consider permadeath a reasonable solution for most virtual worlds.

   2004 June 15, Lee Sheldon, Character Development and Storytelling for Games, page 401

   3 more examples

   And yes, especially 'special' mobs coming back is a bit of a stretch. But then the players coming back is a stretch too, no? (yes, I know, many have implemented some form of permadeath).

   1996 April 21, Jay Sax, “Re: Best features of a mud.”, in rec.games.mud.diku (Usenet), message-ID <ayudanteDq7xJB.9LG@netcom.com>

   If you are doing your job right designing a game, the newbie experience should be almost good enough that people don't care about permadeath any more then they would picking up a new novel.

   2001 February 4, Rick Cortese, “Re: Permadeath Debate Today”, in rec.games.computer.ultima.series (Usenet), message-ID <t7s713pgas0b26@corp.supernews.com>

   Permadeath is simply a way to encourage the playing of more than one game so they can try everything.

   2007 January 12, Ray Dillinger, “Re: Roguelike developer diary”, in rec.games.roguelike.development (Usenet), message-ID <45a7f875$0$68978$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>

2. countableslanguncountablevideo gamesLikewise, any situation where a player character or characters who die are lost permanently but do not trigger a game over, allowing the player to proceed without the character(s). Particularly applies if said deaths are avoidable (not forced by the plot) and occur only as a result of player blunder.

   it features character permadeath which can’t be disabled; as the press release puts it, “in this Fire Emblem game, if your soldiers meet their end, they’re gone forever.”

   2023 June 16, Oli Welsh, “A classic Fire Emblem is coming to Switch Online very soon”, in Polygon

   3 more examples

   Last week, as you might recall, I promised to play Fire Emblem: Awakening with permadeath on. I also promised to continue battling no matter what happened: in other words, if any of my party members died in combat, they'd be dead for good.

   2013 February 8, Jason Schreier, “A List Of Characters I Accidentally Killed In Fire Emblem: Awakening”, in Kotaku

   For many fans of the dungeon crawler genre, the ultimate risk is permadeath. And it’s just what it sounds like. If you die in a game with permadeath, your character is toast. Gone. Permanently.

   2015 April 4, Laura Hardgrave, “Darkest Dungeon and Permanent Death in Video Games”, in Den of Geek

   Combat gets a lot more challenging in the back half of the story, especially if you ratchet up the sliding difficulty gauge to hard (which, notably, features Fire Emblem’s signature permadeath for added consequences to your actions).

   2017 October 26, Meghan Sullivan, “Fire Emblem Warriors Review.”, in IGN