kill screen
English
editAlternative forms
editNoun
editkill screen (plural kill screens)
- (video games) A level in a computer game that is impossible to win, usually due to programming errors.
- 2010, Scott Rogers, Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design, page 48:
- The most famous kill screen from classic gaming is the 256th level of Pac-Man. At this point, due to a bug half the screen becomes garbled data, which keeps the player from collecting all of the dots and clearing the board to move on.
- 2020, Michelle Herte, Forms and Functions of Endings in Narrative Digital Games, Routledge, →ISBN:
- Kill screens—a problem largely limited to arcade games—occur when an unexpectedly far progress of a player causes an error in the game program.