kill screen

English

Alternative forms

• killscreen

Noun

kill screen (plural kill screens)

1. (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.