It's a Wonderful Failure/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A Nonstandard Game Over which shows the unfortunate consequences of the player's loss.

  • Straight: The Hero Kelvin is trying to protect his beloved Princess Velvet from all that threaten her. If he fails, her fate is shown, whether she's driven into exile, forced into marriage, murdered, or worse.
  • Exaggerated: No matter how Kelvin fails -- whether at the blade of a random Mook, a spellcaster's magic, a monster's fangs/claws/what-have-you, or even killing Velvet during an Escort Mission -- there's a corresponding Game Over sequence showing the fallout. Not just Velvet's fate, but the fate of various NPCs who were counting on him...
  • Justified: The game developers want the players to see the consequences of their actions.
  • Inverted: The Game Over screen shows Kelvin frolicking happily in heaven, apparently glad he died.
  • Subverted: Failing cuts straight to a static Game Over screen.
  • Double Subverted: ...However, the Game Over screen is followed by a shot of Kelvin's body and/or Velvet's fate.
  • Parodied: If Kelvin dies, Velvet berates the player for leading her knight to such a ignoble fate and demands to know what they plan to do about it -- after all, they can't just leave her to face all her problems on her own! So hurry up and load your save, stupid--!
  • Deconstructed: ???
  • Reconstructed: ???
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: The game over screen shows a character doing something else, such as a mundane job.
  • Enforced: The designers wanted to drive home the stakes, so they plotted out the immediate consequences of the hero failing at various points.
  • Lampshaded: "Dear Crystal Dragon Jesus, was that really the game over screen? That was depressing!"
  • Invoked: half-way through the game "You have five minutes to find me or she dies!"
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: "Man, I saw that guy who was looking for the princess was dead, and there were some depressing images floating around his body."
  • Conversed: ???
  • Played For Laughs: The Game Over sequences show a Super-Deformed Kelvin or Velvet suffering some humorous indignity, or a fuming Velvet scolding a bandaged or recently rezzed Kelvin.
  • Played For Drama: Kelvin's final moments are drawn out, showing how he suffers or his body's immediate fate, before segueing into a Downer Ending detailing how Velvet suffers after losing her champion.

And so the trope page slowly sunk into the realm of the forgotten, having been all but abandoned and not having enough information of the right quality to make it interesting enough to be noticed and revamped. "Retry" "quit".