How do I find games where you can't die or get stuck?

Question

I'm looking for games that can't be made unwinnable.

Answer 1

The "forgiveness rating" of a game, or its "cruelty," will tell you whether the game can be made unwinnable. (You can read more about the cruelty scale on IFWiki: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Cruelty_scale) 

To find games that can't be made unwinnable, look for games with a rating of "merciful." You can search the Interactive Fiction Database for merciful games by adding forgiveness:merciful to the end of your search terms: http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=forgiveness%3Amerciful

Comments

Technically...merciful and polite both work. But I think people get the general idea. Still, just in case...

http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=forgiveness%3Apolite

It would be neat to be able to search for both at once, or even to have forgiveness > merciful, but trying polite|merciful or the reverse doesn't show anything.

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Not sure what you mean....the ifwiki link says it's possible to get stuck or die in a polite game.

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Oops! I got caught up on the details and not the original question.

I was also considering games where you have, say, amusing insta-deaths with "Would you like to undo?" Sometimes they can add to the story, for instance with Taco Fiction if you try to shoot the cops. Often these deaths are pretty obviously bad actions. This bumps the game to merciful from polite, but it doesn't box you out of a good ending, and you can undo.

I also hope you don't mind me nitpicking about the definition of death. Does it mean the game ending, or actual death/incarceration/unhappiness, etc?

For instance, you can't die in Six, but you can "lose" the game by playing tag wrong. The game-end should not be particularly traumatic to anyone. So Six is merciful instead of polite, but it *feels* polite.

An obvious but clearly marked "exit and give up" ending would also bump a game from polite to merciful by a strict application of Zarf's criteria, but I don't know if that's 100% fair to the game, especially if such an ending gives backstory.

Zarf himself has said the scale may need an update (for instance, the one-undo rule is no longer a concern, since Inform can undo multiple times,) but it still works really well.

If he is planning to update, I'd like to see Unlosable as the new Polite, with Polite meaning "OK, you can die, but it says undo" and Merciful meaning the same as before.

So I think Polite definitely works, but someone may be missing out on some games if they don't look at Merciful. However, Merciful provides a bit of risk.