kill screen
kill screen noun: a level in a computer game that is impossible to win, usually due to programming errors.
Noun
kill screen (plural kill screens)
- A level in a computer game that is impossible to win, usually due to programming errors.
- 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.2010, Scott Rogers, Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design, page 48
- As a type of bug, the death loop is not the only deadly, and deathly, reference to game-halting system failure. There is also the kill screen.2015, Emily Flynn-Jones, “Don't Forget to Die”, in Torill Elvira Mortensen, Jonas Linderoth, Ashley ML Brown, editors, The Dark Side of Game Play: Controversial Issues in Playful Environments...
Forms of kill screen
| plural | kill screens |
|---|---|
| alternative form | killscreen |
Questions about kill screen
- What does kill screen mean?
- Kill screen means a level in a computer game that is impossible to win, usually due to programming errors.
- What part of speech is kill screen?
- Kill screen is a noun.
- What is the plural of kill screen?
- The plural of kill screen is kill screens.
Words near kill screen in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kill screen (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-kill screen.wav.
Cite this entry: “kill screen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kill_screen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.