walking dead
walking dead adjective: corresponding to an unwinnable game state, where the player can still act in the game world but victory is impossible.
Adjective
walking dead (not comparable)
- Corresponding to an unwinnable game state, where the player can still act in the game world but victory is impossible.
- The term I've typically seen used for the latter is "walking dead" -- meaning you can still wander around, but no progress can be made, and therefore you have effectively lost the game -- ie "died" -- and just don't know it.2005 March 4, M. Damian Dollahite, “Re: Boundlessness & IF”, in rec.arts.int-fiction (Usenet)
- There are numerous ways to instantly get killed, as well as walking dead situations, which were practically banned across all other adventure games when this game was released in 1996.2018 October 3, Kurt Kalata, “Dragon Lore II: Heart of the Dragon Man”, in Hardcore Gaming 101
- Synonyms:
- unwinnable, softlock, softlocked
Noun
walking dead pl (plural only)
Synonyms of walking dead
Questions about walking dead
- What does walking dead mean?
- Walking dead means corresponding to an unwinnable game state, where the player can still act in the game world but victory is impossible.
- What part of speech is walking dead?
- Walking dead can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near walking dead in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: walking dead (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-walking dead.wav.
Cite this entry: “walking dead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/walking_dead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.