Here is one type of situation, one that can be called "dead man walking", that comes up in some video games (including many Sierra classics). Consider the following sequence of events:
1. There's an item obtainable early in the game, but for whatever reason you don't obtain that item.
2, At some point, something happens and there's no way to go back and get the item.
3. Later in the game, you reach a point where that item is required to progress.

Hence, after 2, the game is now unwinnable, and that doesn't become apparent until 3. Therefore, you can waste many hours playing through the game and not realize that you have already made the game unwinnable.

Do you think this is good game design? Or do you think developers should go out of their way to prevent this sort of thing from happening?

Also, do any of the many recent indie point-and-clicks that have appeared on this site have "dead man walking" situations?

back in the 90's situations like that could be a bit annoying, but these days they can be a deal breaker. as a kid time felt unlimited and having to replay parts of a game wasn't such a huge deal. these days, with familty, work, etc time feels much more limited and valuable.

so yes, i have a huge nostalgic soft spot for pretty much all sierra games of yore. and once and a while for nostalgic purposes i'll play one, but always with a walkthrough handy.

There is, however, a flipside to this (though not something I consider to be as serious of a flaw): Some games require you to hold on to quest items even after you need them. This is particularly aggrevating in a game like Final Fantasy 2, where in the original version you only have about 32 inventory spots, and by the end, around half of them are taken up by useless items you can't get rid of.

(Incidentally, FF2 *does* have a "dead man walking" situation, though it's something one isn't particularly likely to encounter if not looking for it; if, before you get the canoe, you walk around the world and get an airship ride or a chocobo and ride it to the Semite Cave, you are now unable to leave. I don't know if the remakes did anything to prevent this (like not letting you ride the airship there too early).)

If you want some professional design insights, there is the Ebook "Fundamentals of Adventure Game Design" by Ernest Adams which tackled this sort of issues (among others) in point 'n' clicks:

http://www.peachpit.com/store/fundamentals-of-adventure-game-design-9780133812176

One of the reasons I never got into Sierra games. For me that's a fundamental design flaw.

No. A lot of people call things they dislike "bad design" when they're not, they just set out to accomplish something different from what you want.

I hate when a game does this. It would make me replay the whole game. I prefer the less punishing and time consuming approach to not let this happen. Then again, I'm terrible at point-and-clicks.

Someone better than me might enjoy the challenge. That the items you need to solve puzzles aren't all found in the same room they're in. That the game doesn't break immersion by refusing you passage until you've found every single item. That the world might feel more believable if it's not there simply for you to conquer it, and that these types of failures are always possible if you don't pay proper attention.

Neither approach is "bad design". It just accomplishes different things.

Actually the reason I haven't even considered picking them up.

You could still try the Quest for Glory series, where the developers tried to prevent that situation from happening. (In fact, in QfG4, if you enter the endgame lacking a certain item, it magically appears in your inventory.)

Of course, sometimes bugs do crop up; apparently, in QfG2 there is a monster whose appearance triggers a memory leak, and if enough memory leaks away, the game can't be completed without running into an out-of-memory situation. (I would imagine that you could avoid this by playing the fan-made VGA remake.)

no

I haven't read Fundamentals of Adventure Game Design (and probably won't, since P&C adventures are close to the bottom of my list when it comes to playing or developing games), but I think it's fair to say that while the typically Sierra "dead man walking" scenarios are an absolute no-go design choice (although I think "choice" is a generous word - I suspect it was just a lazy oversight), the way the P&C genre has stubbornly refused to evolve beyond its "one item, one solution, no way to lose" mantra since Monkey Island in the early 1990s as an extreme antithesis to this has really damaged the genre in my eyes. It's lazy design. The Sierra adventures are prime examples of crap design, little doubt about that, but at least they took a risk and encouraged caution, which is what games should ultimately do: encourage you to weigh up caution against action. The Sierra adventures encouraged the player to err too far on the side of caution, driving the player to hunt every single command and pixel.

The opportunities that modern technology have afforded to create more emergent gameplay in this genre (physics puzzles with multiple solutions, for instance) really haven't been adequately exploited. "No way to lose" is a cop-out solution to avoid such "dead man walking" scenarios - the trick is to give the player ample opportunity and information to get it right, but not to hand the solution to them on a silver platter or hide the solution behind an obscure set of rules that have to be precisely met in a single constellation.

Divine Divinity does a good job with this. Weight limits are crucial and here comes this quest where you have to drag this big ass wagon wheel all over the map, however they were kind enough to make the wheel weightless.

Heh. While you do have a point there in general, I think this is actually one of the worst examples to defend that position. I'm still waiting for the first one coming to this thread to say in all earnestness: "I love this, it's a great challenge!". I'm not even sure developers do this on purpose. And I was very tempted to make a snarky remark at what I thought was a very rhetorical question in the OP. ;)

This is a really bad, wrong design... intended to push players to call official hotlines / magazines for walkthroughs at the times. Should be gone and never show its ugley head again by now..

Don't forget the joy of the weightless bed, perfect for the catnapping adventurer!