Botching

Video game concept

Characters are capable of botching whatever they tried, often to catastrophic or even fatal outcome.

13
games
5
platforms

Alternate names: Critical failures, Disastrous results, Dangerous results

Mostly a feature in RPGs where you don't only have some bonuses for great success but also disasters caused by horrid execution. Often quite random due to their nature of being tied to character's skill levels.

Obvious cases like springing a trap instead of disarming it shouldn't usually count, but things like carelessly swinging a sword and hitting your friend and spilling acidic substances on yourself rather than opponents or whatever concoctions you were making.

Breaking objects instead of repairing them due to incompetence is also common.

This can be tied to normal to-hit randomization where while results of 95% and above will cause critical hit, results below 5% cause something bad to happen like the gun exploding in your hands or you cutting yourself somehow such as knive slipping out of your hands or you trying to be too fancy with your moves and slash at your other arm.

Popular tags

dungeoncrawler fallout megaten persona roguelike socialsimulation sots-series

Parent group

Random chance

Games by year

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The first Botching video game was released on September 30, 1997.

Interplay and Kerberos Productions published most of these games.

Platforms

Windows 6
Linux 3
PS2 2
Mac OS X 1
MS-DOS 1