An instant-kill condition ends the current attempt when one explicit rule becomes true instead of subtracting ordinary damage. Because health, defense, and healing cannot soften that result, the condition needs early redundant warning, a reachable answer, a precise commitment moment, and exactly one authoritative resolution.
Kern marks a fixed execution seal at 0.30 s. Tavi's full body clears its 92-unit radius before the first resolution at 0.98 s, so the condition evaluates false and no health, result, or reward changes. The empty trap remains visible before Tavi returns.
Autoplay is disabled by reduced motion. Scrub across 0.30, 0.48, 0.88, 0.98, 1.82, 2.58, 2.86, 3.02, 4.18, 4.72, and 5.20 seconds to inspect warning, escape, lock, execution, result, restore, and reset.
Define the lethal condition, eligible targets, telegraph and lock times, complete-body danger geometry, valid answers, immunity and revival exceptions, result ownership, camera and input behavior, multiplayer authority, and tests that distinguish a deliberate execution from merely very high damage.
Express the rule as one testable predicate: inside the seal at resolve, crushed between two solid bodies, uncleansed when Doom expires, or hit while a special encounter state is active. Snapshot every input at the lock moment. Do not implement the result as an arbitrary damage number that future health, armor, shields, or difficulty scaling may accidentally survive.
Budget signal recognition, movement, network latency, camera recovery, and the whole collision body before commitment. State whether the answer is leaving geometry, facing away, cleansing, interrupting, taking cover, or satisfying an earlier objective. Test the slowest legal build and every control mode without silently requiring an optional dodge upgrade.
Resolve the condition once on the encounter authority, reserve a stable result id, cancel duplicate hit and reward paths, and preserve the cause through defeat and replay. Specify invulnerability, revival, co-op rescue, rollback, simultaneous victory, phase transition, and late-join behavior. A result that bypasses health must not also emit misleading damage events.
If the same shape sometimes removes health and sometimes ends the attempt, color alone is not enough. Add a pre-attack state, unique silhouette, boundary treatment, cadence, sound, caption, and persistent rule cue before the response window begins.
A large damage value interacts unpredictably with shields, percentage reduction, temporary health, cheats, difficulty modifiers, and future balance changes. Resolve the explicit terminal condition directly, then emit one cause-specific result with zero ordinary damage.
The telegraph may be harmless and track a target; the lock freezes its inputs; resolution evaluates once; aftermath disables further combat and keeps the cause readable. Store these as distinct states so late frames, rollback, and accessibility announcements cannot disagree.
Clearance uses the player's full collision volume, not its center or feet. Sweep spawn points, camera angles, movement penalties, controller dead zones, latency, animation locks, and arena obstruction. If ordinary movement is promised, leave a measured margin rather than a frame-perfect edge.
One lethal check can create useful focus; frequent or overlapping checks can erase experimentation and make retries dominate playtime. Measure warning-to-resolution time, failure rate after recognition, time lost per failure, checkpoint distance, and whether the mechanic appears during visual or input overload.
Decide whether invulnerability, dodge procs, shields, revival, companions, scripted phase protection, or accessibility assists may answer the condition. Expose every permitted exception and reject every forbidden one consistently instead of relying on whichever damage hook runs first.
Kern's six runes close around one fixed circle. The first time, Tavi crosses its edge and the pattern breaks harmlessly. The second time, the last rune locks while Tavi remains inside; the full health mark is crossed rather than drained, making the encounter rule itself the cause of defeat.
Offer larger boundaries, longer warning, reduced flashes, unique audio, captions, haptics, and a preview option. Difficulty and accessibility settings may lengthen the response, reduce simultaneous demands, allow one recovery token, or replace the result with severe damage, but the selected policy must be stated before the check and remain consistent.
High damage still travels through the ordinary health and mitigation model, even when it usually removes all remaining health. An instant-kill condition directly chooses a terminal result when its predicate is true. Status buildup may feed such a predicate, but accumulation and its final consequence remain separate mechanics with separate timing and feedback.
During daytime the enraged boss changes its projectiles to bright yellow and its attacks normally kill in one hit while bypassing configured dodge effects. This is a useful edge case: the implementation still uses enormous attack damage, so its presentation must communicate the encounter-wide lethal context rather than pretend every projectile gained a new geometry rule.
Olmec pauses above the player before pounding down, and crushing is an instant-kill interaction rather than a fixed number of hearts lost. The short airborne hold, full body width, destructible floor, and walls make the lethal condition a spatial predicate that must be tested against the complete collision shape.
Mortal Gaze applies Doom when its facing condition is failed, then a separate lit glyph can cleanse the debuff before its timer expires. The lethal result is therefore preceded by two authored answers at different times, and the interface must keep the gaze failure, countdown, cleanse state, and final KO causally linked.
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