- Ace Combat does this on occasion, usually when dealing with a Recurring Boss who is not meant to be defeated in that instance, meaning the only thing you can do to win is simply not get shot down.
- Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War does this the first time you deal with the Scinfaxi and its burst missiles: it's firing them from outside the area of operations, so the only thing you can do is fly up high enough to get out of their explosive radius and wait for enough of them to hit to sink an allied fleet before the mission ends.
- In Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, the first two of three battles against Mihaly are Unwinnable by Design - even if you do hit him, none of them do anything - so all you need to do to finish the respective missions is stay out of Mihaly's line of fire until all the scripted radio chatter has played out and he retreats on his own.
- Advance Wars 2 features a deployment map (so you start with no units and you have to build them) where Colin has to hold off the enemy (that is, not lose) for fourteen days. There are two ways to lose in AW: being routed, or having your HQ captured. The thing is, the AI in this chapter focuses on building up a force planning to rout you — and you can't be routed if you don't have soldiers in the first place, and the AI is dumb enough to put one of her own vehicles onto your HQ without moving it, preventing her from capturing it. So you can go the whole battle without building a single unit and win. That said, you're in for a nasty surprise if you try this on the Reboot Camp rerelease: that game, owing to improved AI, will gleefully roll an infantry-loaded APC right to your front door and win via capture on turn 10.
- This can sometimes happen in Among Us wherein an impostor might end up making a wrong move (such as killing someone or coming out of an air vent in plain sight) when a few players haven't had much of a chance to do anything. Or more generically, since most people want to play impostor, they quit when they get assigned crew so all the impostor has to do is wait to be declared the victor by default.
- Arknights:
- Shining is a Martial Pacifist medic who focuses entirely on healing the sick and wounded. However, she is also an incredibly dangerous swordswoman with immensely powerful Arts abilities, which she rarely ever uses. That being said, the sheer power and presence she exudes is enough to intimidate many opponents into backing down or fleeing, even if they have no idea who she is. During the Maria Nearl storyline, the assassin Platinum is outright told to abandon her mission by her superiors when Shining shows up, and to try to simply ''stay alive''. During the Near Light story, she foils multiple assassination attempts just by being present in the area, which causes the assassins to abandon their missions lest they provoke her.
- Gameplay-wise, the Survivalist condition for the game's Roguelike mode forces both player and enemy to constantly lose HP on the map. While the player has Medics to heal and counter this condition, enemies don't. So on certain maps, the player can just wait for all enemies to run around unimpeded and die before they even enter the player box, earning victory without lifting a finger.
- Barney's Hide & Seek Game can be beaten in less than 10 minutes with the only thing the player needing to do is turn the Sega Genesis on. Barney will move on his own if there's no prompt from the controller after a few seconds, all the way to the end of the game, though it is as a Minimalist Run.
- Discussed in Batman: Arkham Origins: a $50,000,000 bounty is placed on Batman's head and eight of the world's deadliest assassins are aiming to collect. Alfred points out that since none of the assassins know Batman's identity and the bounty is only valid for Christmas Eve, he could simply spend the holiday at home. Batman refuses since the assassins will likely endanger innocents to draw him out and he cannot allow that. Sure enough, not only is Batman proven right (Deadshot, Shiva, and Firefly all take hostages to bait him) but Alfred is proven wrong: Bane deduces Batman's identity and attacks Wayne Manor, nearly killing Alfred.
- Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is already Unlosable thanks to an AI opponent that, depending on the version, either doesn't move at all or stops right before the finish line. Sometimes, however, the game will just declare "YOU'RE WINNER !" as soon as the race starts.
- The Binding of Isaac:
- If you have the Gnawed Leaf (which makes you invincible after a few seconds of no action, which lasts until you move or shoot again) and any autonomous damage-dealing item, from orbitals to familiars and things like Daddy Long Legs, most rooms in the game can be cleared by basically just moving in and leaving your keyboard entirely alone for a few minutes. This extends to bosses as well — while you might need to leave the game running for longer, it's entirely possible to slay endgame bosses like Mega Satan, Hush, and Delirium without lifting a finger.
- When facing Baby Plum, if you do absolutely no damage to her for about half a minute she'll wave, fly away, and drop (as well as unlock, if it hasn't been already) the unique Plum Flute item that summons her to fight on your behalf. This only works in rooms where Baby Plum is the designated floor boss, however.
- This was actually Sofia Lamb's strategy for surviving the Rapture Civil War in the backstory to BioShock 2. Rather than getting involved in the conflict between Andrew Ryan and Atlas or trying to stage her own powerplay, Lamb goaded Ryan into locking her and most of her followers in Persephone, which gave her a secure base to hole up in, and then kept her head down while Ryan and Atlas slugged it out. After they both died in the first game, Lamb emerged from Persephone and established herself as the new ruler of Rapture, since her organization had remained preserved in Persephone while the rest of the city fell into chaos.
- Bloodborne: In the infamous cummmpfk dungeon, all the player has to do to get a ton of Blood Echoes is to walk into the first room and do nothing; in fact, going too far forward results in the exploit not working. This is because of a quirk of the loading process and the layout of the dungeon; on the other side of the first room's wall, there's a pendulum blade trap and a NPC who spawns right in its way. In the first room, the game loads the hitboxes of the NPC and trap, but not the models, meaning the NPC won't be knocked out of the way since he can't play that animation yet, so he instead takes damage repeatedly until he dies, which gives you the Blood Echoes. Actually trying to complete the dungeon will result in his model being loaded in, so he does move out of the way when the trap hits, negating the exploit.
- Bugsnax: You can invoke this in the final level if you complete the sidequests for all the residents on Snaktooth Island. More specifically, it's justified because during the raid of Snaxburg by the Bugsnaks, you are supposed to be tasked with fending off the Bugsnax to prevent them from Force Feeding the Grumpuses. However, if you complete their sidequests, said Grumpuses outright fend off the Bugsnax on their own free will and resist the urge to eat them. Doubles as Instant-Win Condition as well, as this guarantees their survival.
- Chrono Trigger:
- Early in the game, Crono is jailed and given three days until he'll be put to death, wherein you need to lure a guard into the cell by making noise, beat him up, and escape. You can do nothing and just wait out the sentence though, and Lucca will bust in to knock out the guards and save you. Since they marched you past all the obstacles of the Prison Towers, all you need to do now is run out the door and battle the Dragon Tank to escape, but of course doing this means you miss out on a lot of good items, including a number of Mid Potions and a Silver Sword.
- After multiple New Game Plus runs, it's possible to beat large parts of the game by equipping every character with an auto-berserk item, which takes care of most battles until the late game (although there is a major stopping block in the form of Jugglers, an enemy in the Fiendlord's Keep that reacts to physical damage by becoming nearly impervious to it and reducing its magic defense (and vice-versa).
- In Civilization V, in the vanilla game and the Gods & Kings expansion, the condition for domination victory is to be the last player to still control your original capital. It is therefore theoretically possible to win a domination victory without ever going to war if the other players conquer each other's original capitals while leaving you alone. In the Brave New World expansion, this will no longer fly, as the victory condition was changed to require controlling all original capitals in the world.
- In Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex the level "Ghost Town" can be beaten by not pressing any buttons on the controller. Go to 4:45 in this video
and you'll see that it is possible to beat the level and win the Gem for it by, you guessed it, literally doing nothing. - Cobra Triangle plays with this trope with its red dragon boss, the penultimate level of the game. If you fire your weapons even once, it will return fire with full force — but if you don't, it will harmlessly move around for about 10 seconds, then self-destruct.
- In D4DJ Groovy Mix, the very first Groovy Mix Tour stage is on Audience mode, meaning that the entire chart is on auto-play. It has a score requirement, but it's superfluous; you just need to let the song play to the end to clear the stage.
- In DanceDanceRevolution, this happens twice, thanks to modifiers that remove certain types of steps:
- If you play the beginner chart to "CHAOS" with the CUT option set to ON 1note modifier, no steps will show up due to all of the steps that would otherwise appear officially falling on non-quarter beats and you'll clear the song without having to do anything. Subverted in that you'll get a D grade due to having 0 points.
- If you play the Challenge Double chart for ようこそジャパリパークへ and you set it to remove jumps, the song will have no arrows, thus clearing the song without doing anything. Like above, you'll get a D grade due to having 0 points.
- Hilariously, if you decide to just lay the controller down as soon as Frank lands on the mall in Dead Rising, you can wait out the 72 in-game hours (6 hours real-time) and still get the good but not great Ending B. That is, without ever encountering a single survivor in the mall, swinging a weapon, encountering a zombie, or even watching the first cutscene, you "earn" the second-best ending in the game. Mahatma Gandhi would be proud of you!
- At the end of Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is a survival gauntlet where you have to hold out against a large number of zombies. In theory. In practice, you can kill the first four to lower the platform, then activate the Zombie Walk (which prevents zombies from noticing you and lasts indefinitely as long as you stand still or move continuously) and all you'll have to do is wait for it to end completely uncontested.
- The entirety of the Flash game Don't Shoot The Puppy revolves around this. Doing anything in the game, even moving the mouse, will set off the gun and shoot the adorable little doggy, and so you have to not do that to win. The entire game revolves around its increasingly sneaky attempts to trick you into doing something and killing the puppy, with everything from fake error screens, fake pop-up ads, and even a fake "You win! Click here for the next level!" pop-up.
- Diablo Immortal: Defense of Cyrangar, a mode where you defend a castle door against waves of incoming enemies, can be completed without any manual input via a combination of auto-spawning summons, familiar's attacks, as well as items, skills and legendary gem effects that trigger on taking or dealing damage or killing enemies (note that dealing damage also counts damage done by summons).
- A variation in the Doom II mod "Hacx": in MAP16, the aim is to find the four switches which together cause the exit to rise from the ground — or, due to how the Doom engine handles switches on walls, you can just turn around at the start of the level and "use" thin air, ending the level as soon as it begins.
- Elden Ring: This is Mohg's strategy for the Shattering; hide out underground, recruit Bloody Fingers, and let everyone else slug it out. It seems to have worked, given that he's the only demigod who's generally on the upswing, while Radahn and Malenia took each other out, Liurnia fell into a civil war, Morgott exhausted most of his troops destroying Rykard's faction, Godrick made a fool out of himself lost most of his power due to his incompetent leadership, Miquella abandoned the Lands Between to pursue godhood in the Land of Shadow, and everyone else with a claim to the throne died offscreen.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- In series' lore, Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness, made a wager with Vaermina, the Daedric Prince of Nightmares, in which they would both torment an artist who served Vaermina to see who could most influence him. While the artist was accustomed to Vaermina's nightmares and used them for inspiration, she pulled away what protections she was giving him and inflicted horrific night terrors on him. This resulted in him being inspired to create terrifying and grotesque art, which drew fame and acclaim due to its pure nightmarishness. When Sheogorath's turn came to torment the artist, he did nothing at all. Confused and feeling betrayed by Vaermina for the sudden lack of nightmarish inspiration, the artist was driven to rage and began to lose his mind. He started turning that anger into insults to kings and blasphemies against the gods in an attempt to get some response out of Vaermina. Eventually, his insanity grew to full-on madness, and his blasphemies and insults became too much to be ignored, and he was put to death, with his soul traveling to Sheogorath's realm, the Shivering Isles, proving who had won without a doubt. It all happened without Sheogorath doing a thing.
- Another of the myths surrounding Sheogorath has a wizard come to Sheogorath asking for power. Sheogorath says he can have it, if Sheogorath fails to drive the wizard insane within three days. The fear drives said wizard completely bonkers even though Sheogorath hadn't actually bothered doing anything.
- In ''The Argonian Account'', Decumus Scotti is hired to overhaul the infrastructure of a trade network in Black Marsh, but his survey of the area shows him that Black Marsh is unsuited to roads, bridges, wagons or anything his Imperial backers expect him to invest in. So he quietly embezzles the stakeholder's investment for himself and leaves the network to collapse, leading to the Argonians returning to their traditional methods of transporting goods which are more efficient and suited to Black Marsh. This also solves the crime rates, as bandits stop robbing caravans as soon as there are no caravans passing through for them to rob; and the region's rampant poverty (and the fact that of all of the Imperial-enstated governers are kleptocrats working their serfs half to death and trading in slaves) are solved when the lack of Imperial support makes the corrupt governers go bankrupt and all of their workers return home to work on family farms which become self-sufficient with the sudden influx of manpower.
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The quest to kill three Mythic Dawn spies could actually result this for at least one of the spies' deaths, because the spies need to reveal themselves to attack, but do so at such a distance and within range of the town guards, that the guards kill the spy without the player even seeing the spy.
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, this is effectively the Thalmor's long-term strategy: use Ulfric Stormcloak as an Unwitting Pawn to start a bloody civil war and drain the Empire's resources so when the second war eventually kicks off, their exhausted human enemies and "allies" will fall easily. The Dragonborn can intervene on either side and bring the civil war to a decisive conclusion, thwarting the Thalmor's plan: if the Imperials put down the rebellion, they consolidate their hold on Skyrim and High Rock and can rebuild for the war they know is coming; if the Stormcloak rebels win the war, it results in a Thalmor-hostile independent Skyrim and an empire that, while battered, can finally stop wasting time with Skyrim and ready for the coming war; and in either case, the winning side will have the aid of a One-Man Army Physical God.
- Everything Is Crab has a few achievements for invoking this trope, including "Dove" (complete a Pacifist Run, which, in this game about hunting animals, forces you to scavenge for food instead while letting the others kill each other), "Rebellious" (have a charmed Crawlee kill Clawdia) and "Zen" (complete a Pacifist and No-Damage Run at the same time).
- Fall Guys: If Blastlantis is picked for an early round in singles, and the player has a very favourable spawn position (especially on the flat platform that looks down counterclockwise into the slime halfpipe), a fair few of the other players can very well eliminate each other without ever getting near the player, usually even before the level's idle timeout runs out for the player.
- The secret ending in Far Cry 4 is done this way. After the opening cutscene, Affably Evil Big Bad Pagan Min tells Player Character Ajay Ghale "Don't move, I'll be right back." as he goes to torture a prisoner. If the player doesn't leave the starting room for fifteen minutes Pagan Min comes back, gives Ajay what he wants with no strings attached, and the game ends.
- Far Cry 5 has a similar hidden ending where refusing to cuff Joseph Seed for a full five minutes makes the Sheriff agree that trying to arrest Seed would be a very bad idea, and Seed lets the group leave without a fight. note
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy V:
- The "Quickleak" exploit allows you to win any battle this way, after a short setup. First, cast Quick. As your first Quick action, do anything that inflicts the target with Sap. Do not use your second Quick action. Wait a very very very long time as Sap drains their HP, 2 points a tick, unable to respond because you are still in the middle of Quick.
- You can perform a similar tactic with a party of bards, but only on bosses, by inflicting Sap and then having your whole party hide. Normally having all four party members hide equates to fleeing from battle, but since you can't flee from bosses it'll result in all four of your party members off-screen while the boss throws futile attacks at nothing as its health steadily decreases. Imagine the boss screaming for them to come back as it slowly dies, while the four of them are hiding behind a rock playing poker.
- This is how you beat Gogo, who mimics whatever you do with the power souped-up. You could brute-force it if you're particularly over-leveled, but by setting the controller down for two minutes (even though you only have seven minutes' worth of air), he will acknowledge your mastery of mimicry (since you mimicked his inaction) and eject himself.
- Also, the Berserker class attacks without the player's input, as will any character with the class' "Berserk" ability equipped. Rig all four characters with this and the game plays itself. Don't expect this one to work against bosses.
- In Final Fantasy VI, any fight with solo Umaro or Gau (or both) becomes this, since they attack on their own and you can't control them (though Gau requires a single command from you at the start of battle). For especially difficult fights, you may want to go get a book.
- Final Fantasy V:
- In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Ashe's paralogue is a defence map where they must protect Rhea. However, the characters are positioned in such a way that enemies can't get through. If a player doesn't care about treasure, or experience, and has their units powerful enough, they can literally win this chapter by never moving anything and simply killing enemies in the enemy phase.
- You can beat Five Nights at Freddy's 1 by just sitting still at your office and not doing anything. You can even clear 4/20 mode by doing nothing. By manipulating the game's FPS you can delay Foxy's attack to after 6 AM, and the other three animatronics will never attack you if you don't check the cameras.
- FlatOut 3: Chaos and Destruction has a demolition derby mode which, as demonstrated by Rerez on his Worst Ever series, can be won by doing this. In fact, it is the easiest way to win. Since every enemy car targets the human car over and above all else, they'll swarm you like an angry nest of wasps — if you sit still and do nothing, they'll crash into each other while trying to damage you, which ends up doing far more damage to them in the process. Also, owing to some dodgy collision-based points calculations, often you will get points for hitting them when they ram into you, which adds up to insane points while barely taking any damage. And that's not even counting the "Idiot Wave", where you manage to get on top of a fleet of vehicles:Rerez: If you're lucky, you'll get flipped onto some idiot's car, like this, and you'll get to ride the smashing Idiot Wave to Damageville racking up insane points! You're crushing their car while the cars around you can't do any damage directly!
- Freelancer:
- It's rare, but possible, for a mission target to be located inside a sun corona. If this happens, simply coming close enough for the enemy ships to spawn results in an instant victory as they are fried by the heat.
- Some enemies spawn inside hazardous areas, like minefields or radiation zones. These tend to die, too, but more slowly.
- Similar things tend to happen in almost every game if random spawns can happen inside hazardous areas and enemies are not immune to environmental effects. Very few A.I.s survive that — one of the reasons why they are usually granted immunity to the environment.
- Some of the missions in FreeSpace -series can be completed without any effort from the player. You can just set your ship to full speed, head away from the battle, increase time compression, and sit back until you are given permission to return to base. Good example of this is the mission Doomsday in the first game, where you're supposed to defend a destroyer against waves of enemies until the personnel on board have evacuated. This objective is optional, as the mission will be considered completed once the destroyer inevitably goes down. You will get a medal if you manage to hold the line until all the escape pods have launched and departed, though.
- In FTL: Faster Than Light, if you encounter a Rebel scout ship with no shields in an asteroid field, and provided your own ship has functioning shields, it's possible to do nothing and watch as the asteroids blow the scout into pieces. If you have enough shields and evasion, it's very possible to win this way without taking any damage.
- In Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, the Mediocrity ending counts as this. You achieve the Certificate of Mediocrity by not purchasing anything for the pizzeria, and declining all offers to salvage the old animatronics. It even commends you on your "efficient level of laziness" before firing you.
- Friday Night Funkin': In the promotional video for Boyfriend's Newgrounds figurine, Daddy Dearest and Mommy Mearest attack him and turn him into a figurine, which they then give to Girlfriend. This not only nets him a date with her where she takes him everywhere stuffed into her bra, but she turns him back via a True Love's Kiss while in her room, which lets the two have sex unimpeded (much to Daddy and Mommy's dismay).
- Gang Beasts, which can loosely be described as a battle of inept jelly-baby wrestlers, lends itself readily to this as players — particularly inexperienced ones — fall off edges or succumb to environmental hazards. For example, once, when Outside Xbox played Gang Beasts, Ellen Rose scored a win on a Traintop Battle stage because she headed up to the front and allowed the other three players to fight it out on top of the rear carriages... which disconnect and get left behind quite early, automatically defeating everyone standing on top of them after a few seconds.
- In Gauntlet, in case you find yourself on a level where you have insufficient keys to reach an exit or which is too complicated for you to get through if you wait a while all doors unlock themselves. Wait even longer, and all walls turn to exits.
- Genshin Impact: "The Secret of Al-Ahmar" has a big enough arena for its first fights that the player isn't in constant danger and they can hang and let the AI mercenaries take care of things.
- Gradius final bosses typically put up laughably weak amounts of offense as you shoot them into oblivion. A few, such as those of Gradius, Gradius II, Gradius IV, Gradius Galaxies, and Gradius V, on the other hand, have as much firepower as a piece of plastic, so you can win simply by idling until they self-destruct.
- After 19 years of release of Gran Turismo 4, there are cheats that can be literally this. Steps:
- Step 1: Transfer 100,000 credits from 3: A-Spec save file.
- Step 2: Buy the Daihatsu Midget Type-II '98, the cheapest affordable car in the game.
- Step 3: Buy as many wheels until the money counter is very low.note
- Step 4: Preview races until they passed 365 in-game days.
- Step 5: In the license test selection screen, press "Select, Select, R1, R2, L2, L2, Select, L1, R1, Select, R2, L1, Select", enter the license test menu and exit without starting it. And voilá, the license test is cleared in gold without ever driving. Rinse and repeat until every license is cleared in gold and get free cars.
- Step 6: Press "Select, Left, Right, Right, Down, Up, Up, Left, Down, Up, Right, Left, Down, L1, R1, SELECT" in order to get 10 million credits. The cheat can be activated several times in order to get more millions. Useful to purchase cars in certain events.
- Step 7: Go to any event and press "Select, L1, Up, Up, Select, R1, Down, Down, Select, L2, Select, R2, Select" and enter the race menu, but do not start the race. Exit the race menu and the race is cleared in gold without driving. Rinse and repeat to get the prize car without even participating in the event. Rinse and repeat with the rest of the events.
- As a result, every race and license test with the exception of driving missions can be completed without ever reaching a single mile.
- One of the most anticipated, and hence most derided when it finally arrived, games on the Spectrum was The Great Space Race. The main criticism of it was that it played quite happily without user input.
- It's unlikely, but possible in Hades to collect just the right combination of boons on a run (mostly those that increase health, improve Death Defiance, and give Revenge effects) to be able to win the final boss battle by going AFK.
- The Happy Wheels community is fond of making "don't move" and "heart donation" levels, where the player does not perform any input and the many mechanics of the level will bring the player (or the player's heart) to a finish line or victory trigger. However, they might not work on all devices due to different processing speeds.
- Henry Stickmin series: Several times throughout the games, you're given a short amount of time to make a decision on your next action. Ninety-nine percent of the time, doing nothing and letting the time run out is a Fail. There are, however, a couple of exceptions:
- At the end of the "Presumed Dead" path of Fleeing the Complex, the truck you've stolen for your getaway is dangling off the edge of a cliff, and as the complex's warden Dimitri monologues, you get your timer and choices of how to act. Unusually, and hinting at the actual solution, rather than get all your choices at once like normal, they appear one at a time over the course of Dimitri's speech. Wait out the timer, and Dimitri kicks the truck over the cliff, presumes Henry's death (hence the ending's name), and leaves.
- In the Thief/Dead route of Completing the Mission, Henry is charging through the Toppat Clan's launch site on a scooter when he sees two Toppats blocking the way. All the options for avoiding them end in Fails, and the solution is to wait out the timer and simply run them down.
- One of the kills in Hitman (2016) involves simply reaching him in your default Agent 47 attire. Your target, a man who is both about to receive a much-needed heart transplant and well aware of who Agent 47 is and what he is capable of, takes one look at 47 and immediately dies of a heart attack.
- Indiana Jones is a repeat offender here.
- As with Raiders of the Lost Ark above, if Indy had never become involved in the events of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the Nazis would have found Atlantis, messed with the God Machine, and killed themselves and destroyed the city — which is exactly what happens anyway.
- Zig-zagged with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The Nazis would have lost no matter what Indy did - only those judged worthy can use the power of Noah's Ark, which the Nazis aren't. The problem is that an unworthy user will set off a second Great Flood. Indy's involvement allows a third party who is worthy to intervene and prevent the rest of the world from losing as well.
- In Jetpac, once one got to the fourth planet it was possible to rack up a ridiculously high score by landing Jetman on the right-hand platform, switching off the TV, and going out for a few hours.
- Thanks to your final guest party members in Kingdom Hearts III (especially Roxas and Xion) being quite powerful and hard-hitting and the bosses being downgraded from before, it's possible to "beat" several end-game bosses on lower difficulties by doing absolutely nothing.
- In Kirby Air Riders, if only one player chooses a stadium in City Trial, they'll immediately be declared the winner since there's no competition. Afterwards, you get the option to compete against computer opponents that have the other players' stats.
- Giliath Osborne in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II wins the entire Civil War while absolutely doing nothing because, at the end of the first game, he was shot before he could declare war against Crossbell by an assassin and isn't present for most of the civil war that happens in the sequel. It's only after he decides to show up in person, fully alive and all, that he declares that he's won the entire conflict because the nobles sabotaged their chances by showing off their worst while everyone else got caught in the crossfire. Helps that the Dragon-in-Chief, Rufus Albarea, is actually a Mole in Charge as he's actually part of Osborne's side.
- Lemmings: "The Apple Bonus Level". Just crank up the release rate and watch as the lemmings stroll into the exit without your help.
- The Longing takes this to its logical conclusion. Its entire premise is that you're waiting for 400 days for your king to recover his powers, and this wait plays out in real-time. There's plenty for you to do to pass the time, some of which will speed up the wait slightly or give you an alternate ending, but it's all entirely optional; you can beat the game by simply booting it up once, waiting 400 days, and then booting it back up again.
- In Look Outside, if you reach Day 16 without having fulfilled the requirements for another ending, you're automatically diverted to the "No Going Back" ending: the Visitor departs of its own accord, leaving two-thirds of the human population dead, with the remainder transformed into monsters ruled by 124 tyrannical, superpowered mutants known as the Hundred Gods. You don't even have to leave your apartment to get this ending, as Sam has plenty of food and entertainment on-hand to just wait the apocalypse out, and he can quite literally "win" the game by not doing a damned thing.
- The plot of Luigi's Mansion is kicked off by Luigi winning the titular mansion from a contest he didn't even enter. Granted, there's an insidious plot behind it, but the fact remains that Luigi still effectively won the mansion by doing absolutely nothing.
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe added auto-throttle and auto-steering options, allowing the player to complete a race with no input from themselves. It is intended to be more of an assistive function, as left to its own devices the AI will move in straight lines, never turning until going off-road is imminent, and will not use any items. However, in a 50cc race, such a setup for a driver can very well, and usually does, end up winning the race.
- Mario Kart World goes further and adds "auto-use item", which allows the AI to use items for you, though its timing for doing so can be questionable. Regardless, that new addition now means that, with a little luck, the auto-driving AI can win on most tracks regardless of difficulty level. Keyword being most, as since it still opts for only turning to avoid going off-road unless it has a speed-boosting item, it is impossible for it to get anything other than last place on Koopa Troopa Beach.
- In Mendel Palace, the boss fight in the Sumo house can be won by standing perfectly still as the boss transforms you into a Sumo. Her attempt to attack you will trigger the Sumo's Counter-Attack: a Shockwave Stomp that sends her flying into the wall.
- The first phase of the Shagohod Battle in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater consists of riding a motorcycle while fleeing and dodging the thing in a massive tank compound. Eva's doing all the driving and none of Snake's weapons can even scratch the thing; there is absolutely nothing you can or need to do until Eva escapes the tank compound. By driving into the enemy base crawling with soldiers. That's when Ocelot and hordes of soldiers, many of whom have motorcycles of their own, enter the battle and it goes from "kicking back and watching Eva do the work" to "frantically gunning down dozens of enemies so Eva can survive long enough to get the two of you out of there."
- Day 17 of Mom Hid My Game! has a bomb with a fuse burning down and a fire extinguisher in the cabinet. Attempting to extinguish it creates a cloud of smoke that Mom appears out of and fails the level, and attempting to grab the fuse burns your hand and fails the level. What you actually have to do is sit back, do nothing, and let the bomb go off since it's actually just a party favor that pops open to reveal your game.
- Monster Hunter: The Espinas, introduced in Monster Hunter Frontier, is perfectly adapted to hunt without effort. It spends most of its time sleeping, but thanks to its thick protective hide and the lethally venomous spines all over its body, it can literally kill prey in its sleep.
- In Nickelodeon Party Blast, it is possible to win each level in the Food Fight minigame simply by hiding in a safe spot from the other players and having them throw food at each other. Some of the most notable safe spots are the back room of The Krusty Krab, one of the tables at Bloaty's Pizza Hog, and the top of the refrigerator at Tommy Pickles' house.
- Otaku's Adventure: The only way to defeat the one-eyed alien? Just stay still. Its lack of depth perception means it will never hit its attacks as long as you remain motionless. It will eventually give up and leave you alone.
- Overwatch:
- The game ends its rounds with a "Play of the Game", which shows off the most impressive moment in a given match, such as large multi-kills, lifesavers, and the like. However, Torbjörn's playstyle, which involves maintaining an automated turret gun, makes it common for him to get the Play of the Game from his machine mowing people down while he's off doing nothing of merit, such as mindlessly hammering a wall, being dead, or staring at Widowmaker's butt.
- A later update gave everyone "resting" emotes to taunt the enemy with; as Torbjörn, you can literally sit on your ass and do absolutely nothing while your turret rips enemies apart.
- In the Midnight Trivia Miracle Quiz mini-game from Persona 4: Golden, it's possible for you to win by doing nothing while your teammates give themselves negative scores by picking wrong answers.
- One way to kill the Optional Boss which is the Grim Reaper in Persona 5 is to find him during flu season, which causes Shadows in Mementos to occasionally spawn with the Despair ailment (die in 3 turns), which includes the Reaper. This gets removed in Persona 5 Royal, but one of the new boss fights in the game consists of Joker going solo against a boss who only has Physical and Bless attacks and lacks defense against either. As long as Joker equips a Persona with Reflect against at least one of those two and Null or Drain against the other, he'll win the fight without even taking damage no matter what he does.
- When playing Cure Mode of Plague Inc. this is the fastest, easiest, and most effective tactic for curing the bio-weapon. Just declare armageddon and expectation management to get your authority high and then stand by, do nothing, and let people die by the millions. Though it ends up killing between 90%-95% of the human race, it also ends up killing people faster than it's infecting them which allows humanity to survive by the absolute skin of its teeth as the survivors, who are doing everything people should be doing to avoid the disease since your authority is up so high, manage to basically stay uninfected long enough for the bio-weapon to kill everyone infected before it can get to them while you sit there twiddling your thumbs.
- One ending in Please, Don't Touch Anything involves just sitting around waiting for your friend to get back without pushing the button or anything else that leads to another ending. In other words, it involves actually obeying the title.
- Pokémon:
- A relatively common situation faced with wild Pokémon across all installments goes like this: Trainer comes across Pokémon with access to Self-Destruct (or a similar Suicide Attack move). On said wild 'mon's first turn, it uses Self-Destruct and faints. While this falls into Spiteful A.I. if it does manage to faint your Pokémon (ensuring they don't get the XP for the encounter), if it doesn't, then it's this trope. Bonus points if your Pokémon is a Rock, Steel, or Ghost type; the former two resist Normal damage (which is what Self-Destruct does), and the latter type is outright immune to it, rendering the move completely pointless. A similar situation can happen if a Pokémon uses a move like Take Down or Curse which damages itself if it hits, or Jump Kick or High Jump Kick, which damage the user if they miss, and the stat disparity is big enough that the attacker faints from the recoil before it either whittles down the defender's health or lands the move.
- In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, two of the new Pokémon, Tandemaus and its evolution Maushold, have a signature move called Population Bomb that launches a weak physical strike potentially up to 10 times in a row. With good RNG or by having the Pokémon hold Loaded Dice (which cause multi-strike moves to always hit at least 4 times), it can become a very annoying move to tangle with... Unless the opposing Pokémon has the ability Rough Skin or Iron Barbs, or is wearing a Rocky Helmet, which inflicts Collision Damage when a move makes contact (1/8 of the attacker's max HP for the abilities, 1/6 for the Helmet). Having an even somewhat bulky Pokémon with either or both of the ability and the Helmet can cause a hilariously catastrophic domino effect for the mice while the targeted Pokémon simply has to sit there taking hits and watch them knock themselves out. The same effect can be induced by any multi-hit move that makes contact, but Population Bomb is the only one that can take the user from full health to self-KO in one turn with just one or the other. In fact, "Population Bomb against Rough Skin" was used in a Pokémon Champions tutorial on contact moves specifically to showcase the disastrous domino effect.
- Pokémon Trading Card Game (1998): One opponent you can challenge in this game is Imakuni?, an eccentric musician who threatens to make you dance if you lose. However, his AI is programmed to play the Trainer card of the same name on his very first turn, which confuses his own Pokémon. If he happens to use Slowpoke from Base Set and has no other Pokémon on the bench, and it knocks itself out due to being confused and weak to its own type, you instantly win without even having to do anything.
- In Rabi-Ribi, if you commit Sequence Breaking to reach Ribbon without collecting any mobility upgrades or the Piko Hammer, you'll fight her despite having zero offensive capabilities...but Ribbon's HP will automatically drain out in a matter of seconds. You might take damage by standing still, but Ribbon will lose HP well before she can wipe out Erina. After using this method to recruit Ribbon, you can beat the game & all of its extra content besides DLC, without unlocking any attacks for Erina. Doing so is required if you want the achievement named "So...Erina, do you expect to win with cuteness?", the picture for which is Erina sleeping.
- In Salt and Sanctuary, it is possible to kill enemies who perform leaping attacks by simply standing on a ledge. If you position yourself right, usually by being close enough to aggro an enemy but on a lower platform so they leap right over you, you can provoke the enemy to perform a leaping attack that sends them plunging into a pit or poisonous swamp. You can even use this to kill the False Jester since unlike most boss arenas, you can run out of it and lead him after you to an area with a bottomless pit.
- In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, if you have Toki set as your partner and you encounter a single random-encounter demon or a demon horde and she jumps in with a successful Temporal Blade, the battle will end immediately without you having to do anything. This can also happen if you have Gaston as your partner, as he occasionally cuts into your turn to attack, but he'd have to have a significant level advantage over the enemy for it to happen.
- Silent Hill:
- In the first Silent Hill 1, if you enter the final boss battle with no ammo, the boss will keel over dead straight away. The same thing happens to Silent Hill 2's final boss, though replace "straight away" with "after some time has passed".
- The Remake of the latter however, requires you to actually fight it.
- Any time you fight Pyramid Head in Silent Hill 2, all you have to do is avoid its attacks and wait until a cutscene triggers the end of the battle. Shooting it makes the battle end faster, but isn't necessary. This includes the fight against the Twin Pyramid Heads.
- In the first Silent Hill 1, if you enter the final boss battle with no ammo, the boss will keel over dead straight away. The same thing happens to Silent Hill 2's final boss, though replace "straight away" with "after some time has passed".
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- One of the pleasures of getting all the Chaos Emeralds; many of Robotnik's vehicles in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles can be defeated in Super Mode by standing in the right place, and letting Robotnik get hit by you until he's out of hit points.
- In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, getting all the Super Emeralds while playing as Tails turns almost every boss fight into this because Hyper Tails has four Flickies that will automatically attack any enemies on screen. So you can just sit there and let them peck Robotnik to death every time (and yes, this also includes the Giant Eggman Robo). The only bosses this doesn't work on are the Bowling Spin, the Egg Inferno, and the Death Ball, all of which can only die via their own attacks, the Guardian which must be pushed into the nearby quicksand to kill, and the Egg Golem which requires some effort in knocking the outer shell off since the birds won't do this themselves.
- In Sonic Adventure, if you wait enough time in Sky Chase 2, the Egg Carrier will kill itself, as shown here.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2006):
- In some sections of Shadow's story, he has to fly a hang glider while being attacked. The Mercy Invincibility is so generous and the sections short enough that it's entirely possible to get through without touching the controller, as shown here. Of the three stages the glider appears in, Crisis City is the only one that can't be beaten by doing nothing.
- There's a Moon Logic Puzzle mission that requires Sonic to determine who the Captain of the Soleanna guard is. This puzzle is most easily solved by just talking to the questgiver over and over again without speaking to any other guards, since he is the Captain.
- The final boss of Sonic's story can be defeated by using a glitch to jump high enough in the air, which somehow causes the Egg Wyvern to kill itself.
- In some sections of Shadow's story, he has to fly a hang glider while being attacked. The Mercy Invincibility is so generous and the sections short enough that it's entirely possible to get through without touching the controller, as shown here
- Split Fiction: When Zoe and Mio take on Dark Mio, a symbolic representation of Mio's anger at the world for her father's illness, the final phase of the fight presents both players with a Button Mashing prompt. Completing both prompts causes Dark Mio to break free and kill Zoe. In order to win, Mio's player must ignore the prompt and do nothing while Zoe's finishes off the boss.
- In SpyParty, the spy player takes control of the character when they are ready; before that, it is controlled by the same AI that controls the NPC characters. Spy players will occasionally not take control of their character at all, and allow it to be run around by the AI for the entire round. The advantage of this approach is that the spy is very unlikely to be shot, since they'll be completely indistinguishable from the NPC characters. The disadvantage is that they won't accomplish any missions, so victory depends on the sniper not having the discipline to refrain from shooting. The Omegathon Finals at Pax Prime 2013 were won by the spy employing this very tactic.
- Due to the way Stardew Valley's Fishing Minigame works, it's occasionally possible to reel in a fish (and even get a perfect catch) by not doing anything at all after you've cast the line.
- Starfield has randomly generated missions, of which the most common is to kill a target in a facility after fighting through their troops. It's possible for the target enemy to be of a different faction to the other enemies in the facility, leading to them fighting the second you enter the building, which the target will generally lose, being outnumbered, letting you leave without a problem.
- Star Fox Adventures: When traveling to Dinosaur Planet, it is impossible not to beat the Arwing minigame.
- Sunset Overdrive:
- Certain missions' enemies can be defeated without the player having to attack at all:
- Due to all enemy factions warring with each other, "Fizzco: The Dirty Secret"'s second recycling truck's defenders can be defeated by a large enough pack of OD, then the Player can access the truck without needing to kill anything themselves.
- Most missions that involve fighting in concert with some other group usually also have the other group actually invincible, unless a Health Meter for them is shown, such as the Fargarthians' "The King's Feast", which is just following the Fargarthians around, hitting dialogue trigger points and enemy spawn triggers, but the Fargarthians don't need any help attacking its enemies. They're invincible and some enemies don't even attack them unless the Player engages, but the Fargarthians do attack no matter what. However, the player does have to kill one enemy in at the "Goblins and Brigands" section of the mission. The enemies constantly respawn otherwise.
- In "A Hero's Duty", the Oxfords' defense can be handled by the Oxfords themselves, so long as the enemy stays within a certain distance, otherwise the Oxfords cannot deal killshots, other than 3 of the Rifle Bots and all of the Bomb Bots and Tank Bot are set to need player-dealt damage to damage and defeat.
- The first stage of the "Use Boo-Boo to kill Fizzco bots." section of "The Most Epic Quest For EXP" starts with Boo-Boo, who will attack anything within range, standing beside the player, and the enemy are Blade Bots, melee sword robots, who end up walking right into Boo-Boo's attack range when trying to kill the player. The next section has ranged bots, however, so the Player has to signal Boo-Boo on where to go.
- The endgame mission's first combat section, "Help the survivors defeat the Fizzco forces" just needs the player to kill one Fizzco bot before the survivors can handle the rest of the skirmishes themselves, until the third skirmish, which has endlessly respawning Fizzco Rifle Bots, that need about 6 or more to be taken down by the player until the Tank Bots arrive, which themselves need 1 to be player-killed before the survivors can damage the rest.
- Raising the Unity Flags for its post-endgame quests have Fizzco Bots try to interfere and pause the 30-second timer, needing the player to unpause it, but sometimes the bots never stop the 30-second countdown, so the player doesn't even have to fight, they can just run away after starting the countdown and never defend the flag-raising.
- Certain missions' enemies can be defeated without the player having to attack at all:
- There exist quite a number of Super Mario World hacks for "automatic levels" where Mario is sent through the levels without any user input. Sometimes this is synced to music, and sometimes it's just to show off cool stunts. Many of these levels can be seen on YouTube. These would then resurface for Super Mario Maker wherein they are fairly common, and one of the official sample levels is an automatic level.
- This is one of the core reasons why Char and Neo Zeon are a lot more cooperative with the heroes in Super Robot Wars Y. Instead of the expected war, both the Zero Requiem and the collapse of the New Federation resulted in the space colonies getting their independence without really doing anything, making Neo Zeon itself pointless in retrospect and causing Char to start thinking about finding a new path.
- Super Smash Bros. Melee has an end-of-battle bonus called "Peaceful Warrior" that the player only receives if they never attacked their opponent(s) in any way yet somehow ended up winning the match. There's also "Switzerland" with the same conditions, only the player can't receive any damage either.
- In Tacoma, it's possible to finish the game by simply waiting around in the starting area for the data download to finish, instead of exploring the station to learn the fate of the crew. Doing so takes a little over 9 hours of real-world time, though, and has no effect on the actual ending.
- In Tales of Symphonia, you get the Dependent title for Genis if you control him in a battle and win without doing anything. Note that "doing anything" includes moving and getting hit by enemy attacks. This is surprisingly difficult - since enemies like to Gang Up on the Human.
- The Engineer from Team Fortress 2 has a taunt called the Rancho Relaxo. The Engineer places down a toolbox which promptly unfolds into a lounge chair, complete with umbrella and drinks. This taunt loops indefinitely until either the player cancels it or the player is attacked. It's totally possible (if your teammates are especially good at thwarting Spies) to set up a sentry gun in a really good spot, spend most of the round taking it easy, and still end up with the most points.
- At the beginning of Thank Goodness You're Here!, the player character is told that the mayor he's here to meet with is in meetings all day and to sit and wait for him. If you actually do wait there and do absolutely nothing for 15 minutes, the mayor comes out, declares that he cleared his schedule for you, and the game immediately ends.
- Titanium Court: To get the best ending you must deliberately end the game early by leaving the Court. All the extra challenges and quests were invented by Your Enemy to keep you stuck, after all.
- While not common enough, sometimes in Touhou Project it is possible to come across a boss's spellcard that can be defeated by doing little to nothing.
- Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: "Icicle Fail" is a common meme about defeating Cirno's "Icicle Fall ~Easy~" by getting right in front of her and either shooting her or doing nothing. Of course, she wouldn't repeat this mistake on Normal.
- Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character: Sekibanki manages to be even easier than Cirno: two spellcards in a row can be defeated without moving on Easy and on Normal.
- In Town of Salem, there are several conditions in which this can happen:
- During All Any, it is possible for town to win on Day 2 because the game either picked all town members or the only neutral roles were non-killing (ie, Survivor, Guardian Angel, Executioner, Jester). This was changed in the sequel - All Any will tend to spawn multiple "Evil" roles.
- Much like the SC 2 Mafia mod that spawned it, it's possible to do this as a Survivor. The survivor's win condition is to be alive at the end of the game. If the investigative roles can confirm you and/or if the rest of the players actually believe your claim (it's harder than it sounds.) then it's entirely possible to just sit back and receive a win despite not voting anyone up or lynching anyone.
- This also sometimes happens with the Jester role. The Jester's win condition is to be lynched — so they try to look suspicious to get voted up. Sure enough, some Jesters will actually be completely silent (especially if they get voted onto the stand) so they look like an evil player who Rage Quit. A few lucky Jesters won't even have use a deliberate strategy to win, since the mafia can frame others and some towns are so trigger-happy you don't even have to do anything to be considered suspicious.
- Very very rarely, an Executioner can win this way. The Executioner's goal is to get a certain player lynched. This player is random, though it's always a townie. So if that player gets framed by other evil players, draws suspicion of their own accord, or is just unlucky in a particularly lynch-happy town, the Executioner will get their win without having to actually convince the town of anything.
- While uncommon (depending on the faction they chose), an Amnesiac can be confirmed via Investigator, Consigliere, or Potion Master... then simply pick the role of the winning faction, resulting in them winning without performing their role's functions. (Like many others, this was changed in Town of Salem 2 to avoid kingmaker scenarios.)
- And all this isn't even counting the evil roles all killing each other off before the town even has a chance to start lynching...
- In the sequel, the Soul Collector can win this way if a town is incredibly passive. The Soul Collector's goal is to transform into Death, in which town must remove them during the day or else Death kills everyone and the Apocalypse faction wins. It can be sped up if they collect the soul of a player who is killed that night, but they will passively collect a soul.
- Transistor: Luna upgraded with Help() and Switch() may be able to finish off some groups of Process without Red having to do anything, if Luna's around at the beginning of the battle, since the Help() upgrade has a high, 90% chance to remove the only reason Red needs to participate, which is cleaning off the Cells that defeated Processes leave behind.
- In Ultimate Custom Night, it's possible to get a fairly decent score without having to do anything during the night. Just only turn on the Support Party Member animatronics that can't kill you, use the D.D. Repel power-up (D.D. can activate other characters, some of which are lethal), and wait for 6 AM.
- Three bosses in Undertale will do this to you, stalling their attacks so that you can't do anything.
- The first (and while "boss" may be a bit strong) is the Training Dummy Toriel pits you against. You can either fight it and be scolded or talk to it and be praised to "win" the fight. However, if you do nothing and just keep checking it instead, the dummy soon gets bored and leaves while Toriel stands agape at what just happened.
- The second is the Mad Dummy, who, after chasing off their allies and wasting their only projectile attack, decides to just keep their attack window open forever so you can't act since neither of you can damage each other. They run away after getting hit by Napstablook's tears, which apparently can damage them like acid rain.
- The third is the final boss of the No Mercy route, Sans the Skeleton. He knows that by now you can kill him in one hit as soon as he messes up a dodge, so after throwing everything he has at you, he decides to pull the same stalling tactic the Mad Dummy did in hopes that you'll Rage Quit out of boredom. Unlike with the Mad Dummy, no one will bail you out of this one, so you have to wait until Sans falls asleep from exhaustion and then slowly nudge the attack window over to the bottom-left so you can reach the Fight button.
- Due to having more than 1,000 microgames (and a fair few minigames) in its franchise over the years, the WarioWare franchise has a fair few of these under optimal conditions even when not counting the designated fakeout microgames:
- WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!: "Arrow Space", "Dodge Balls", "Fruit Fall", "Hasty Pastry", "Hectic Highway", "I Spy", "Manic Mechanic", "Ninja Pipe Cleaner", "Sole Man", "Racing 112", "Pompeii Back"note , "Super Wario Bros."note , "Vermin", "Wario Wear", "Wrong Way Highway", "Crazy Cars"note , and "Gifted Goalie"note .
- WarioWare: Twisted!: "Assembly Flyin'", "Balloonatics", "H2-Woah!", "Homecoming King", "Nice Catch", "Pinball", "Power Line Pigeons", "Practical Joker", and "And the Winner Is..."note .
- WarioWare: Touched!: "I'm #1!", "Game & Watch Oil Panic" and "Game & Watch Lion"note .
- WarioWare Gold: "Arrow Space", "Cavity Calamity", "Flag Waver"note , "Hover for Cover"note , "Manic Mechanic", "Off-Fence"note , "Roll Model"note , "Self-Defense", "Star Fox", "Super Wario Bros."note , "Body Block"note , "Heads Up"note , "Mars Jars"note , "Ride the Wave"note , and "And the Winner Is..."note .
- The Witch's House can be won by having Viola not enter the titular house. Just stand outside and wait for one hour to pass in real time, and the wall of thorny roses blocking the player's path will crumble, letting them leave. This is because the witch's body has died at that point, and her magic ceases to block your way.
- In Wii Party's Flag Fracas and Flag Footrace minigames, if you start running before the gun goes off, you receive a fault, 2 faults, and you're disqualified. This means it's possible to win by being the last one disqualified from the race. Should this happen, the last Mii left will stand up and look shocked.
- In World of Warcraft, it is possible to be placed into a dungeon right before the final boss goes down, or a battleground right as it ends. Similarly, some players during the "Trial of style" minigame did not pose or even bother to transmog yet still win as their existing transmog fits the theme.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has an in-game achievement called, "Some Help You Are!". To unlock it, you have to initiate a battle, then literally stand there while your AI-controlled party members do all the work.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel: A player was attempting to perform a first-round win by playing numerous cards that forced his opponent to draw cards, planning to run his opponent out of cards before the game even beganGame rules. What he did not realize was that his opponent had all of the Exodia cards in his deck. The only things the opponent had to do were discard a couple cards as a result of the player's actions until all five cards were in his hand, and the game was over before the opponent even took his own turn. (The video is in Spanish, but the eventual winner's reactions say it all.)Atlas (translated): Just imagine the opponent's face, saying "wow, I'm doing this, I'm gonna discard his whole deck" and such and such, and suddenly fucking Exodia pops up on his screen! I love it, I haven't played! It was his turn! It was his turn, I haven't played, I haven't laid down even a single card!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WinsByDoingAbsolutelyNothing/VideoGames
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