An invisible wall is a boundary in a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

that limits where a

player character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

can go in a certain area, but does not appear as a physical obstacle. The term can also refer to an obstacle that in reality could easily be bypassed, such as a mid-sized rock or short fence, which does not allow the character to jump over it within the context of the game. In 2D games, the edge of the

screen Screen or Screens may refer to: Arts * Screen printing (also called ''silkscreening''), a method of printing * Big screen, a nickname associated with the motion picture industry * Split screen (filmmaking), a film composition paradigm in which mul ...

itself can form an invisible wall, since a player character may be prevented from traveling off the edge of the screen. In 3D games, invisible walls are used similarly to prevent a player leaving the gameplay area, or getting trapped in a small inescapable space, though visible boundaries such as stone walls or fences are generally preferred. Completely invisible walls are cited to be

level design In video games, a level (also referred to as a map, stage, or round in some older games) is any space available to the player during the course of completion of an objective. Video game levels generally have progressively-increasing difficulty t ...

bugs, and might be "left-over geometry" from an earlier version of the

level Level or levels may refer to: Engineering *Level (instrument), a device used to measure true horizontal or relative heights *Spirit level, an instrument designed to indicate whether a surface is horizontal or vertical *Canal pound or level *Regr ...

or an object's improperly-aligned

collision box Collision detection is the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. Collision detection is a classic issue of computational geometry and has applications in various computing fields, primarily in computer graph ...

. Nevertheless, designers might add invisible walls on cliffs to keep characters from falling off or use them as final borders of large open worlds, to make the world appear even larger than it actually is.

Effect on player immersion

Invisible walls can cause discrepancies between a game's systemic logic and its fictional logic, as a game's rules dictate that one cannot continue past the wall, while the fictional setting cannot explain why this is. This breaks the supposed internal reality of the game. However, the existence of invisible walls does not break player immersion as much as they might seem to, because most gamers are fully aware of the limitations of game worlds and accept the inability to venture off the path as a given. The true threat to player immersion is not the mere existence of invisible walls, but whether they are consistent and credible within the game world. For example, if the player character is normally able to jump over knee-high fences, encountering such a fence that cannot be jumped over breaks immersion much more than if the player character is normally incapable of scaling any sort of fence. Many games, especially open-world games, use substitutes for invisible walls that prevent players from encountering an edge of a levelor becoming lostwhile retaining more immersion, like extremely powerful or invincible threats or enemies, such as restricted areas subject to lethal

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s in '' Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction''.

Bypassing invisible walls

Computer glitches or the use of computer game

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can result in both visible and invisible walls becoming penetrable. If a player character passes through a wall, they may enter an area of the game not intended for their use. This might be an area containing unused portions of a level, or an area containing nothing at all. Visible and invisible walls exist to keep players out of such areas.

References

{{video game gameplay Video game terminology Video game design