Playing With / Endless Game

Following

Basic Trope: A game goes on indefinitely until the player loses.

• Straight: Trope Invaders is a Shoot 'em Up that has no ending. Gameplay only stops once the player loses.
• Exaggerated: Truly Endless Game - The game is literally endless: the player can't win or lose, so gameplay only stops upon pausing and quitting to the main menu.
• Downplayed:
  • The game has a story with boss fights, but after defeating the Final Boss, the game keeps going indefinitely until the player loses.
  • The game is extremely long, but after hours and hours of waiting, it ends.
• Justified:
  • The game is set during a Forever War, and the player character is a robot who must keep fighting until death.
  • The game is about preventing various groups from releasing a Sealed Evil in a Can, and Evil Only Has to Win Once.
• Inverted: The game has no beginning; as soon as it's booted up, it drops the player right into gameplay without any menu, and the score, lives, etcetera set themselves to random values as if to imply the player was thrown into the middle of the game rather than the start.
• Subverted:
  • After clearing Stage 255, the player is shown an ending.
  • The game would have been endless if it wasn't for that meddling Kill Screen at level -256.
• Double Subverted:
  • The ending is quickly revealed to be a prank, and gameplay continues indefinitely after all.
  • Despite appearances Level -256 is finishable.
• Parodied: ???
• Zig-Zagged: The player is constantly shown endings that are quickly revealed to be pranks after beating certain stages... Until one is the real one.
• Averted: The game has an ending.
• Lampshaded: "Must I keep fighting until the end of time?"
• Invoked: ???
• Exploited: ???
• Defied: A character with Medium Awareness calls in a favor from the developers, allowing them to perform a Deus ex Machina and bring the perpetual conflict (and thus the game) to an end.
• Discussed: ???
• Conversed: "Does this game ever end?" "No, but that's the whole point. Keep playing for as long as you can to rack up the highest score!"
• Implied: ???
• Deconstructed: Realizing that their quest is endless and that they will fail sooner or later, the player character crosses the Despair Event Horizon.
• Reconstructed: ???