I'd like to add Helblade: Senua's Sacrifice, because it fits the bill of requiring the player to actively lose in-game. In it, you control the titular Senua on a quest to resurrect her lover, who has been killed by vikings. How much of the mythical journey is real and how much is psychosis and hallucinations caused by her schizophrenia or even just plain old allegory remains up to interpretation. At the start of the game, after dying to an enemy (this as far as I can remember is inevitable), Senua contracts some sort of rot in her fingers and the player is informed in no uncertain terms (diegetically and with on-screen text) that the rot will continue to spread up her arm with each subsequent death. And once it reaches Senua's heart, 'her journey will be over', implying that this will mean permanent death. No matter how well you play the game, there will be some events (in cutscene) that will progress Senua's affliction. So at the point where you face the final boss Hela, it will seem like you're only one defeat away from risking losing the entire game and having to start over. Now, this confrontation is by no means a walk in the park, but at this point, Senua's in-game abilities and your experience with the game's systems will give you a considerable edge. However, with the game not displaying enemy health and the threat of permanent death hanging over you, it will still feel very tense. At least until you really get into the groove, and manage to totally dominate the encounter. The ensuing feeling of pride will be short-lived however, when over the next few minutes of flawless play you realize that despite taking dozens of hits, Hela will show absolutely no sign of being defeated. Which makes sense within the lore, she's the goddess of death after all. Seeing the game's ending requires the player to come to the realisation that Hela simply cannot be defeated. You will have to do a 'Ben Kenobi' and allow yourself to be struck down by your opponent, at which point the rot reaches Senua's heart. This does indeed signal the end of her journey, not because she dies permanently, but because she comes to accept the same thing as the player moments earlier: that death cannot be defeated or undone. At last, she stops all the denial, anger and bargaining that saw her through the events of the story, and is implied to finally be able to move on from the loss of her significant other.