What is "karoshi"

n. death, such as from heart attack or stroke, brought on by overwork or job-related stress.

, which can be translated literally as "overwork death" in Japanese, is occupational sudden mortality. The major medical causes of karōshi deaths are heart attack and stroke due to stress and a starvation diet. This phenomenon is also widespread in South Korea, where it is referred as 'gwarosa' (과로사).

Karoshi is a series of puzzle platformer video games created by Jesse Venbrux and developed by YoYo Games Ltd, in which the goal is to make the player character, a Japanese salaryman named "Mr. Karoshi", commit suicide. The word " karōshi" literally means "death by overwork" in Japanese.

The series titles span a number of platforms. The oldest games, Karoshi, Karoshi 2.0, and Karoshi Factory, were released as standalone executables for Windows. Karoshi: Suicide Salaryman and Super Karoshi run on the Adobe Flash platform, the latter of which was developed by Armor Games. The latest installment, Mr. Karoshi, was primarily targeted at the iOS and Android platforms. Although the game has since been pulled from the iTunes and Google Play app stores, Mr. Karoshi remains playable as an HTML5 browser game on the YoYo Games website. All of the games have since been released as freeware, and all expect the flash titles were made with Game Maker.