History DeathWorld / VideoGames

* The world of VideoGame/{{Fallout}} features giant ants, murderous mutants with mini-guns, scarce food and radioactive water.

** Tabora and Grelbin from ''Going Commando'' are also notable as they are wast open areas with seemingly nothing in them but the [[MacGuffin Mac Guffins]] you need to collect. There is a ton of enemies that are burrowed underground that are [[DemonicSpiders especially infamous]] in Grelbin. Running out of ammo and having to retreat to local hub to resupply is a common occurence in here.

* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'''

* ''VideoGame/ArmoredCoreVIFiresOfRubicon'' has Rubicon 3, a planet that was home to a bustling human civilization thanks to the newly-discovered substance "Coral", which unfortunately turned out to be ToxicPhlebotinum that caused not only the planet to basically catch on fire, but the ''entire solar system''. By the time the game begins, the solar system is no longer burning, but Rubicon 3 is now reduced to little more than harsh deserts, frozen wastelands, and abandoned cities contaminated by Coral.

** On the reverse of the spectrum, there's also the Void, also known as The Thirteenth. Like The First was flooded with light, the Void was flooded with darkness and its denizens are mutated by the excess darkness into aether-hungry [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Voidsent]] just by staying in the realm. Not even death is an escape since the darkness prevents Voidsent from properly rejoining the lifestream, meaning that they'll eventually just come back to life to suffer again.

** By the time of ''Gears of War 3,'' [[FromBadToWorse It's got worse]]. While the Kryll have been wiped out, it is now entirely possible for Lambent Stalks to erupt anywhere, spewing bioluminescent, homocidal mutants without warning (even over the ocean!). The surface-dwelling Locust have gone feral, killing anything they see. And to top it all off, Imulsion, the miracle energy source all the human tech runs on, [[spoiler:is a parasite that is consuming Locust and humans alike.]]

* Pretty much every zone outside Haven City from ''VideoGame/JakII'' onwards. There is a reason the city is surrounded by tens of meters high wall and protected by Eco shield. Wasteland from ''VideoGame/Jak3Wastelander'' is even more so - at least around Haven City you have a manageable weather conditions where only the local wildlife and mainly Metal Heads are the problem, but Wasteland is a giant unforgiving desert with frequent sandstorms and plagued by The Marauders that shoot first, ask questions never.

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberium'': ''Earth itself'' has been turned into a Death World due to the transformation caused by the ludicrously lethal yet economically valuable [[GreenRocks Tiberium]]--which in ''[=C&C3=]'' was revealed to be a [[spoiler:GrayGoo DepopulationBomb to weaken/xenoform Earth for the extraterrestrial Scrin's harvest]]. Unfortunately for them, [[MagnificentBastard Kane]] had other plans.
** The average threats in the Tiberium-infested earth include the air, which is laced with Tiberium and breathing it in translates to infection, and mutation if you're lucky, if you're not you [[BodyHorror end up meaning consumed by Tiberium]], crsytals that cover the floor and slowly either mutate or consume all organic material on it, and happens to be spreading, and the countless mutants already turned into tiberium-based monstrosities by the stuff. Oh, and it's already assimilated enough of the planet for stuff like ''[[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/cnc/images/6/67/Glaciers.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20070619073240 this.]]'' For scale, the big two-gunned tank on the top is about the size of a house. Large masses of Tiberium also generate enough energy to create Ion storms, which are basically giant EMP lightning storms, with far, far, more energy. Oh and it's a naturally valuable resources, so people end up fighting for it and even planting more of it on purpose to gather it.

* Gristol, the island that pays host to the city of Dunwall (of ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'' fame) is a subtle example of this. The local rats will attack humans and can devour a whole corpse in a matter of a minute or so. The local ''barnacles'' are capable of killing humans. Fish in the river will attack humans and try to rip out chunks of their flesh for food, like [[PiranhaProblem movie-style piranha]]. Even the local ''houseflies'' pack a venomous sting and lay their eggs parasitically in human flesh! And this is the ''urban wildlife''; gods only know what sorts of monsters are lurking in the wilderness beyond the city...

* ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity Nova'' has Cunjo, named for its top predator. Auroran warriors sometimes hunt them for bragging rights, and rendered a minor Federation world unsuitable for colonization by introducing cunjos to it.
** The Auroran capital worlds also qualify: ridiculous levels of pollution from extreme overpopulation makes them uninhabitable outside of arcologies.

** As it turns out, both were contributed to by the {{Mad Scientist}}s of the Big Empty (from the expandable content ''Old World Blues''), and the Courier was [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom inadvertently responsible for sealing the fate of the latter]].
*** The Divide manages to one up itself with The Courier's Mile, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero ground zero of a nuke that you set off during the course of the DLC]] which is massively irradiated and needs huge amounts of Rad-X and Rad Away to for a player to last even a few minutes, and is full of pissed off Deathclaws and Marked Men (who are healed very quickly by the radiation). Ulysses wastes no time in [[WhatTheHellHero calling you out recklessly causing such a place]]

* The entire world in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles'' is completely uninhabitable to live in unless you're under the protection of a crystal. The whole world is covered in miasma, which is an extremely toxic gas that is harmful to living beings and will kill anyone who breathes it in and only crystals can repel the miasma; this also carries into the gameplay where if you leave the protective zone of your chalice's crystal, you'll take rapid damage from the miasma. Most towns and cities are under the protection of a large crystal and said crystals have to be recharged every year with myrrh, which is a rare and sacred water that only grows from myrrh trees that are buried deep within dungeons filled with monsters. Myrrh trees need time to replenish its myrrh, which means people will have to venture farther out and make longer journeys just to find more myrrh elsewhere. It's also implied that monsters get stronger every few years so that the next journey in the same dungeon will be even more dangerous and the caravanners tasked with bringing back myrrh have to be in top form to survive the stronger encounters or they'll be killed. One of the dungeons is actually a town whose crystal died because its caravanners never returned, causing the place to be overrun with miasma and monsters. The road between towns and dungeons aren't always safe either since they can be filled with bandits and con men looking for gullible and weak caravanners to take advantage of.

* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'''s Sera seems like a fairly nice place....until you realize that underground it is coursing with explosive, mutagenic chemicals that cause terrible sickness in humans, and aboveground during the wintertime, it is quite common to encounter "razorhail," which are shards of glass-sharp ice pouring down from the sky and able to rip human beings apart and even damage ''tanks.'' And that's before you get to the Locust Horde and all the other assorted monsters roaming underground... On top of that, there's the Kryll. It's not known whether they are part of the the Locust Horde or if the Locust just control them. What ''is'' known is that they'll eat ''anything'' that comes into the darkness at night in seconds. ''Nighttime'' will kill you on Sera.

* The Dark World in ''Videogame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'' illustrates this trope considering that if Link goes there without a particular artifact, he's transformed into a helpless pink bunny.
** Hyrule in general counts throughout the series, even the light world. A place where crows mug you, setting bats on fire just powers them up, chickens are highly organized and vengeful unstoppable engines of ruin, and the flowers variously explode, shoot you with seeds, try to eat you, or [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking sell you overpriced low-quality merchandise]]. [[BaitAndSwitchComparison And then there are]] the [[OhCrap actual monsters]].

** [=SR388=] wasn't given a proper planet name because it was so desolate, dangerous and just plain remote that nobody wanted to acknowledge it in any capacity. The Metroids (practically indestructible floating beings which can shoot destructive energy blasts and drain the life from any being they come across) were the dominant lifeform on the planet (despite there apparently being only a few dozen of them) and any other creature had to be ''very'' strong in order to survive in such an ecosystem. After Samus wiped them out, the planet is taken over by a kind of shapeshifting bacteria ([[NiceJobBreakingItHero which the Metroids were the primary predator of]]) which most likely wiped out all other life on the planet, and prove a severe threat to human researchers (and eventually, the whole galaxy). Even without the Metroids or X, [=SR388's=] surface also has thunderstorms and tornadoes every now and then, which would explain why most of the planet's ecosystem is underground. It's later revealed that the Chozo engineered the Metroids as the perfect predator to keep the X parasite under control and prevent it from from completely screwing up the ecology of [=SR388=]. The Metroids are so damn indestructible because they had to be the top of the food chain on the deadliest planet the Chozo had encountered. [[spoiler:''VideoGame/MetroidDread'' reveals that when the Metroids got out of control, the Chozo, or more specifically the Thoha tribe, not only tried to seal them up within the depths of the planet, they decided [[EarthShatteringKaboom blowing up the whole planet]] was the only way to guarantee neither the Metroids nor X become a threat to the universe, only to be massacred by the Mawkin tribe before they could go through with it, with the Mawkin only seeing the Metroids' potential as a bioweapon for galactic conquest. Fortunately for the universe, one Mawkin came down with a case of X, and the quarantining of the soon-to-be-fully-infected tribe by Raven Beak stalled him long enough for Samus to wipe the Metroids out.]] You know a planet is bad when Samus' reputation remains untarnished after she [[ColonyDrop drops an X-infested research station on it]] [[EarthShatteringKaboom to destroy them both]].
** Zebes is a rather nasty place too. It's been described to be uninhabitable for normal humans (Samus was able to live there only because of being infused with Chozo blood, and even then she was only able to survive in the least deadly areas) and filled with miles of underground caverns crawling with all kinds of dangerous creatures. It got nastier when the SpacePirates conquered it, too. When Samus comes back in ''Super Metroid'', the surface is pouring with acid rain and there is barely any life to be seen save for sparse vegetation growing in rocky soil. While most of Zebes' dangers are underground, one of the surface's deadlier attractions is the wreckage of the ship the Chozo came to the planet with, which has since been [[GhostShip haunted by the vengeful ghosts of the crew who died in the crash]] and Phantoon, an EldritchAbomination that caused the ship to crash. The planet blowing up after Mother Brain's second death suggests that exterminatus is the typical Chozo reaction to planets going bad.

** ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes''
*** You spend about half her time running around one of these in [[DarkWorld Dark Aether]]. Not only do the resident {{demonic|invaders}} BeePeople want to kill you, but the toxic atmosphere constantly drains your health unless you find a spot to rest in. Even worse the Phazon meteor that crashed into Aether creating Dark Aether royally screwed up the original too with the records left by the Luminoth lamenting that their once beautiful planet is now inhospitable: the plains are a desert filled with [[SandWorm sand worms]], the forest is a sunken bog filled with the most out-of-control wildlife and the robots used to defend their fortress have turned against their programming in order to kill them and are steadily being possessed by the Ing.

** Bryyo from ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption''. The planet is tidally locked, with one half burned to a wasteland by the sun and the other frozen over, and only a tiny sliver of the equatorial area is inhabitable. This area is filled with hordes of nasty creatures (including two species that can ''teleport''), lakes of explosive and corrosive [[{{Unobtainium}} Fuel Gel]] (many of the creatures have adapted to live off or weaponize Fuel Gel), ancient but still functional war machines, and treacherous landscapes, and that's all ''before'' the Leviathan hit and corrupted the planet. Now it also includes pools of Phazon and Space Pirate bases, and most of the fauna are Phazon-powered.

** ZDR from ''VideoGame/MetroidDread'' is similar to Zebes and [=SR388=], being a Chozo world with a variety of hostile environments underground and many more hostile lifeforms (and that was before some sections of the planet started being patrolled by {{super persistent|predator}} NighInvulnerable {{Killer Robot}}s that were reprogrammed from research drones to hunt down Samus), and apparently, the planet's so cold even deep underground that the Chozo use geothermal energy pumped from the planet's LethalLavaLand region to keep the planet from freezing over. Aside from superheated and supercooled sections, other dangerous regions include an AbandonedLaboratory with hostile robots and {{bioweapon beast}}s running amok, a flooded marine research lab, and an underground jungle with gigantic carnivorous plants. And none of that is even the worst part about the planet. [[spoiler:After the massacre of the Thoha tribe, an X parasite snuck back among the ranks of the Mawkin, infecting the whole tribe in Elun and leading [[BigBad Raven Beak]] to quarantine them there. Half-way through the game, Samus stumbles into Elun and Raven Beak releases the X from quarantine, infecting every other living creature on the planet in a matter of minutes, and some of them get the idea to stall the geothermal pumps to deep-freeze the planet from the inside and kill Samus that way. Like [=SR388=], Samus determines that ZDR is unsalvageable and the only course of action is [[EarthShatteringKaboom blowing it up]].]]
* Similarly, ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' can easily be regarded as a Death World. Sure it's pixelated and only domesticated farm animals seem to be the most of your troubles at first, but once the Sun sets or you start exploring you realize this seemingly serene world is trying to kill you in every way possible. The terrain is littered with random cliffs, deep drops and pits of lava one could easily kill themselves in and random forest fires happen a lot. At night armies of undead zombies and skeleton archers along with kamikaze creepers and gigantic spiders will track you like heat-seeking missiles if they see you while the almost 3 metre tall Endermen will wipe the floor with any unprepared player does as much as glance at them. Meanwhile booby trapped ruins experiment with different ways to creatively end you; from housing nests of huge poisonous spiders to being able to blow you and all the treasure to bits or having tripwires primed to shoot any trespassers. Even seemingly "safe" mobs like the wolf will descend upon you in packs if you hurt any even by accident. It even has the Nether; it's version of Hell, home to it's own collection of death-toting enemies from huge fire-shooting [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Horrors]] to 2.5 metre tall sword-welding skeletons that will cause you to literally wither away. At least with a Hell you'd think there would be a Heaven right? WRONG. It's just another Hell, where bottom void surrounds the one tiny island and Endermen are everywhere; if that's not enough there's also an almighty dragon that kills anyone on the island.
** And if you are playing on a server, sometimes other players will be yet another thing you have to avoid if people are after you for your blood and gear.

* The various Franchise/{{Pokemon}} regions, where bugs the size of car tires are the norm. People in the Pokeverse say that traveling without a Pokemon companion of your own is dangerous. They are not joking.\\
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Even in a LighterAndSofter Death World like the Pokéverse, ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' and ''[[VideoGame/PokemonXDGaleOfDarkness Gale of Darkness']]'' Orre stands out in particular. First, it's based on real-world Arizona, which neighbors hellish California and Nevada. So, natural ''desert'' is the majority of the landscape. Second, if you think humans have it bad, wild Pokémon in Orre are said to be rarer than ''water'', and that's saying something given that the only flowing water in the Eclo Wastes is in Phenac City [[note]]Agate Village has flowing water and greenery, but it also houses an artifact explicitly blessed by [[OlympusMons Celebi]] which helps resist desertification, which excludes it from the desert just outside in ''Colosseum''.[[/note]] Third, the place is a WretchedHive with the criminals in charge, and Cipher is top dog. Isn't it fitting, then, that the most badass protagonist in the history of the series happens to come from this very hellhole?

* In ''VideoGame/{{Rimworld}}'', your settlers will crashland on a planet riddled with SpacePirates, {{Future Primitive}}s, [[KillerRobot lethal mechanoids]], and dangerous animals. In extreme climates, survival may be even more difficult: Extreme Deserts are scorching hot and largely devoid of life, and unless you set up a hydroponics basin then your only hope for crops will be some patches of gravelly soil where hardy potatoes might grow; in the opposite extreme, Ice Sheets are, as the name suggests, arctic permafrost several kilometres thick with no arable soil and almost no wildlife - trade and [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty cannibalism]] may be your only options for food. Building your base deep in mountains or large hills for safety is also not a guarantee, as you might be attacked by [[BigCreepyCrawlies an infestation of giant underground insects]], and occassionally an [[DeusEstMachina enraged super AI]] will unleash [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien psychic effects on the planet,]] driving humans and animals mad. There's also the possibility that the world may be shrouded by an eclipse (disabling solar power), random heat waves and cold snaps that wipe out your crops and threaten to kill your colonists with heatstroke or frostbite, sudden flashstorms burning down huge swathes of grassland, and random eruptions of radioactive fallout that poisons all life around your colony.

* Zoness from ''VideoGame/StarFox64'' is a planet comprised entirely of machines and structures built on a toxic, acidic ocean that corrodes your Arwing. Also Solar from the same game, though that's justified in that it's a ''star''. It's suggested that Zoness used to be a paradise before Andross' forces started messing with it.
** Also from Star Fox is the appropriately named planet [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Venom]]. It's completely covered in yellow dust clouds, the oceans are acidic enough to melt a spaceship, the gravity is twice as strong as the other planets in the Lylat System, and plant life can't be found anywhere. Sending Andross here in exile was thought to be the Cornerian equivalent of a death sentence.

** In ''VideoGame/JediAcademy'', Jaden Korr is assigned a rather nasty [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mission_to_Blenjeel_%28Disciples_of_Ragnos%29 mission to the planet Blenjeel]], a [[SingleBiomePlanet Desert World]] swarming with sand burrowers (which bear a [[ShoutOut suspicious resemblance]] to the Graboids from ''Film/{{Tremors}}''). Oh, and there's a fierce lightning storm going on in the upper atmosphere, which forces Jaden's ship into a not-so-happy landing on the planet's sandy surface. [[DerelictGraveyard By the looks of things]], this is a common occurrence. After Jaden escapes from the planet (being the first person to ever do so, apparently), Kyle Katarn wisely decides to report this planet in public databanks as one to avoid at all costs.
*** Vjun gets a little expansion beyond being the home of Darth Vader's castle. The planet is incredibly barren, devoid of plant life and has acid rain.

* Don't let the colorful, 2D graphics deceive you--the randomly-created worlds of ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'' are Death Worlds, one and all. Killer slime can be found in the safest environments. Vultures, sharks, hornets bigger than you are, killer bats, and even piranhas await you above ground. Razor-sharp feather-slinging harpies inhabit the upper atmosphere. The underground is filled with skeletons, killer roots, vampire bats, and far enough down, demons. The hills and caverns are steep enough that you can die from fall damage just by traversing the terrain, plus the risks of drowning or falling into pits of lava. Meteors and Hellstone will burn to the touch unless you've built a charm to ward them off. Legions of zombies and enormous, disembodied eyes will pound at your door all night, every night. Eventually, an army of goblins will descend upon you with little warning. And every night has a chance for the Blood Moon to rise, increasing the number and might of the zombies, and turning even the harmless bunnies of the wilderness into walking horrors. The first instructions you get upon starting the game are on "surviving your first night."

* ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'': Pretty much every world in the Origin System has turned into this. Earth is a technological wasteland covered in a bio-engineered forest designed to prevent anyone from using it for anything useful, and one of the few clear areas is filled with half-dead Sentients that stalk the plains at night. Venus was terraformed by the blunt method of dumping ridiculous amounts of coolant on its surface, turning it into an ice world that requires large heat generators for anyone who wants to be outside for more than a minute. Mercury is a mining world completely under the brutal control of the Grineer. Mars is little more than a desert, with the ruins of its former inhabitants slowly being consumed by the sands. Ceres is a polluted industrial world barely habitable any more. Jupiter is being mined by city-sized ships that are not particularly concerned with employee safety, so tumbles into the clouds are common. Europa is a natural ice moon famous for crashed Corpus ships littering the landscape. Saturn was once known as a merchant world, but Grineer blockades make it impassable for nearly everyone else. Uranus is an ocean world that would be uninhabitable except that some Grineer scientists decided they wanted labs on the ocean floor. Neptune is a Corpus industrial world--it's not quite as bad as Ceres, but it still alternates between cold and lethal and high altitude and lethal. Pluto is another ice world, with the added fun of swarms of Corpus robots. Sedna is only barely habitable at all, and most of its better locations are poisonous factories. Eris has been completely overrun by the Infestation, and thus anyone who gets close will be assimilated.

** Snakemouth Den is regarded as this story-wise, as a hostile cave that has killed several Explorers who ventured in it to find a lost artifact. [[GameplayAndStorySegregation Gameplay-wise]], it's the tutorial area, and houses the weakest enemies in the game except for [[TheGoomba Seedlings]].

* The planet your mild-mannered scientist character is teleported to in ''VideoGame/AnotherWorld'' (''Out of This World'' in the US) is like this. The very first screen of the game features a sea monster that will pull you down to your death if you don't start swimming to the surface. The next creatures you encounter are tiny slug-like things which will slash you with deadly poisonous barbs if you get too close. And this is in the first minute of gameplay; it only gets worse from here.
* The setting of the ''VideoGame/{{Avernum}}'' series. An enormous cave system similar to the Underdark of ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms''. By the start of the series, several large caves are civilized enough to support cities. The First Exploration, however, found an underworld full of slithzerikai (savage lizard-people), undead, demons, and giant bugs. Part of the fun in the first game is to find the remains of the first explorers, all without fail dead in some corner of Avernum.
* The ''Franchise/BaldursGate'' games made by Bioware may not always look deadly, but eveything seems to be out to kill everybody, whether you're an adventurer seeking a rapidly shortened lifespan in Durlag's Tower, or a halfling messenger half-an-hours' saunter from Beregost.
* The land beneath the Taintclouds in ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'' (the surface) is a deadly poisonous wasteland filled with all manner of deadly and vicious beasts. [[spoiler:At least [[SubvertedTrope according to legend.]] When you actually go down there you find it's not poisonous at all (anymore), people live a quite peaceful and comfortable life there, the monsters aren't even that powerful, and other than being a bit gloomy thanks to the cloud cover it's not a bad place at all.]]

** The lovely world of Inferno, as depicted in ''VideoGame/{{Bayonetta 2}}''. Naturally, as a FireAndBrimstoneHell, it is far from hospitable. The easiest ways for a mortal to get there are to venture to the top of the sacred mountain Fimbulvetr, or venture through an obstacle course of floating ruins under a subterranean ocean. If you get there, you'll be witness to hordes of incredibly powerful demons that even the strongest Umbra Witches in the world have trouble against. Attractions include a constantly-shifting living forest inhabited by soul-eating nagas capable of turning you into a helpless child, fire-breathing spiders, demons forced to eat their siblings to survive, and colossal dragon-like demons; giant rivers of boiling blood home to mile-long centipedes; an enormous tornado wrapped in thorny tentacles; and even the ground can turn out to be a giant manta ray that can hold you in its guts for all eternity. Bayonetta sure doesn't stick around here for long.

* The Wasteland from ''VideoGame/BillyVsSNAKEMAN'' is an expanse of Death World made of ninja villages blown up by the [[RuleOfCool sheer awesomeness]] of their leaders. The ''safest'' parts of even the outskirts of The Wasteland can be described as "Like the Sahara but the sand is poisonous". Near the center, sunlight occasionally spontaneously focuses into a laser, homicidal unicorns are perpetually searching for new victims, and the ''corn'' will eat you if you're too slow.

** Snakemouth Den is regarded as this story-wise, as a hostile cave that has killed several Explorers who ventured in it to find a lost artifact. [[GameplayAndStorySegregation Gameplay-wise,]] it's the tutorial area, and houses the weakest enemies in the game except for [[TheGoomba Seedlings.]]

* In the ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberium'' series, ''Earth itself'' has been turned into a Death World due to the transformation caused by the ludicrously lethal yet economically valuable [[GreenRocks Tiberium]]--which in ''[=C&C3=]'' was revealed to be a [[spoiler:GrayGoo DepopulationBomb to weaken/xenoform Earth for the extraterrestrial Scrin's harvest]]. Unfortunately for them, [[MagnificentBastard Kane]] had other plans.

** You spend about half your time in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'' running around [[DarkWorld Dark Aether]]. Not only do the resident {{demonic|invaders}} BeePeople want to kill you, but the toxic atmosphere constantly drains your health unless you find a spot to rest in. Even worse the Phazon meteor that crashed into Aether creating Dark Aether royally screwed up the original too with the records left by the Luminoth lamenting that their once beautiful planet is now inhospitable: the plains are a desert filled with [[SandWorm sand worms]], the forest is a sunken bog filled with the most out of control wildlife and the robots used to defend their fortress have turned against their programming in order to kill them and are steadily being possessed by the Ing.