History DyingTown / VideoGames

* ''VideoGame/OctopathTraveler'': Orewell is said to have been a thriving mining town at some point but by the time the events of the game take place, it's been reduced to a desolated, run-down settlement full of depressed, hopeless townsfolk.
* ''VideoGame/OctopathTravelerII'': Orerush used to be the quintessential [[TheWildWest Wild West]] BoomTown founded following a silver rush. By the time of the events of the game, the place has fallen in hard times: a combination of the price of silver plumeling and the original founder leaving a SmallTownTyrant in charge, now Orerush is a pale, decrepit shadow of its former self full of impoverished and exploited townfolk that barely survive day to day. Fortunately, after [[IntrepidMerchant Partitio]] deals with the cruel SmallTownTyrant and his cronies in his first chapter, the town makes a miraculous recovery.

* It is heavily implied the Slums of ''VideoGame/{{Stray}}'' used to be vast and sprawling, yet by the time the Cat falls down there the majority have been overrun by parasitic Zurks, with only a scant few pockets still populated by RidiculouslyHumanRobots.

* ''VideoGame/OctopathTravelerII'': Orerush used to be the quintessential [[TheWildWest Wild West]] BoomTown founded following a silver rush. By the time of the events of the game, the place has fallen in hard times: a combination of the price of silver plumeling and the original founder leaving a SmallTownTyrant in charge, now Orerush is a pale, decrepit shadow of its former self full of impoverished and exploited townfolk that barely survive day to day. Fortunately, after [[IntrepidMerchant Partitio]] deals with the cruel CorruptHick and his cronies in his first chapter, the town makes a miraculous recovery.

* The title town of ''Franchise/SilentHill'' is an odd inversion, since in-game dialogue from the first game suggests that Silent Hill might have been a dying town several years before the game takes place, but by the time that the series kicks in, it's a popular lakeside destination for people to go on vacation.
* ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'': Santa Destroy seems to be this, or closer to the small-town version of ViceCity. It is generally portrayed as a derelict, seedy place with a [[LowerClassLout menial population]] and a notable lack of care for education, infrastructure and culture. It is heavily implied that most of the inhabitants remain there simply because they couldn't leave for one reason or another. In ''[[VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle Desperate Struggle]]'', the city has a miraculous recovery thanks to being renovated into a tourist hotspot funded by multiple corporations.
* ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroesIII'' has Call of Battle, a region that suffered from a severe warlike conflict a long time ago, and is now a crumbled mess with very few inhabitants.
* The [[CityWithNoName nameless town]] in the middle of a steppe from ''VideoGame/{{Pathologic}}''.
* ''VideoGame/SimSeries'':
** The town in ''VideoGame/MySims'' seems to be like this when you arrive. In fact, your arrival increases the population by 25%.
** The early ''VideoGame/SimCity'' games, mainly the original and ''Sim City 2000'' feature these as scenarios where you have to help it grow. Of course, you can also build one of these yourself in Sandbox Mode if you so desire.
* There is one in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'', which eventually becomes a GhostTown. It's [[spoiler:Tazmily Village]].

* Mars has become this in ''Franchise/MassEffect''. According to the in-game codex, it was once considered ripe for terraforming, but mankind essentially lost interest when the Prothean mass relay was discovered and they began to spread across the galaxy and meet other races.
* Inaba in ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' has shades of this, several stores in the central shopping area are boarded up, with many of the residents blaming Junes (a megastore) for these businesses failing, and several high school [=NPCs=] comment that they're ready to jump ship and leave town once they reach college age. [[spoiler:It's implied in the GoldenEnding that Inaba will recover, and Junes starts working with and supporting the local shops instead of displacing them. Yu comes back a year later for Golden Week in the UpdatedRerelease and ''Arena'' and the place seems fine.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}''

* One of the staples in the ''VideoGame/RollercoasterTycoon'' series is the "save the park" scenario, where you prevent a Dying Theme Park from going bankrupt. The most prominent is the "Renovation" scenario in the "Wacky Worlds" expansion for the second game where you save a [[MotherRussia Russian theme park]]. There's a specific set of scenery which is nothing but ''deteriorated Kremlin pieces'' made solely for this scenario.
** Similarly, ''VideoGame/ZooTycoon'' features a few Dying Zoo scenarios, where you essentially rebuild neglectful zoos from the ground up. Special mention goes to the "[[Film/JurassicPark Dinosaur Research Island]]'' scenario in the "Dinosaur Digs" expansion, which is presented as your typical scenario, but later on you "return" to the island in a later scene where all the dinos have escaped and you have to capture the dinos and rebuild their exhibits.
* ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'' gives us the ironically-titled "Esparanza."[[note]]Spanish for "Hope".[[/note]] Built by sailors from all over the world, Esparanza was meant to be a port town or headquarters of sorts for sailors who wanted to take a crack at penetrating the seemingly-unpassable Dark Rift. Unfortunately, no one ever passed through the Rift, and everyone who came back from the trip were hollow shells of their former selves. It didn't take very long for the hope to wither...
* Pyrite Town (and the base camp known as "The Under"), in ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' was a former mining town, but with its mine dried up, it has fallen into a WretchedHive.

* ''VideoGame/ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura'' has Dernholm. In the backstory, it was the thriving capital of the nation of Cumbria, but when their king [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope suddenly went mad with power and hatred of technology]], he dragged Cumbria into a hopelessly one-sided war against the ''much'' better-equipped nation of Tarant. When the player arrives at Cumbria in the game proper, it's lost nearly all of its power and prestige, and Dernholm itself is a barely held together village whose people desperately try to survive, but have little hope of doing so due to the king's ever-escalating insanity and his sickeningly depraved Guard Captain. [[spoiler:Depending on the player's actions, Dernholm, and Cumbria and general, can begin a slow but sure path to recovery in the epilogue.]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'', Tristram was going through this stage during the first game, what with the demonic invasion and slowly being bled dry by a steady wave of heroes drawn to the town by said demonic invasion. Then the town completely [[DoomedHometown flatlined]] at some point before the second game.
* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'':
** Winterhold was once a grand, vibrant city that rivaled Solitude and Whiterun in sheer glamor and splendor. Then an earthquake sent 99.9% of the city (and indeed, the Hold itself) into the ocean. No one knows what exactly caused what became known as the Great Collapse, but many people, including the current Winterhold Jarl, believes that the Mage College is connected somehow. Ironically, the College itself is now the only reason anyone still cares about Winterhold. The replacement Jarl (if the Imperials win the Civil War) recognizes the reality of the situation and wants to foster good relations with the College.
** Ivarstead. One man is reluctant to allow his daughter to go to Riften with her new paramour partly because Ivarstead will have no future if more of the younger generation leaves. The main attraction of Ivarstead is that it is the closest settlement to the mountain where the legendary Gray-beards reside.
* ''VideoGame/{{Syberia}}'': Almost every location Kate travels through appears to be a half-deserted town past its prime:
** Valadilene was once world-famous for its automaton factory. Since then it seems to have fallen on hard times as the demand for Voralberg automatons decreased and many young people left the town to seek employment elsewhere. Many inhabitants fear that the death of Anna Voralberg may mean the closedown of the factory and the ultimate end of the town.
** Despite all its grandeur, there appear to be almost no students on the campus of Barrockstadt University. Local stationmaster admits that, while he still remembers days when students would come from all around the world to study in Barrockstadt, he hasn't seen a train come to the station in a very long time.
* Rapture in ''VideoGame/BioShock1'' the entire city has been torn apart by a civil war between Ryan and Atlas, and the only ones left are insane splicers. By [[VideoGame/BioShock2 the sequel]] the city is slowly crumbling as the sea starts overtaking it.
* In ''VideoGame/AfterProtocol'', when morale drops too low on a planet, your colonists will say ScrewThisImOuttaHere and abandon the colony.
* Mamon in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'' (Aktemto in the official NES release) big time, with this mining town going from decline to virtual ghost town status over the course of the game. The apparent cause is a poison gas seeping from the nearby mines, caused by the fact that the demon king Estark was sealed underground beneath the town centuries ago - and the miners had been unwittingly unsealing his prison.
* ''VideoGame/StoryOfSeasons'':
** A lot of towns are this way in ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon''. You might even have to fix the entire town up all by yourself, like in ''[[VideoGame/HarvestMoonANewBeginning A New Beginning]]''. Or maybe you just have to fix up this farm or something, like in ''[[VideoGame/HarvestMoonGBC3 GBC 3]]''.
** In ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonAWonderfulLife'' and its DistaffCounterpart, the protagonist is a city-goer who decides to take over their deceased father's old farm. The local town in Forget-me-not Valley is a sleepy village with less than 30 inhabitants. By the end of the game, most adults are either middle-aged or seniors while the very few kids in the town are all most likely going to leave. However, by the sequel ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonDS'' the town is just fine a century later. Admittedly, ''DS'' is very loosely a sequel and more-or-less only used that concept in order to [[GenerationXerox excuse reusing all the characters and saying they're reincarnations/descendants]].
* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyI'': As a way of deconstructing OneHundredPercentCompletion, [[spoiler:the titular town becomes this if you 100% the game (with people losing interest by Etria's main attraction, the labyrinth, not having any mysteries anymore)]].
* ''VideoGame/TheVanishingOfEthanCarter'' is set in a small mining town that has been abandoned for well over a decade after a mine collapse killed off its economy.
* Ghost Port Kolobos in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyBraveExvius'' isn't quite a GhostTown yet despite its name, as it does have some permanent residents and a couple of shops, but large sections of the town are falling apart, and everyone makes it clear that the town currently doesn't have long before it's completely abandoned.

* ''VideoGame/SuikodenV'': Lordlake. Once a beautiful and popular tourist destination in Falena, it was reduced to a scorched, dust-filled hellhole after being declared a pariah city in the aftermath of the Lordlake Incident. Most the original inhabitants left, leaving only the infirm and the stubborn in the city. [[spoiler:Fortunately, thanks to the actions of the protagonists during the Godwin war, Lordlake was revived and the population is working hard to restore the place to its former glory.]]
* ''VideoGame/OctopathTraveler'': Orewell is said to have been a thriving mining town at some point but by the time the events of the game take place, it's been reduced to a desolated, run-down settlement full of depressed, hopeless townsfolk.
* It is heavily implied the Slums of ''VideoGame/{{Stray}}'' used to be vast and sprawling, yet by the time the Cat falls down there the majority have been overrun by parasitic Zurks, with only a scant few pockets still populated by RidiculouslyHumanRobots.
* ''VideoGame/OctopathTravelerII'': Orerush used to be the quintessential [[TheWildWest Wild West]] BoomTown founded following a silver rush. By the time of the events of the game, the place has fallen in hard times: a combination of the price of silver plumeling and the original founder leaving a SmallTownTyrant in charge, now Orerush is a pale, decrepit shadow of its former self full of impoverished and exploited townfolk that barely survive day to day. Fortunately, after [[IntrepidMerchant Partitio]] deals with the cruel CorruptHick and his cronies in his first chapter, the town makes a miraculous recovery.

* It is heavily implied the Slums of ''VideoGame/{{Stray}}'' used to be vast and sprawling, yet by the time the Cat falls down there the majority have been overrun by parasitic Zurks, with only a scant few pockets still populated by RidiculouslyHumanRobots.

** In ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonAWonderfulLife'' and its DistaffCounterpart, the protagonist is a city-goer who decides to take over their deceased father's old farm. The local town in Forget-me-not Valley is a sleepy village will less than 30 inhabitants. By the end of the game, most adults are either middle-aged or seniors while the very few kids in the town are all most likely going to leave. However, by the sequel ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonDS'' the town is just fine a century later. Admittedly, ''DS'' is very loosely a sequel and more-or-less only used that concept in order to [[GenerationXerox excuse reusing all the characters and saying they're reincarnations/descendants]].

*** The Capital Wasteland is a ''dying region'', at the start of the game most people just survive and don't really thrive, the topsoil and water supply is lousy with radiation, the region is slowly but surely being overrun by raiders, slavers and super mutants and the [[LawfulGood Brotherhood of Steel]], the only people who can make a difference, have their hands full. Naturally, this being a [[AWorldHalfFull Fallout game]], you can make things [[EarnYourHappyEnding much better]] [[DownerEnding or doom them to extinction]].