History ScavengerWorld / VideoGames

* The [=iOS=] game ''Rebuild'' involves survivors of a ZombieApocalypse trying to [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin rebuild]] human civilization while fending off attacks by zombies and raiders, finding more survivors and convincing them to join you, reclaiming zombie-infested areas, sending people out to find food and supplies (which you can't build yourself), etc. You can even reclaim labs and research new techniques in them, including the zombie virus cure (one of the ways to win). Some equipment can also be purchased from or sold to a visiting merchant for food. The equipment includes weapons (anything from a [[ChainsawGood chainsaw]] to an assault rifle), dogs (which the game treats as equipable weapons), tools (and yes, some tools, like sledgehammers, double as weapons), leadership items (e.g. a megaphone to talk to survivors or a NiceHat) and scientific equipment. Each survivor has stats associated with various skills (killing, scavenging, leadership, research, construction), which improve with successful use or equipment. The game never has you run out of ammo, though.

* ''RedDeadRedemptionUndeadNightmare'' applies this to the original game's setting. Nobody's selling any goods now. You've got a horse on call, but that's it. If you're lucky, you'll get back enough bullets after a fight to replace what you spent ''on'' the fight. Bait? Bombs? Any other tools? Make them yourself.

* Played brutally straight in ''{{VideoGame/Mad Max}}'', where The Wasteland is naught but a blasted hellscape populated by raiders, lunatics and a handful of struggling hardasses in fortified strongholds. Note that this describes the ''entirety'' of the human race now: if you're not in service to one of the crazy and the strong or with the (relatively) sane living in a stronghold, you're dead. ''Everything'' is salvaged and cobbled-together from the long-lost remnants of our technology, and money has long-since been replaced by useful "scrap". Zigzagged in that while it's so bleak and merciless it almost seems like a ''{{VideoGame/Borderlands}}'' DLC instead of Earth, there are pristine "History Relics" that seem to indicate this collapse wasn't more than a generation or two ago.

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout4}}'' goes further with actual scavenging with the scrap mechanic. All that heavy, cheap VendorTrash you found everywhere in Fallout 3? Now you can break it down for parts and build your own weapons, tools, and buildings! [[MemeticMutation COLLECT ALL THE FANS]].

* The settings of ''{{Planetarian}}''. The viewpoint character's job is raiding depopulated ruins of cities to find [=MREs=], or just anything that is potentially valuable. It's not an easy job because the competition is cutthroat, and the ruins are patrolled by autonomous death-machines that are supposed to defend the cities, even if they are pointless because the cities are no longer inhabited AfterTheEnd.

* Another prime example is the setting of Rapture in the ''Franchise/BioShock'' series, where security bots are made from boat parts, turrets are chairs with guns duct taped on with motors to move them, and the grenade Launcher fires canned goods as explosives and it's loaded to a box filled with said canned goods.

*** Which is consistent with in-universe explanations of just ''how'' the world worked after the bombs fell. The knowledge wasn't lost---it was just sealed away on old Vault computers and in military bases like the one the Brotherhood of Steel got its start in. Which is unsurprising when you consider that New Vegas was helmed by a lot of the same people who did the first two Fallout games and is much more consistent thematically with them than is Fallout 3.

* This happened in ''EveOnline'''s backstory: When the wormhole connecting the New Eden and Earth collapsed, most of the colonies died off or regressed back to pre-industrial status due to the lack of self-sufficient infrastructure. It got better, but there's still plenty of LostTechnology to be found.

* The main protagonist of ''SepterraCore'' grew up on a world shell where the most common way to make a living was by scavenging scraps dropped from the higher, more affluent world shells.

* ''Phantom Dust'' has technology that looks like it was jumbled together from all sorts of tech. They seem to be set for equipment, though, so the few scavanging missions you go on usually has food, recipes, or medication as the goal.

* The [[http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/screenshots/x_rebirth_screen_027.jpg Lost Colony]] in ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' has an old Split Python (a destroyer from the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3]]'' trilogy) stripped for supplies, with power lines leading from the ship to a nearby installation. The shutdown of the [[PortalNetwork jumpgate network]] at the end of the Terran Conflict [[EndOfAnAge set off a dark age]] for [[LostColony many small colony worlds]]; DeVries, a cut-off Terran colony, suffered greatly at the end of the Terran Conflict, as it wasn't self-sufficient - tens of thousands starved, and many went [[SpacePirate insane and started looting]] other stations. When it's reconnected to the shattered remains of the gate network thirty years later, most of its ships are cobbled together from old United Space Command hulls, and the majority of the population live in the wrecked hulks of old Terran mining stations.

* ''IAmAlive'' is the most scavenger-y of them all. How many bullets do you usually find at a time? ONE.

* Another prime example is the setting of Rapture in the ''Franchise/BioShock'' series, where security bots are mad from boat parts, turrets are chairs with guns duct taped on with motors to move them, and the grenade Launcher fires canned goods as explosives and it's loaded to a box filled with said canned goods.

* "NEO Scavenger: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival RPG" is a new game basically going around surviving and resolving the main story via scavenging
* ''BattleTanx'': Nominally what the world is supposed to be. Yet somehow EVERYONE seems to be effective enough scavengers to all have tanks...

* Played with in ''Warzone2100''; salvaging pre-Collapse military technology is a key game mechanic and indirectly kicks off the plot, but when you find it, you have your engineers reverse-engineer it and put it back into production.

* Another prime example is the setting of [[{{Bioshock}} Rapture]] in the Bioshock series, where security bots are mad from boat parts, turrets are chairs with guns duct taped on with motors to move them, and the grenade Launcher fires canned goods as explosives and it's loaded to a box filled with said canned goods.

* The [[http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/screenshots/x_rebirth_screen_027.jpg Lost Colony]] in ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' shows a Split Python (a destroyer from the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3]]'' trilogy) stripped for supplies, with power lines leading from the ship to a nearby installation. The shutdown of the [[PortalNetwork jumpgate network]] at the end of the Terran Conflict [[EndOfAnAge set off a dark age]] for [[LostColony many small colony worlds]]; DeVries, a cut-off Terran colony, suffered greatly at the end of the Terran Conflict, as it wasn't self-sufficient - tens of thousands starved, and many went [[SpacePirate insane and started looting]] other stations. When it's reconnected to the shattered remains of the gate network thirty years later, most of its ships are cobbled together from old United Space Command hulls, and the majority of the population live in the wrecked hulks of old Terran mining stations.

* The [[[[http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/screenshots/x_rebirth_screen_027.jpg Lost Colony]] in ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' shows a Split Python (a destroyer from the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3]]'' trilogy) stripped for supplies, with power lines leading from the ship to a nearby installation. The shutdown of the [[PortalNetwork jumpgate network]] at the end of the Terran Conflict [[EndOfAnAge set off a dark age]] for [[LostColony many small colony worlds]]; DeVries, a cut-off Terran colony, suffered greatly at the end of the Terran Conflict, as it wasn't self-sufficient - tens of thousands starved, and many went [[SpacePirate insane and started looting]] other stations. When it's reconnected to the shattered remains of the gate network thirty years later, most of its ships are cobbled together from old United Space Command hulls, and the majority of the population live in the wrecked hulks of old Terran mining stations.

* A released ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' [[http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/screenshots/x_rebirth_screen_027.jpg screenshot]] shows a Split Python (a destroyer from the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3]]'' trilogy) stripped for supplies, with power lines leading from the ship to a nearby installation. The shutdown of the [[PortalNetwork jumpgate network]] at the end of the Terran Conflict [[EndOfAnAge may have set off a dark age]] for [[LostColony small colony worlds]].

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout New Vegas}}'' averts this to a certain extent, given how there are factories building new weapons and ammo, as well as gear. Much more new material is also produced and created than before- though scavenging is still a good way of finding weapons and cheap items to sell.

* ''VideoGame/{{Metro 2033}}'' is a PostApocalyptic CrapsackWorld taking place in the subway tunnels of Moscow AfterTheEnd, when a nuclear strike irradiates the surface almost beyond survivability and plunges everything into a nuclear winter. The few creatures and people who survived above-ground have become horrific mutants of some form or fashion. Most of the equipment found or seen is put together from bits and pieces of pre-war technology or repurposed altogether. This is most evident in the weaponry. While guns are obviously a necessity in the game's setting, all the better to hold off bandits or the occasional monstrosity that approaches a population center, the weapons that are there are generally cobbled together from pipes, plywood, and parts of proper guns. The game's basic double barreled shotgun and SMG equivalents are the guns that are most obviously built from scavenged pieces, as they are visibly and obviously constructed from pieces of old plumbing with receivers and stocks welded on.

* ''MassEffect'': The Krogan homeworld of Tuchanka is this -- essentially a planet-sized postapocalyptic junkheap whose inhabitants no longer care about ''making'' things but instead concern themselves with fighting over the few remaining scraps of technology.
** And the Krogan ''like'' it this way, because it [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy apparently proves how tough they are.]]

* A released ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' [[http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/screenshots/x_rebirth_screen_027.jpg screenshot]] shows a Split Python (a destroyer from the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3]]'' trilogy) stripped for supplies, with power lines leading from the ship to a nearby installation. The shutdown of the [[PortalNetwork jumpgate network]] at the end of the Terran Conflict may have set off a dark age for small colony worlds.