History ScavengerWorld / VideoGames

** ''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!
* In the spirit of post-apocalyptic worlds like ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', old [=CRPGs=] like "''VideoGame/{{Visions Of Aftermath The Boomtown}}''" and "Scavengers of the Mutant World" are good examples of old survival/scavenging games from the old PC era.

* ''{{VideoGame/Primordia}}'' is set in a world where an apocalyptic war destroyed humanity thousands of years ago. The world is now inhabited largely by the robots humanity left behind and it's been so long that humans are thought of by robots as mythological gods. The only way robots survive in this world is scavenging relics and power sources left over from the ancient times before humanity "ascended".

** The series is set in a post-apocalyptic ScavengerWorld in which getting an old car to run is a major quest. However, it's a world that's on its way to fill the holes: in the good endings of both ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' new cities are created, new governments established and it's implied that things are getting better. It's also only a partial example, as there's still groups like the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave who have the ability to manufacture energy weapons, fusion cells and other Old World technology.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' takes place on the opposite coast of America, and is much closer to this trope. Megaton for instance is a town with houses, furniture and outer walls made out of scrap metal from an old airport. It also affects gameplay too, as buildings that you've picked through for supplies stay empty. The armor used by Raiders and Super Mutants [[ImprovisedArmour are made from scavenged materials]], such as car parts and old tires. One piece of concept art for the Super Mutant Behemoth depicted it wielding a ''car engine'' attached to a chain as a makeshift flail.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout New Vegas}}'' is less of a scavenger world, as it carries on from the endings of ''1'' and ''2''.

** ''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!

* ''VideoGame/NEOScavenger: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival RPG'' is a game basically going around surviving and resolving the main story via scavenging

* ''VideoGame/{{Kenshi}}'' is basically what a super modern space-faring cyberpunk Japan would become if it suddenly collapsed due to a heavily implied AIIsACrapshoot. The whole world is littered with huge structures resembling starship hulls, jet engines the size of an entire town slowly rusting away for millennia and even crashed satellites creating a permanent sandstorm around them, and one of the sentient races of that world is a robot species that is implied to be many millenia old; however, after not one but at least ''two'' complete collapses of civilization, the world has basically regressed to a SchizoTech mockup of medieval Japan in a stark DeathWorld where even the most gentle herbivore animals can kill you with just a couple strikes.

* Played with in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'': Pandora very much looks and feels like a post-apocalyptic world where the only way to survive is by pillaging and salvaging gear and tech. However, it's actually not a post-apocalyptic world; it's more like a stark DeathWorld where settling is just impossible, and any attempt at settling there has resulted in mining outposts and research camps that were quickly abandoned after the megacorporations behind them realized it was an absolutely terrible. Starting with ''VideoGame/Borderlands3'', it becomes clear that the rest of the universe is way better off.

* Played with in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'': people on Pandora tend to scavenge and salvage gear and tech, but it's mainly because the planet was never truly settled in the first place. The closest it ever got to human civilization was a handful of mining outposts and research camps, which were quickly abandoned after the megacorporations behind them realized just how much of a DeathWorld Pandora really is. The rest of the universe is implied to be much better off.

* ''VideoGame/AtomRPG'': the nuclear post-war society, based mainly on the recycling and reuse of technologies prior to the 1986 nuclear war, the majority of the culture and society of the Soviet "Wastelands" is based on the Recovery, recycling and salvaging of pre-existing technologies , on recycling and reuse of pre-conflict atomic technologies, as all Soviet factories, industries and infrastructures, ended up destroyed and devastated after the nuclear war, depriving the society of a production or industrial base ...
** the technologies of the Soviet Wastelands, are a set of recycling of fragments of pre-existing technologies or more rudimentary and primitive technologies
** guns and weapons are either military firearms of the Soviet Army or the Warsaw Pact, old, rusted and worn out, or weapons of the Russian civil war, looted by museums after the atomic conflict, or old Soviet weapons of World War II, or rudimentary and artisan weapons, made of wood and metal pipes and pneumatic systems, many weapons of the "Wastelands", are Scavenged Weapons, houses and dwellings are made of shacks and sheets, while, as a means of transport, wagons drawn by oxen are widespread and rusted or "Recycled" motor vehicles for other purposes, the major source of energy and Coal and Wood, even if there are elements like the Radios ...

* This trope is invoked constantly in ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}''. Lesser technology, including [[HumongousMecha Gears]], is scavenged by previous civilizations that died out. [[spoiler:More advanced technology is scavenged from the ship and cargo that originally crash-landed and brought humanity to this planet 10,000 years prior, as seen in the intro movie.]] In fact, [[spoiler:all of the technology that had ever been used in the game comes from the Eldridge; the Galactic Federation that produced it was pretty high up on the Kardashev Scale.]]

* The ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series is set in a post-apocalyptic ScavengerWorld in which getting an old car to run is a major quest. However, it's a world that's on its way to fill the holes: in the good endings of both ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' new cities are created, new governments established and it's implied that things are going better. It should be noted that the scarcity that seems to have hit the automotive industry has apparently left the weaponry one untouched, at least judging by the ludicrous amounts of energy blasters, miniguns and assault rifles scattered all over the place. They did manage a HandWave with one character late in the game, a blacksmith who produces his own gunpowder and loads it into recycled shells to make new bullets for sale.

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout New Vegas}}'' is less of a scavenger world, 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.
*** 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.
*** In one quest, you're asked to ''shut down'' one such factory. Why? It's making bottle caps, the universally accepted currency in the Wasteland, and making more would cause inflation and crash the market!

* In the spirit of post-apocalyptic worlds like ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', old [=CRPGs=] like "''VideoGame/{{Visions Of Aftermath The Boomtown}}''" and "Scavengers of the Mutant World" are good examples of old survival/scavenging games from the old PC era

* ''VideoGame/{{Rimworld}}'' is set on a planet that appears to have been someone's LostColony. You can dig scrap metal and salvageable mechanical and electronic parts out of the ground, and there are usually at least a few abandoned buildings or lengths of wall still standing. Of course, if you manage to keep a settlement functional long enough to start researching new technologies then it eventually becomes a small-scale ApocalypseNot.

** ''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. FOR TEH SCREWS]].

* ''VideoGame/AtomRPG'': the nuclear post-war society, based mainly on the recycling and reuse of technologies prior to the 1986 nuclear war, the majority of the culture and society of the Soviet "Wastelands" is based on the Recovery, recycling and salvaging of pre-existing technologies , on recycling and reuse of pre-conflict atomic technologies, as all Soviet factories, industries and infrastructures, ended up destroyed and devastated after the nuclear war, depriving the company of a production or industrial base ...

* Played with in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'': people on Pandora tend to scavenge and salvage gear and tech, but it's implied that it's because Pandora never really had an industrial base to begin with, and most of the people on planet were convicts. Also, it's implied that this situation is fairly unique to Pandora; it's mentioned at least once that Pandora got supply drops from off-world.

* ''VideoGame/PhantomDust'' 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.

*** 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 Fallout 3 is.

* ''VideoGame/ThisWarOfMine'' is much like ''I Am Alive'', above. Set in an eastern-European city in the midst of a civil war (loosely based on the Bosnian War and the Siege of Sarajevo), you must lead several characters to improve their shelter to make it more livable while sending someone out scavenging every night for food and supplies.

* Played brutally straight in ''{{VideoGame/Mad Max|2015}}'', 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.

* [[ShiningCity Laurentia]] from ''[[NexusWar Nexus Clash]]'' ''was'' much more technologically advanced than modern Earth, but was bumped down to UrbanFantasy levels when the world ended and it was pulled into the Nexus. Too much of the really advanced Laurentian technology depended on human expertise that's no longer available AfterTheEnd, and most of the functioning exceptions are {{Magitek}} created by interaction with the powers of the Nexus.

*** In one quest, you're asked to ''shut down'' one such factory. Why? It's making bottle caps, the universally accepted currency in the Wasteland, and making more would cause inflation and crash the market.

*** In one quest, you're asked to ''shut down'' one such factory. Why? It's making bottle caps, the universally accepted currency in the Wasteland, and making more would crash the market.

* ''NEO Scavenger: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival RPG'' is a game basically going around surviving and resolving the main story via scavenging