Patchwork Map / Video Games

Donkey Kong Country

• Donkey Kong Country
  • Donkey Kong Country: Donkey Kong Island goes from a tropical rainforest, to a mine setting in the side of a grassy hill, to a temperate forest, to an ice capped mountain, to a polluted grassland, to a giant cave. This is actually justified, as most of the game involves you climbing up a very large mountain which will have similar changes in scenery in Real Life. It's pretty logical about the change too; the temperate forest is at a higher altitude (and thus colder) than the jungle, and the ice cap is higher still.
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: Once you reach Crocodile Isle, you go from a volcanic region, then to a swamp, then to an amusement park in the swamp, then to an ancient deciduous forest, then to a castle on an ice cap. Here it seems that the lower parts of the island, which connect with the sea, are all swamp except for the volcanoes, and the forest is much higher on the map than the swamp, thus following a similar logic to the original DKC.
    • The Lost World map plays this straight. It is mostly a jungle, but it also happens to contain both volcanoes and ice caves for no particular reason.
  • Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!: The Northern Kremisphere features stuff like a ski resort level in the sunny lake world, a deep water coral reef level in the mountain world and a whole jungle world in a game where the settings should be entirely based on temperate geography (with said world being at the northernmost point in the map even, ironically enough).
    • The hidden Krematoa world is perhaps the most extreme example of this, as it somehow features both a tropical jungle and a temperate forest inside a volcano.
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns: The game actually justifies the trope by having the first levels of each world being a transition between it and the previous world. For example, the first level of the beach world has Donkey Kong leaving the jungle from the first world, and the first level of the factory world has several rock formations in the background which belong to the previous cliff world.

The Elder Scrolls

• The Elder Scrolls series downplays the trope on a continental scale with Tamriel, the continent where every game in the series has been set to date. Oddities do exist, but they are less extreme than most instances of this trope. A number can also be explained by geography working in a similar fashion to the real world. For reference, see this map of Tamriel◊. To note, broken down alphabetically by province:
  • Black Marsh, also known as "Argonia", is a dense swampland and the homeland of the Lizard Folk Argonians. To non-Argonians, it is also an example of The Savage South and Swamps Are Evil. Hot, humid, and wet, it is riddled with diseases which plague non-Argonians. One caveat for Black Marsh is that it is supposedly one of the "twelve worlds of creation" destroyed by Padomay during the act of creation. During the Dawn Era, Anu assembled the pieces of these "shattered worlds" into one: Nirn. Black Marsh is believed to be one of these pieces, originally part of the home world of the Hist, sentient trees who still exist in Black Marsh and who are worshiped by the Argonians.
  • Cyrodiil is the central province of Tamriel, base of the various Cyrodiilic Empires throughout history, and homeland of the Imperials. It has a generally temperate climate which varies along the borders to match those of the bordering provinces (for example, the north is colder and mountainous similar to Skyrim, while the southeast is warmer and marshy like Black Marsh). According to the lore, this was not always the case, however. Cyrodiil is said to have once been a tropical jungle, but the Deity of Human Origin Talos performed a Cosmic Retcon upon ascending to godhood to make it more temperate in honor of the Imperial Legions who served him so well in mortal life as Tiber Septim. As seen in The Elder Scrolls Online, a prequel to the main series, this change was retroactive as well.
  • Elsweyr is the mostly desert homeland of the Cat Folk Khajiit. The southern regions are more fertile, and home to Elsweyr's many Moon Sugar plantations. Its desert nature is in stark contrast to the provinces bordering it.
  • Hammerfell is another primarily desert region, homeland of the Redguards, surrounded by much wetter and cooler climes in the provinces surrounding it.
  • High Rock is a coastal province with inland mountains, home to the Bretons. It has a culture based on medieval Britain and France, with elements of Renaissance Italy as well, and these influences reflect in its climate as well. Despite much of it being on the same latitude as snowy Skyrim, High Rock has a much more temperate climate, though this can be justified by its proximity to warmer coastal waters as well as the inland mountains serving as a barrier to the cold winds of Skyrim.
  • Much of Morrowind, homeland of the Dunmer (Dark Elves) is an alien volcanic desert region completely distinct from the rest of the continent. This is generally justified due to the presence of Red Mountain, the massive volcano of the Vvardenfell island. Additionally, the border with Cyrodiil is stated to be more temperate while the southern regions which border Black Marsh are similarly swampy and hot.
    • The island of Solstheim, which lies to the north between Morrowind and Skyrim, is a largely barren and mostly frozen-over rock inhabited for thousands of years by only the Skaal people. After Ebony was discovered there, the Empire set up a legion fort and the mining colony of Raven Rock in the late 3rd Era. The Ebony soon dried up, leaving it to be nearly abandoned once again. Following Red Mountain's eruption during the Red Year, Solstheim's southern coast was blasted with ash, making it very similar to Morrowind. Vvardenfell's flora and fauna were able to make a successful migration there.
  • Skyrim is the snowy, mountainous northernmost province and is the homeland of the viking-inspired Nords. Very much a Grim Up North region to non-Nords, it goes from boreal forests and icy peaks in the south to tundra to a frozen ice-choked northern sea coast. Similar coastal latitudes in High Rock and Morrowind are not nearly as icy. (Though, as mentioned, these borders include mountain ranges which block Skyrim's icy winds, arguably justifying it.)
  • The Summerset Isles are a tropical archipelago to the southwest of mainland Tamriel, and are the homeland of the Altmer (High Elves). With Tamriel following the North Is Cold, South Is Hot philosophy, their climate is rather justified.
  • Valenwood is a Lost Woods themed province enveloped by dense old-growth forests, and is homeland of the Bosmer (Wood Elves). Valenwood's forest climate makes it an odd fit directly to the west of the deserts of Elsweyr.

Final Fantasy

• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy X puts the Macalania Forest next to the eternally frozen Lake Macalania. While that could be explained by the presence of Shiva (the aeon of ice) in the latter, it wouldn't explain how the lake stays frozen after the aeons disappear. Another example is the Calm Lands, a lush green plain right below the snowcapped Mt. Gagazet.
  • Final Fantasy XII has the Phon Coast — a beach map with a very obvious ocean — which is somehow at the top of a mountain. There's also Golmore Jungle next to the frozen Feywood. Most of this can be explained by the Mist, according to background information. The concentration of Mist in a certain area significantly affects its climate, though that still doesn't explain the beach at the top of a mountain.
  • Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was an even greater offender; the world is divided into four climate zones of identical size, one representing each of the four classical elements, by a pair of planet-spanning mountain ranges that run directly along the equator and the prime meridian.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance even lets you make up your own map by placing different regions on the map. The sequel on the other hand does a surprisingly good job at averting it.
  • Final Fantasy XIV attempted to avert the trope back in its original release, but after the game was remade, a lot of areas were condensed for the sake of travel convenience, thus you get situations like, as of the Stormblood patch cycle, a forest area directly between two different desert regions. However, the developers did try to make the zone transitions somewhat seamless by having the area next to the zone border being a mix of two zones. For example, Eastern Thanalan is a mostly dry and arid zone, but to the far east of the map, there's some grass and trees growing in a few places and it becomes more dense when you approach the zone border that leads into the South Shroud, which is a forest region. Looking at the world map implies that the distance between each zone may be many miles apart, but the player will never actually walk that much since they'll appear in the next zone via loading screen. There are also applications to the effect of A Wizard Did It for more obviously-jarring transitions - Coerthas was originally temperate, mountainous grassland in the original patch cycle, but after the fall of Dalamud, its weather was screwed up, leading it to be reworked into an eternally snowy region - right next to the still-temperate forelands and hinterlands of Dravania introduced with Heavensward.

The Legend of Zelda

• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Extremely evident in Majora's Mask. The world is cleanly divided into four totally different environments (swamp, snow mountain, beach and desertic canyon). A Giant Did It. Four Giants, to be exact.
  • Spirit Tracks does much the same, but partly averts it with the snow realm by having it gradually change from "snow everywhere" to "it looks sort of cold" as you get close to the border.
  • Whoever designs the map for the Zelda games clearly has no idea how rivers work. They do normally start high and end low, which is better than a lot of examples on this page, but they do all kinds of crazy stuff on the way. The worst offender is probably Twilight Princess, where two rivers cross.
  • Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess have the lush-lake-near-a-desert thing just as bad, if not worse.
    • This in OoT may be somewhat justified in that Zora River (whose water is at least vaguely implied to be somewhat magical in some way, or at least magically generated) empties into Lake Hylia, which is right next to Gerudo Desert. However, in both games the two are separated by what look to be mountains. This would be justified if Lake Hylia would be desert if not for the water emptying into it.
    • A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds show the same lake near the same desert, with a field (steppes?) and mountains or hills separating them. Again, justified if Lake Hylia and the river leading to it are all that's keeping the rest of the region from desertification.
  • Four Swords Adventures. A desert and snowy region are right next door. This is justified in that the snowy region has been in an endless winter due to the Tower of Winds vanishing. The ending even shows what it looks like after thawing out.
  • Link's Awakening also has some crazy map parts. Most of the island is single-biome woods and mountains, but some levels feature volcanic activity that's nowhere else on the map. Also a mini desert next to a swamp and the friggin ocean. Justified, since the whole island is just a dream of the Wind Fish.
  • Breath of the Wild does much to justify the usage of this trope — the icy regions of Hyrule are all high in altitude and thus have a lower temperature. The desert is separated from the rest of Hyrule by tall mountains and plateaus, meaning it can exist in (relative) proximity to the more temperate regions elsewhere. And all the differing air pressures from everywhere else would indeed result in the rainforest being where it is.

Pokémon

• Pokémon has this with practically every new region. This one is partially justified in that it's implied the Pokémon themselves influence the enviroments around them, especially in regards to Legendary Pokémon.
  • The Pokémon Gold and Silver remakes provide a near-literal example of this trope. In HeartGold and SoulSilver, you can customize the Safari Zone, allowing you to put any terrain near any other, theoretically allowing fields next to deserts and lakes next to savannahs, etc.
  • Unova, the setting of Gen V, has Route 4, which is a desert surrounded by forests and a huge city, with the transitioning area being about as long as a building. This is especially egregious because Unova is otherwise a dead ringer for (a strangely underdeveloped version of) the New York City metropolitan.
  • There are other examples throughout the series. For example, in Sinnoh (where the fourth generation takes place), a snowy city is fairly close to a tropical island, and in Hoenn (third generation) there is a rainy route near a desert route.
  • The biomes in Kalos (sixth generation), after the central Kalos region, change practically every route. After entering west Kalos onto Muraille Coast (cliffside with beach at the bottom), go on a detour through Route 9/Spikes Passage (rocky cliffs). Menhir Trail turns into simple grassland before going into Miroir Way, a mountain trail that provides the entrance through Reflection Cave to reach an oceanside city. Navigate the oceanside Fourrage Road, which provides the entrance to the open-ocean Azure Bay, and go through the next city and you'll reach the red-rock Lumiose Badlands. Pass through Lumiose City and you'll drudge through the marshy Laverre Nature Trail. One city later and you're in the lower-mountain trails of Brun Way and Mélancolie Path. Next city leads to the icy mountain containing Frost Cavern and the snow-covered Mamoswine Road. The next two routes are mountain valleys before reaching the snow-covered Snowbelle City (justified because the local Gym is putting out lots of cold air) that has a detour to the Winding Woods forest area. The final major route ends in a simple mountain area right before the rugged Victory Road. Phew!
  • In both the anime and the FireRed/LeafGreen games, there are tropical archipelagos not too far south of the icy Seafoam Islands (or at least, they're implied to be icy, given that that's the only place in Kanto where a lot of Ice-type Pokémon, including Articuno, are found. In Pokémon games in general, the "icy cave/island" which forms the Ice-types' lair tends to come out of pretty much nowhere).
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon finally breaks the trend with the tropical Alola region (which is based on Hawai'i), which has a nearly completely uniform climate. The closest it gets to this trope is Ula'ula Island, which puts both the desert and the ice area right next to Tapu Village. Even then, the ice area is Pokémon's version of Mauna Kea, meaning that it's largely cold due to its altitude.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has the most extreme and (arguably) justified case of this in The Indigo Disk expansion. The Terarium in Blueberry Academy consists of Savannah, Costal, Canyon and Polar biomes all next to each other. The justification is that it is an artificial environment that is controlled via technology, the unjustified part is that all four exist in the same location with a high-tech fence separating them into equal quarters with no spill over.

Unsorted examples:

• Maps in ARK: Survival Evolved can come across this way because they "need" to represent all the biomes that the dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals live in. The original map, The Island, is the straightest example by virtue of its snow biome in the northwest of the map—it sharply transitions into beach or temperate/tropical forest, and sometimes diving into the ocean off its northern edge shows that it's warmer in the water! There's also the redwood forests in the center of the island, which only exist on that part of island between a bunch of rivers, and everything around it is either tropical jungle or a swamp which also quickly transitions into a tropical jungle. The Center and Valguero maps similarly have many sharp biome transitions; Ragnarok is slightly better in part because the snow biome is restricted to the extreme altitudes of the map and the volcano biome is justified as being the result of recent, ongoing eruptions, but the sudden transition from forest to desert in the southeastern part of the map, or from temperate beaches to a savannah in the southwest, is less understandable.
• The island in Backyard Football 2006.
• Done so blatantly in Banjo-Tooie that it almost counts as a lampshading. When Banjo rises to Cloud Cuckoo Land, we see the Isle O' Hags laid out below, with all the disparate levels right next to each other — most significantly the blazing volcano and freezing mountain of Hailfire Peaks.
• Zig-Zagged Trope in The Battle For Wesnoth. Campaign maps will try to keep the terrain relatively sane (although the varying scale of the maps means that there will sometimes be deserts right next to snowfields), but multiplayer skirmish maps have to be a wild patchwork for the sake of balance, since different units have varying movement and defense ratings on different terrain types.
• Morning Land in Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. It has the wooded Forest Village, next to the beach/oceanic like Pirate Island, which in turn is right next to the volcanous Dino Mountain, which is next to Blizzard Castle (guess). And in the middle, with all the others surrounding it, is Sand Ruin! Circus Park and Giant Palace don't count, seeing as the former isn't in any particular biome, and the latter is in the sky.
• Brütal Legend has about half a mile and a deep chasm between icy mountains and sweltering jungle. Most of the other transitions are better, though.
• Bug Fables tries to justify this. While the game is set in a single backyard, that backyard contains a Forest of Perpetual Autumn, a desert, a jungle, a swamp, a "sea" with a tropical island, and a foggy wasteland. Most of these have an explanation: The autumn forest is explicitely set in a permanent autumn by Venus' powers, the "sea" is just a large puddle that appears to be a sea because the protagonists are bug-sized, and the jungle and swamp are really just patches of overgrown grass. It is implied that the foggy wasteland is the way it is due to the smog from the Termites' city and magic from an exceptionally large crystal that landed there ages ago. The desert in the middle is actually a sandbox, but for some reason it is treated like a real desert, from the climate suddenly being hot around there, to cacti growing out of the sand, to pits of quicksand being in a few spots.
• Bugsnax has Snaktooth Island, which has a deciduous forest, a snowy alpine region, a desert, and a tropical beach, all within walking distance from the main town. Possibly justified, given that it's an Eldritch Location.
• The lower areas of Paradise City in Burnout Paradise are tropical and resemble Florida, then there's the geologically implausible California-style mountains with a parody of the Hollywood sign, and temperate forests/vegetation.
• Calico has a Forest of Perpetual Autumn, a town with cherry trees in full bloom, and snowy mountains, all within easy walking distance of each other. One can easy stand on top of a tall mountain and see four biomes at once!
• Civilization IV has a map option called "fantasy world" where the terrain types are strewn about randomly. Any given tile is as likely to contain tundra as forest, desert, etc.
• A common complaint about the world in Dark Souls 2. While the world of the previous game was very cohesive to the point that you could frequently spot other locations off in the distance, and extreme changes in climate had proper justifications (such as the fire area being hidden deep, deep underground, and the ice area being its own isolated world inside of a magic painting,) the world of 2 had no such cohesion. You could go from the poisonous Harvest Valley up Earthen Peak, an isolated windmill at the end of the valley, and from near the top ride an elevator further up to suddenly find yourself at Iron Keep, another series of ruins inside a massive lake of lava, or from Aldia's Keep up another elevator and end up at the Dragon Aerie, a castle on top of a series of massive rock pillars with dragons flying all around them, that should be easily visible from multiple locations but isn't. Drangleic Castle can be seen from multiple locations, but even then when you approach the tunnel leading to Dranglec Castle it's just off to the left of the tunnel, and after travelling in a straight line through the tunnel suddenly it's way off to the right instead.
• Averted in Diablo II, where there's a specific "travel gap" between the different Acts — an (unseen and assumed) caravan takes you from the temperate Rogues camp to the desert of Lut Gholein, then an unseen boat takes you from the desert to the jungle of Kurast, then the end of that Act a magical portal directly to Hell is opened. If you have the LoD expansion, a helpful angel teleports you directly from Hell to the snowy mountains for the fifth Act.
• Dragon Quest VII has a similar zoo, although you don't customize it; you find the plans for each biome.
• Also averted by Dwarf Fortress, which pays attention to things like rain shadows and biomes when generating worlds. Generating a new world can take about a quarter of an hour, depending on the size of the world and the number of potential worlds rejected for not having the right terrain distribution. On the other hand, the world generation is very powerful and flexible and you can set parameters that create worlds with glacier, sand desert, swamp, and mountain range all rubbing shoulders. Regions in half the map bursts into flames as soon as the game starts and the other half freezes every living thing dead within a minute are statistically uncommon (you really do have to make the effort) but not otherwise unusual. However, bugs in some versions can cause unusually powerful fluctuations in water temperatures.
  • "Fluctuations" means creatures spontaneously melting on contact with water, if you weren't aware.
  • Also, the average temperature is set for each section, often leading to perfectly square borders were there is and is not snow, rain, etc.
• The setting of Enchanted Scepters has a jungle, a desert, an ocean, a forest, a volcano, an Egyptian sphinx, a Mayan temple, and some Easter Island heads, all within walking distance.
• Justified in Endless Frontier which ends with five different worlds getting mixed together in a fairly haphazard way. Of course, Nature is soon to start asserting itself, so...
• Epic Battle Fantasy: Since the series added overworlds starting in 3, the maps tend to be made of various different biomes all within walking distance of each other. By game:
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 3: The icy Glacier Valley is right-between the desert Kitten Kingdom Ruins and the tropical beach of Rock Lake. The rest of the game's progression otherwise makes some sense (the Lethal Lava Land is said to be that way due to Akron and it borders the desert, and the forest bordering the beach is reasonable enough).
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 4 downplays this. The map has a jungle, snowy village, and desert ruins all co-existing, but they are on three different ends and at least have a temperate forest in the middle acting as something of a border.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 5: On the west end of the map, the starting jungle area and Frozen Valley are separated only by a single river. Supernatural explanations do not really help: Frozen Valley used to have even more ice, with the game's events warming it up.
• Fe at least partially averts this, with all of the biomes having logical transitions between one another; e.g. a river flowing downhill from the mountains to the sea, a backwater swamp, a rain-shadowed desert valley, and glaciers at high altitudes.
• Fire Emblem (well, the three GBA games at least) does this slightly differently, where forest and other terrain types are spread out in a ridiculously random way. Easily observed in Fire Emblem: Awakening. It isn't as bad as most examples, but Ylisse has a normal grassy plains climate, yet the only location to the east of Ylisstol, the capital, is a Desert Oasis. Which implies it's part of a larger desert. Which would be odd, considering it's on a peninsula. Looking at the map closely even shows a forest of trees along the path that just kind of end when you get there. Plegia is also pretty jarring when you pay attention. There's water on the west, a great wall on the north that separates it from Regna Ferox which appears to be perpetually snowy once you get over the wall, and the lush greenery of Ylisse on the east, and yet Plegia itself is nothing but desert wastelands, except for the southernmost part: a large village surrounded on all sides by extremely thick forest. Regna Ferox itself is perpetually snowy, which makes sense since it's the northernmost part of the continent, suddenly doesn't appear to be cold at all when you reach Port Ferox which is still on the same latitude. Possibly justified as you canonically only go to Port Ferox once, so it may just have been during warmer times. However, once you reach Valm, it's extremely lush and green all over, even the parts with higher latitude than Regna Ferox.
• Fossil Fighters takes place entirely on one smallish island and a couple of tiny ones around it. Yet, the selection of locales include Slippy-Slidey Ice World, Lethal Lava Land, Green Hill Zone, Build Like an Egyptian, Death Mountain, Minecart Madness, The Lost Woods and Shifting Sand Land, all clustered closely around a lust lagoon with a Gangplank Galleon at the bottom. The convection alone should cause a permanent storm-cell over the island, and yet, it never even rains anywhere on the island. Despite occasional weather-reports to the contrary.
• An extreme example in the graphic chat/MMO, Furcadia, users can make their own maps (called dreams) that other users can explore, chat, and RP on. Quite a few users have made dreams based on the Warrior Cats series by Erin Hunter. In the books, the four clans of wild cats live in slightly different territories, such as one clan lives in moorland while another lives in a forest. In these fan-made dreams, however, the differences in the territories tend to be very drastic. It is not at all uncommon to find a Warriors dream with a barren desert, murky swamp, snowy tundra, and lush forest all sitting right next to each other with little or no transition in between, made even more drastic by the fact that the area of the dream would probably wind up being only 15 square miles or so in real life.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas somehow manages to get around this one by placing the desert and the forest in different land masses. Not surprising, since it's based on California (notice the redwoods?) and Arizona, which really do look like that.
• Halo:
  • Halo 3 not only has jungle with Misplaced Vegetation and savanna right next to each other, but Mt. Kilimanjaro is way too close to the Tsavo/Mombasa area.
  • Forerunner installations like the titular Halos are like this too, but it's justified by them being artificial worlds deliberately designed to have their systems to enforce this trope.
• Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising takes place entirely on an island chicane (artificial archipelago) located somewhere around New Zealand. The environment varies from hot to frozen over. Justified by the chicane undergoing rapid, hostile (un)terraformation. Especially visible in the last mission.
• theHunter Classic: hunting reserves are situated on archipelago with various biomes from Arctic to Australian desert & rainforest
• Impossible Creatures is set on an island chain called Isla Variatas which manages to contain polar, forested and desert islands.
• Inazuma Eleven GO has a desert area sandwiched between an icy tundra area to its east and a beach/water area to its west. Justified in that they were man-made (the nearby windy valley area even has gigantic fans to create the wind), complete with walls separating them.
• Jak and Daxter
  • Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy: There are such oddities as a beach, volcanic fissure and jungle next to each other, a lava pit opening onto a lush green mountain pass, and (most perplexing of all) a snowcapped mountain directly above a massive volcanic caldera.
  • Averted in Jak II: Renegade and Jak 3, where most of the environment is a barren wasteland mixed with boreal forests and snow-capped mountains, to obviously fit the post apocalyptic appeal. Jak 3 takes this further with most of the game being a massive desert. Ironically enough, the Woodlands in Jak 2 are patched in between the mountains and desert.
  • Jak X: Combat Racing includes three large cities (Haven, Spargus and Kras) and the Icelands all in close proximity. There are also jungle, deep desert, and tropical island venues, adding to the patchworkiness.
• Just Cause 2 has a greatly varied environment, consisting of arid deserts, snowcapped mountains, lush jungles, open ocean, and the occasional bit of urban sprawl... all contained within a tropical island cluster◊ slightly smaller than Oahu.
• King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! takes place in the land of Serenia, which is mostly forest, but it is bordered by a hot desert to the west and a cold mountain range to the east. Sort of. The mountain is not on top of the forest; it's stated the screen's a few hours later. It's still implausible, but not quite bordered.
• Kirby's Epic Yarn does this literally. Patch Land is split into several distinct areas, each with its own unique ecosystem and no transitional regions whatsoever.
• The Adventure Worlds in LEGO Dimensions take the worlds of their source materials and size them down to the size of a large island, which in some cases results in this:
  • The LEGO Movie world has Bricksburg, The Old West, Middle Zealand, and an unnamed lava-filled area all on the same landmass (though they were adjacent to each other in the original movie as well).
  • The Midway Arcade world features locations based on several old arcade games, including Rampage, Defender, Gauntlet, Marble Madness, and Super Sprint all within walking distance.
  • The Doctor Who world is especially notorious about this, having both the 19th and 21st Century versions of London, Mars, Telos, Trenzalore, and Skaro all on one landmass.
• The hub world in LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 is Chronopolis, a hodgepodge of spatio-temporally displaced areas from across Earth and even beyond. You have Medieval England next to Manhattan 2099, Xandar sandwiched between Asgard and the Old West, Lemuria off the coast of Manhattan, and that isn't even the half of it.
• Averted in Lord of the Rings Online here; but when someone else has already done the dirty work, it's a bit easier to pull off.
• Notably averted in Mabinogi. Regions are laid out in a relatively realistic manner. eg. The region of Rano is divided into roughly equal parts; the rolling prairie land of Maiz Plains, the scrubland of Muyu Desert, and the lush, verdant Karu Forest, sitting side by side in that order. However, each region is separated from its neighbor by a high, almost impassible mountain range that effectively shadows the desert from the moisture laden air to either side of it. The only notable exception is the deserts of Connus; but this is justified by the in-game backstory as the result of a magical catastrophe resulting from a great war, which also resulted in the frozen wasteland of Physis.
• The Mario & Luigi series generally isn't terrible about this, as the first three games all take place in kingdoms that are presumably wide enough to encompass a wide variety of biomes. There are some exceptions, though; Superstar Saga places the icy Joke's End in the middle of an otherwise fairly temperate ocean, and Dream Team manages to cram plains, jungle, volcano, desert, and beach environments onto one island. Bowser's Inside Story has a variant of this in that the areas don't really seem to connect to each other, they just go from one biome to another when you cross an invisible line.
• Metroid:
  • Metroid Prime had swamps, snow, and volcanoes all within a few minutes of each other on Tallon IV, but the speed of the elevators probably means they were fairly far apart. The recent impact of the Phazon meteorite (aka the Leviathan), coupled with Phazon radiation, probably have a role in all of this.
  • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was similar in this regard for Aether, and unlike with Tallon IV it was explicitly because of the effects of the Phazon meteorite impact. The Agon Wastes used to be lush green farmland, while the Torvus Bog was once a forest. In fact, it's implied that the whole section of Aether that Samus explores in the game was a fairly temperate biome overall before the impact threw the environment into chaos.
  • Justified in Metroid Fusion, as the game takes place on a biological research vessel, and the various environments have been artificially created to support creatures that need a watery area or a fiery area.
• Zig-zagged in Minecraft:
  • Originally, the game tried to simulate biomes according to wetness and temperature; therefore, a change in either of them would mean a change of biome. This system was eventually abolished, and afterwards you could walk in rapid succession from a temperate forest, to a tundra, to a sandy desert, to a tropical rainforest. Without skipping a beat. The Beta 1.8 update changed that once more by making biomes significantly bigger, reducing the starkness of the contrasts, though you can see a desert that shares close boundaries with a very large, temperate forest and ocean. The Large Biomes world option obviously makes these borders even less obvious/common.
  • Update 1.7, known in the fandom as the Update that Changed the World, severely overhauled the biome generation system, with the aversion of this trope being one of the end results. Biomes are put into one four main categories: snowy (self-explanatory), cold (mountains, conifer forests), lush (other forests, prairies, swamps, jungles), and dry/warm (deserts, savannahs, badlands). Biomes are only placed next to biomes from their same category or an adjacent one, except oceans, which belong to none of these groups and can appear next to any biome. In essence, this means that biomes tend to be placed next to biomes you'd expect them to in real life, although the system isn't foolproof — you can still find a lush jungle next to a snowless taiga forest, for instance. Since this system doesn't account for precipitation, there's also nothing stopping a swamp or jungle from appearing right next to a barren, lifeless desert.
  • This trope still persists on a large scale. The location of the biomes is still randomly generated, and there is no equivalent in Minecraft's Flat World to arctic circles or an equator. As such, a typical Minecraft world ends up looking like a stretch of chiefly temperate environments with areas of arctic cold and tropical heat randomly scattered around everywhere.
• Monster Hunter: World: While the game's various settings (the Ancient Forest, the Wildspire Wastes, the Coral Highlands, the Rotten Vale, Elder's Recess, and Hoarfrost Reach) are distant enough to not be obvious, Iceborne introduces the Guiding Lands, a single zone that contains elements of all the other levels slapped together, which the Research Commission notes is highly unusual.
• Mount & Blade is another offender: there are no less than seven distinct biomes (tundra, steppes, desert, heavy mountain, temperate forest, coastal, plains) all within casual travel distance of each other. You can start in a corner of the desert and be shivering on the deep tundra in less than a day, but only after having traversed either the steppes or the low plains.
• Unavoidable in NationStates. You can make your nation's map as realistic as you like, but you can't really do anything about what the nations next to you do.
• The world map◊ of New Super Mario Bros. U. For example, it suddenly cuts from plains to desert, then it leads up to a tundra with nothing in between.
• Very common in most games by Nifflas. The geography tends to change halfway through a screen, indicating a new area.
• The continent in Octopath Traveler divided into eight regions, with each region having its own climate. This has some interesting placements like how the wintery Frostlands in the north being adjacent to the tropical jungle-like Woodlands. Or the desert Sunland being adjacent to the lush forest Riverlands. Or the Coastlands beaches immediately bordering the mountainous Highlands.
• Octopath Traveler II also has its world map divided into eight regions with different climates, four on each continent. It also has the lush forest region Leaflands bordering the Hinoeuma desert, which also borders the Harborlands beaches. On the eastern continent, the northmost region is the snowy Winterlands. But on the western continent, on the same latitude, you instead have the Wild West equivalent with no trace of snow.
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps is ostensibly set in a temperate forest, but the Luma Pools region is blatantly tropical. The placement of the icy Baur's Reach and the Windswept Wastes desert is at least partially justified by the former's high altitude and the latter being set inland beyond a mountain range, in addition to The Corruption's influence on their climates.
• OutRun 2's course grid is a mashup of disparate locales from around the world, such as Lake Geneva, Windsor Castle, the Black Forest, Transylvania, the Pyramids of Giza, Paris, etc. all within miles of each other.
• In Overcooked!, the maps you travel across have bits of ocean next to bits of desert, with bits of an alien planet right next door.
• Pac-Man World 2. Here we have the Forest (actually a meadow) in the east, the Tree Tops rainforest in the south, the icy Snow Mountain in the west, and the volcano in the northeast.
• Lampshaded in Paper Mario 64. While two separate areas being next to each other and having different climates isn't rare, there's one part of the game where a forest borders a gulch, and the sky is lit according to which side of a gate you're on. Goombario's description mentions how it's amazing that the scenery can flip between the two so quickly.
• Averted in Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom. The starting "world" is actually one of seven isolated pods of a generation ship. Most seem to be temperate, with varying amounts of grassland, forests, rivers, and lakes, but some have unusual climates, such as an ice world and a desert world. An early first generation quest suggests the ship's weather control system regulates the climes.
• Pikmin 2: The four areas appear to be close to each other on the world map, but each one is themed after a different season. This means that the snow-covered Valley of Repose is near by the warm and sunny Perplexing Pool and the Forest of Perpetual Autumn Wistful Wild. Pikmin 3 avoids this by having its world map show that its areas are a great distance away from each other and the first game has a less drastic change in climate between its areas.
• In Potion Permit, Moonbury Island has Meadow Range to the east, Glaze Iceberg directly north of it, and the Barren Wasteland directly south of the Range.
• Ragnarok Online suffers quite a bit from this; Ragnarok Wisdom comments on it.
• In RuneScape the border between desert and grassy fields is a fence, both from the northern and western sides. The western border eventually turns into a river and a sea. The eastern border is a river and a sea all along, and across the river from the northern part of the desert, both to the east and the west, lie separate swamps. Another swamp lies in the corner of the desert, separated from it by a plateau from two sides and bordering with the sea from two other.
  • Isn't helped by that fact that a bright and sunny, almost Mediterranean fishing village (Catherby) is positioned right next to a snow-drenched arctic-esque craggy hill. Might be justified by the altitude, though — if the world wasn't compressed for player convenience (to the point of two longitudinal or latitudinal minutes being the minimum distance a player can travel, doing so in 0.6 seconds at walking pace), the White Wolf Mountain would possibly be quite high and capable of being cold. Ice Mountain is located at the same latitude.
    • Additionally, the very northern reaches of the world are so cold, the player takes all-stat damage. The Ghorrock fortress is located even further north. Squeeze past an ice block into the Wilderness, and without changing latitude, you'll reach a scorched land with surface lava features in seconds. At least the Wilderness has some justification. It is the site where a Fantastic Nuke went off, and it apparently is supposed to be much lower elevation than the areas to the immediate west of it, which are mountains and plateaus.
• The world of Scribblenauts Unlimited is a blatant example, having several biomes right next to each other within walking distance (putting aside why you would ever need to walk in a Scribblenauts game). This isn't just an approximation for convenience of the map, either, nor is there any gradual transfer in unseen areas between the locations; at several points in the far right end of the map, you can see the geography suddenly turn from that of one region to another. This includes a swamp cutting into plains, which leads to a tundra, which leads to canyons, which has its neighboring desert end at a seemingly tropical beach.
• Averted somewhat by Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, partly because it has less diverse terrain than its sister Civilization games, and so could put more work into the distinctions it did make. Rain shadows do exist, and it's even possible to create them on purpose by raising terrain. However, while one would expect the fertile Monsoon Jungle to be rainy, it can actually be placed in arbitrarily dry place by the map generator; same with the Great Dunes, which can end up wetter than the Jungle.
• Simon the Sorcerer. You have a temperate forest right next to a swamp right next to some icy mountains, and so on, and so on; in its defense, it IS a magical world.
• Played straight (presumably for humorous effect) in the "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game" level of The Simpsons Game. The main hub of the level is a forested area, which leads directly (read: you open a door and you're right there) into a lava area, an ice area, and a sky area. Lisa actually questions how the lava area and the ice area can be so close together.
• Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Angel Island in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure has a tropical rainforest, a mountain range covered in snow and ice, a temperate forest, a desert, and a volcanic mountain range all contained on the same island.
  • The Lost Hex in Sonic Lost World, made up of random groupings of hexagonal pieces housing different biomes.
• Justified as a major plot point of Suikoden Tierkreis, starting from the opening scenes where a forest mysteriously appears near your village. Sometime later, a massive savanna pops into existence in the middle of a snow-covered mountain range.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS: The Smash Run area has the apparent goal of putting together as many typical Video Game Settings as it can into one floating island. The surface area alone, from left to right, has a forest, plains, desert, and snowy grounds all within walking distance of each other. Though this does help with quickly identifying where on the map you are, since it would be far more confusing even with the minimap if all locations looked alike.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: The World of Light is literally formed out of various video game settings haphazardly mashed together without regard for the natural consequences. As a result, we get a frozen snowy mountain, a poisonous forest, a flaming lava-filled castle, a Zapfish-powered power plant, and even outer space, all within short walking distance of a Hub City. In this case it's somewhat justified, as the World of Light is a Merged Reality made up of what was left over after Galeem blew up the universe.
• Somewhat deconstructed in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Since the two worlds merged together, the climates have gone insane. Deserts are freezing over and the north pole is melting.
• Played perfectly straight in Terraria, in which the biomes are randomly generated and divided from one another upon world generation. Like the page image, you can go straight from a frozen tundra into a desert. The only consistency is that the Snow and Jungle biomes are never next to each other depending on which side of the world the Dungeon is generated in. The Snow biome will always be in the direction of the Dungeon and the Jungle is located in the opposite direction from the center spawn point.
• In Theta vs Pi 7 this is lampshaded with "The Land of Confusing Weather".
• Averted in Torchlight II. An Embercraft takes you to the Ossean Wastes of Act II then Grunnheim of Act III, Act IV simply involves you travelling underground into a similarly hellish environment. Though Act I does feature snow just North of rain frequented badlands but it's more due to the fact you travel far up a mountain. The loading screen maps also show where each of these act areas are in relation to each other (including the burning town of Torchlight) but there's no figure of distance, meaning it could be averted or played straight depending on the scale of the map.
• An Untitled Story has its entire world compressed into few hundred screens. As such, there's a snowfield that borders with a sunny town and a grassy (and moonlit) hill without any barriers, or a lava covered factory that borders directly with a water grotto, a grassy plain from above and a tree.
• Justified in A Valley Without Wind, where a recent cataclysm has shattered reality and made continents out of "time shards" from different times and places at complete random, so it's entirely possible to have a region of deep Ice Age adjacent to some Lava Flats. Also mentioned are powerful and very hostile forces holding the world together this way; putting one foot across the border of a time shard is fatal (unless you're a Glyphbearer).
• The enigmatic island of The Witness doesn't appear to be more than two miles across, yet as these◊ pictures◊ show◊, there is a desert, a tropical forest, lots of temperate forests, and several other environments packed in that tiny space.
• The Wolf and the Waves: The island has a savannah, a forest, and a desert right next to each other.
• Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair, which has Direct Continuous Levels in parts, goes from Slippy-Slidey Ice World to Shifting Sand Land to Green Hill Zone to Palmtree Panic and back to Slippy-Slidey Ice World in the second half of the game. The Dragon's Trap is also somewhat guilty.
• This◊ is what the original World of Warcraft looked like from space. It is explained in that the world was forged by god-like creators: an entire continent was blasted to smithereens to form four smaller ones and a few island groups, and magic plagues/life-giving trees/Eldritch Abominations all contribute to weird design. That, and the fact that it does need to be patchworked for game design. Still, somewhat downplayed — aside from the stark transitions, though again, kind of necessary for a reasonable scale for play — since, aside from a couple of places like Un'Goro and Desolace that are explicitly called out as being affected by powerful magic, the biomes do make a fair bit of sense, at least in an "armchair geographer" sort of way:
  • Silithus, Tanaris, and Uldum are all adjacent deserts, and while at the same latitude as the jungle of Stranglethorn, combined with things like Feralas in relation to Thousand Needles and Ashenvale in relation to Azshara, it can be assumed that the prevailing winds blow west to east, and since the western side of Kalimdor is quite mountainous, a rainshadow resulting in arid climates on its eastern side would not be out of place. In contrast, the Eastern Kingdoms' west coast tends not to be very mountainous, so it has wetter climates at the same latitudes.
  • Additionally, places like Dun Morogh and Winterspring are mountainous, having higher elevations than most of the rest of the continent, and so being covered in year-round snow would not be too much of a stretch. Of course, it isn't perfect since Dun Morogh is west of Loch Modan which, according to this reasoning, ought to be rather arid, but is instead, a large lake surrounded by fairly temperate evergreen forests.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has one bizarre case of this. Most areas on the Bionis are distant enough from each other to avoid this trope (it's generally assumed the characters are travelling a larger distance than what is shown in-game), but Valak Mountain, on the Bionis' right shoulder and upper arm, is right next to Makna Forest, on its upper back. Makna Forest is a tropical jungle (in which the characters complain about the heat), while Valak Mountain is a frozen tundra. It's pretty explicit as well: there's one area of Makna Forest where you can see the jungle very suddenly and jarringly transition to the frozen landscape of Valak. Why Valak would be so cold is unexplained: Eryth Sea is at a higher elevation and is temperate, and the Bionis' left shoulder is a grassy plain.
• Yoshi's Island has a grand total of six biomes (though you only see five in the first game, and we're not counting the final world of the first game which is not apparently on Yoshi's Island), none of which seem to take rain shadows or elevation into account. Some levels in the "desert" world even have highly visible trees in the background!
• Ys is a frequent offender. Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand has Shifting Sand Land, Jungle Japes, The Lost Woods, Death Mountain, Bubblegloop Swamp, and Green Hill Zone (across a Broken Bridge from the desert, no less) all in the same vicinity. In Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, Quatera Island is mostly forested while the adjacent Canaan is mainly grassland, and the latter has barren rocky mountains a stone's throw away from the meadows. Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter has a Slippy-Slidey Ice World and Lethal Lava Land directly connected to each other.

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