History Main / BleakLevel

** There's also the Old Chateau and Sendoff Spring from ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'', which are such a jarring change (the former is in a peaceful forest and the latter is along the road between two of the more upbeat towns in the game) that even the music they both share [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hzTU5x6igA functions effectively as]] a ScareChord.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' has Snowbelle City. Apparently, the source of all the snow is from the gym. The music doesn't help either.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioOdyssey'' features the [[spoiler:Ruined Kingdom, a derelict land of crumbling Gothic towers covered in fog and swarming with bats. The boss of the level, the Ruined Dragon (also called the [[ShockAndAwe Lord of Lightning]]), is a frightening and [[NonstandardCharacterDesign abnormally realistic-looking]] dragon the size of a {{Kaiju}} and implied to be responsible for destroying the kingdom in a GreatOffscreenWar. The Kingdom and the Dragon look much more like something from ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' than something from a ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' game.]]

* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioOdyssey'' features the [[spoiler:Ruined Kingdom, a derelict land of crumbling Gothic towers covered in fog and swarming with bats. The boss of the level, the Ruined Dragon (also called the [[ShockAndAwe Lord of Lightning]]), is a frightening and [[NonstandardCharacterDesign abnormally realistic-looking]] dragon the size of a {{Kaiju}} and implied to be responsible for destroying the kingdom in a GreatOffscreenWar. The Kingdom and the Dragon look much more like something from ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' than something from a ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' game.]]

* World 3 (Ocean of Oblivion) of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioFusionRevival'' takes place in a dimension that is not quite the real world and not quite Hell. It takes place in a vast ocean eternally shrouded in unsettling dusk and constant thunderstorms. It is the realm that lies past World 2 in the Bermuda Triangle.

* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioOdyssey'' features the [[spoiler:Ruined Kingdom, a derelict land of crumbling Gothic towers covered in fog and swarming with bats. The boss of the level, the Ruined Dragon (also called the [[ShockAndAwe Lord of Lightning]]), is a frightening and [[NonstandardCharacterDesign abnormally realistic-looking]] dragon the size of a {{Kaiju}} and implied to be responsible for destroying the kingdom in a GreatOffscreenWar. The Kingdom and the Dragon look much more like something from ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' than something from a ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' game.]]

** GUN Fortress in ''VideoGame/ShadowTheHedgehog'' is the final level on the pure evil end of the KarmaMeter, and it shows. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVSigVJcPxU somber music]] really sets the tone: with Shadow's help humanity has been all but defeated by [[AliensAreBastards Black Doom]], and you're storming their last stronghold. Regardless if you go for the Hero or Dark mission in the level, humanity and the world is doomed.

*** The Shadow Temple is underground, so a lot of the environment is in darkness, made of earth or stone. Doors have ominous messages about the fall of Hyrule and skeletons are some of the most prominent enemies. Also the Bottom of the Well in Kakariko Village, which is implied to be connected with the Shadow Temple and even has walls built with human bones.
*** After the TimeSkip, the Hyrule Market Town, once a bustling marketplace full of life and people, [[FisherKing under Ganondorf's iron-fisted rule]] it becomes [[{{Mordor}} a dark, desolate place]], roaming [=ReDeads=] its sole inhabitants.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'' has the entire area of Ikana Canyon. It's a haunted area with scarce flora, with the small Stalchildren waiting around for their long-deceased captain (whom the player races and gets named as the new captain), the royal family's skeletons remain in the area and the only people living here are a thief and, further in, a girl and her turning-into-a-Gibdo father.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' has Hyrule Castle and the surrounding area. While the four Divine Beasts that serve as the other main dungeons can be a bit ominous, what with the backstories about how they were corrupted and the {{Ma|deOfEvil}}lice filling their interiors, they're still brightly lit locations with musical tracks that mix ominousness with triumph. Hyrule Castle, however, is a bleak ruin dripping in Malice, all the plant life in the vicinity is grey and dead, the town at its base is sufficiently demolished to the point of barely being recognizable as a former settlement, deadly [[MechaMooks Guardians]] are ubiquitous, and all around are subtle signs of the massacre that took place a century before. There's also a more quotidian level of bleakness with [[spoiler:the diaries of Princess Zelda and her father King Rhoam, found at their respective desks in the castle. Both record how they felt plenty of fear, and Zelda plenty of shame, over Zelda's inability to awaken the sealing power needed to defeat Calamity Ganon, and how this was leading to their relationship being badly strained due to King Rhoam's tough approach to guiding Zelda's training. And the final entries of each were written the morning of the day Ganon returned and the catastrophic events that led to the kingdom's destruction began.]]

*** Rito Village is beset by an endless blizzard that prevents the Rito from growing crops. For that reason, most of the adults gone to scrounge for food elsewhere, leaving the village much emptier than in ''Breath of the Wild''. There is also a much more depressing remix of the Rito Village theme playing.

*** The [[ShiftingSandLand Gerudo Desert]] is covered in a "sand shroud", basically an uncommonly thick sandstorm that almost completely blocks out the sun and makes navigation very difficult. There has also been a swarm of Gibdos, skeletal monsters immune to most regular attacks. Gerudo Town, once a thriving settlement, is now eerily empty due to the Gerudo taking shelter underground to avoid both the sand shroud and the Gibdos.

* As you return to Cyrum Kingdom in ''VideoGame/GrandiaII'"ñ, you find the dead and dying everywhere, and the dark god's minions just won't stop coming. All but one of your party members are stuck in HeroicBSOD mode (since it is, after all, partially their fault that this is happening) and no one has any idea what to do. Oh, and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V59gD1TVmJU THIS]] music is playing.

*** [[BigBoosHaunt Abandoned Thrifty Megamart]]. It serves as one of the trial grounds, full of ghost types and haunted merchandise. The place is a mess, there are no lights, and the building is crumbling, due to Tapu Bulu destroying it since the Megamart was built on its territory. The music sounds incredibly ''[[HellIsThatNoise wrong]]'', having a constant static effect, cutting out frequently, and when listened on headphones, it sometimes stops playing through one speaker. You fight the Totem Mimikyu in the back room, only to find out it doesn't ''have'' a back room. Going in again reveals that the door you went through before is ''gone''.

** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'': The alternate-history events of ''VideoGame/DragonQuestBuilders'' shows exactly the type of world the Dracolord would mean to create if the Hero should fall before him one way or another: an ashen wasteland antithetical to life as a concept, cloaked in a pitch black sky, where even the skeletons that emerge from the earth to kill in his name are pitiably weak and frail.

* As you return to Cyrum Kingdom in ''VideoGame/GrandiaII', you find the dead and dying everywhere, and the dark god's minions just won't stop coming. All but one of your party members are stuck in HeroicBSOD mode (since it is, after all, partially their fault that this is happening) and no one has any idea what to do. Oh, and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V59gD1TVmJU THIS]] music is playing.

** The final level of the original game is a WombLevel taking place inside the BigBad, Bon Mucho. The cheery music and colorful visuals that accompany every other WombLevel in the game are absent, replaced by murky black and grey backgrounds and a foreboding VillainSong called "[[https://youtu.be/Wp0OId0KZ4U Merure Merure]]".

->''"A town stuck in a perpetual state of dim twilight. Even the townspeople have dim, gray complexions, not to mention dim expressions."''
-->-- '''Description of Twilight Town''', ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor''.

->"A town stuck in a perpetual state of dim twilight. Even the townspeople have dim, gray complexions, not to mention dim expressions."

"A town stuck in a perpetual state of dim twilight. Even the townspeople have dim, gray complexions, not to mention dim expressions."

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'': The ''Endwalker'' expansion has [[spoiler: Garlemald, the capital of the Garlean Empire, now reduced to rubble by both civil war and an ApocalypseCult [[BrainwashedAndCrazy tempering]] most of the survivors to serve a Primal born of the late emperor's corpse. As for the people, anyone who managed to avoid getting tempered is starving and freezing out in the frozen wastelands, at the mercy of the local wildlife, the tempered soldiers, and rampaging magitek. And to top it off, years of being subjected to the Garlean propaganda machine means that most of the survivors would rather die than accept the help of the "savages" they've been taught all their lives to fear.]]

* The ''Videogame/FZero X'' adaptation of White Land has a theme song which, while not outside the game's hot-blooded heavy metal trappings, sounds surprisingly sad compared to some of the other tracks.

You're playing a video game that so far has been good fun--perhaps not all sunshine and light, but still, fairly safe. The story is interesting and everything's going well. Then... things get a little drearier. The color scheme turns drab, the music plays in a minor key, the creatures seem fearful -- [[NothingIsScarier if they're there at all]].

** GUN Fortress in ''VideoGame/ShadowTheHedgehog'' is the final level on the pure evil end of the KarmaMeter, and it shows. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVSigVJcPxU somber music]] really sets the tone: with Shadow's help humanity has been all but defeated by [[AliensAreBastards Black Doom]], and you're storming their last stronghold. Regadless if you go for the Hero or Dark mission in the level, humanity and the world is doomed.