History Main / BleakLevel

* ''Franchise/{{Kirby}}'':
** ''VideoGame/KingsleysAdventure'' has [[MeaningfulName Poorluck Village]], which follows the vivid and upbeat [[BrightCastle Carrot Castle]] and [[PalmtreePanic Sea Town]]. In stark contrast, all the homes in Poorluck are dilapidated, all the grass is dead, it's always dark and rainy, and the highest-running emotions are the dogs'. On top of that, when you first arrive, the village is in the midst of a dragon-induced famine. [[spoiler:You eventually solve the famine, but the place never gets any cheerier.]]
** ''VideoGame/Kirby64TheCrystalShards'':
*** By the time you get to Ripple Star's second stage, the game officially stops being cute thanks to the gloomy areas and the freaky music.
*** Shiver Star's fourth stage is infamous for being at complete odds with the rest of the world's levels, being a spooky factory with scary-looking machinery and dramatic music.

!!Examples

[[folder:Action]]
* In ''VideoGame/GliderPRO'', "Slumberland" has a sudden "Wrong Turn!" into a graveyard area.
[[/folder]]

* VideoGame/{{Shing}}: The Forgotten City level takes place in the ruined remains of a once great settlement long ago destroyed by reckless experiments with the Starseed, leaving a giant crater behind along with ash-covered abandoned homes and deadly cracks in the earth that shoot out deadly gases. The very prospect of having to go there makes the usually irreverent player characters act [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness significantly more serious and somber]] for almost the entire level.

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty 3'' has "The Mace" level, [[BattleInTheRain fought entirely in the rain]], where the Polish have to HoldTheLine on Mont Ormel/Hill 262/"The Mace" against hordes of German soldiers. The entire battle is just a desperate retreat up the hill as soldiers die left and right, culminating in a LastStand near a manor house at the top and [[spoiler: [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome the arrival]] [[BigDamnHeroes of Canadian]] [[TheCavalry reinforcements]]]]. Made even worse with the knowledge it all [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_262 happened]] in real life.
* The Eridium Blight in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' contrasts with the natural SceneryPorn of most of the areas before it. The runoff of Hyperion's Eridium refinement plants mixes with the volcanic ash to make a lifeless wasteland where almost nothing grows. Even the ColorWash is dead-looking.

* While ''Videogame/BioShockInfinite'' is full of dark and scary stuff, the SceneryPorn lightens up a bit... until Finkton and more specifically, Shantytown, which as the name makes clear, it's the beaten up aglomerate of deteriorated buildings and improvised households surrounded by poor and malnourished people, an environment of pure misery. Even the [[https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/Pauper%27s_Drop_(Level) ramshack parts]] of [[Videogame/BioShock2 the previous game]] can't compare, specially because the populace of ''Infinite'' are normal people instead of disfigured mutants.
* Surface II from ''VideoGame/{{GoldenEye|1997}}'' is a more unsettling version of an earlier level. Instead of a well-lit setting with uptempo music as the first Surface was, Surface II takes place under a blood-red sky and has slower, more somber music. The masked guards from the first level are present again, and look much creepier in the murky conditions.

%%* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry1'': Some of the caverns, especially when [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcklfVCEAcg "Life In the Mines"]] is playing. %%Example needs context to make sense on its own.
* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest'': [[BigBoosHaunt Gloomy Gulch]] definitely lives up to its name. Crocodile Isle is not a friendly place in general, but Gloomy Gulch stands out as a dark and barren region high up on the mountain, surrounded by dead forests. Cementing this is the world's theme song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYyMNXM8Kgg Forest Interlude]], which is much more downbeat and moody compared to the rest of the game's soundtrack.

* ''VideoGame/{{Futurama}}'' has [[SinisterSubway the Subway]]. To put it into context, the level before this took place in the sewers of New New York, and true to the show, the whole place has a campy horror vibe, being filled with [[GrimyWater glowing green waste]], cartoony mutants as enemies, and [[SewerGator alligators]], plus a very funky soundtrack. But then when you reach the ruined subway, everything turns [[RealIsBrown drab and brown]], the enemies are sinister-looking [[DisasterScavengers post-apocalyptic scavengers]] in {{gas mask|Mooks}}s, and the music [[NothingIsScarier is completely gone]] -- replaced by an unsettling ambience which includes ''distant screaming''. The whole place seems more at home in a ''{{VideoGame/Fallout}}'' game than a ''Futurama'' game, and the weird thing is that it's the ''third level''. No other level later in the game comes even close to being this bleak, not even Old New York, which immediately follows it, or [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon MOM's HQ]] at the very end.
* ''VideoGame/KingsleysAdventure'' has [[MeaningfulName Poorluck Village]], which follows the vivid and upbeat [[BrightCastle Carrot Castle]] and [[PalmtreePanic Sea Town]]. In stark contrast, all the homes in Poorluck are dilapidated, all the grass is dead, it's always dark and rainy, and the highest-running emotions are the dogs'. On top of that, when you first arrive, the village is in the midst of a dragon-induced famine. [[spoiler:You eventually solve the famine, but the place never gets any cheerier.]]
* ''VideoGame/Kirby64TheCrystalShards'':
** By the time you get to Ripple Star's second stage, the game officially stops being cute thanks to the gloomy areas and the freaky music.
** Shiver Star's fourth stage is infamous for being at complete odds with the rest of the world's levels, being a spooky factory with scary-looking machinery and dramatic music.

* ''VideoGame/SpongeBobSquarePantsBattleForBikiniBottom'':
** Rock Bottom, which is every bit as creepy as it was in the show. Most of it is set on small platforms hovering over a dark abyss, and the music is ominous and minimal.
** The [[DerelictGraveyard Flying Dutchman's Graveyard]] is a wasteland full of shipwrecks and toxic ooze with a darker appearance than most of the other areas. In the original version, even the "flower clouds" in the sky look distorted, and ''Rehydrated'' places a giant glowing green moon over the stage.
* ''VideoGame/TheSpongebobMovieGame'': Almost every level from "Bubble Blowing Baby Hunt" onwards has noticeably darker and unsettling environments, even when they're based on lighthearted parts of the movie (e.g. "Now That We're Men", which plays the depths of the trench for grotesque horror rather than comedy). To wit, "Bubble Blowing Baby Hunt" takes place in the Thug Tug, a seedy and dimly-lit bar full of rugged brutes, "I'll Let You Pet Mr. Whiskers" is set in a field littered with the skeletons of the Frogfish's victims, "Rock Slide" and "Now That We're Men" take place in a dark trench full of ghoulish monsters, "Shell City, Dead Ahead" and "Name's Dennis" are set in a dingy scrapyard, and "Welcome to Planktopolis... Minions" and "Drive of the Knucklehead-[=McSpazitron=]" are set in a dystopian version of Bikini Bottom full of smoggy skies, lava, spikes, heavy machinery, and oppressive monuments.

** 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/WarioLand'':
** The BrutalBonusLevel of ''VideoGame/WarioLandII'', "Steal the Syrup's Treasure!!", is a WombLevel with ominous music filled with mouths, ears, and other body parts interspersed alongside the frozen bodies of various types of enemies embedded in the walls with looks of shock on their faces.
** ''VideoGame/WarioLand3'' has the [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Forest of Fear]]. It's a forest with eerie, minimalist music, tons of spikes and vines, and intimidating faces on all the trees.

* ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheGatheringStorm''
** This game is very silly and upbeat... for its first seven chapters, and then you're plunged into the First Internet, a ruined age that was mostly devoured by [[GreaterScopeVillain Legion]]. The locals aren't bad, but they're pretty pessimistic about their fate.

* While ''VideoGame/BugFables'' is typically cheerful, there are several areas that are ''not:''

* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'':

** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestXI'''s Ruins of Dundrasil. There aren't very many enemies in the area wandering around (aside from a [[BossInMookClothing Green Dragon]]), but the site itself is depressing to walk through considering the sheer aftermath of the destruction left behind, least of all the bad memories it holds for certain members of the party.
* ''VideoGame/{{EarthBound|1994}}''[='s=] final level, the Cave of the Past, is a stark departure from the rest of the game. Whereas other areas were quirky and colorful with an eclectic variety of sights and sounds, the Cave of the Past is a stark gray series of cliffs in a sea of equally gray fog at the center of the Earth. The level is punctuated only by eerie silver orbs, a sole, tentacle-like spire, and the vaguely Freudian entrance to the dark, pulsating lair where Giygas resides. Likewise, the background music consists solely of the LyricalColdOpen to [[Music/{{Sunflower}} "Deirdre"]] by Music/TheBeachBoys, slowed down to resemble an elegiac wail of wind.

* While ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' [[AfterTheEnd isn't]] the [[ScavengerWorld brightest]] picture of humanity, the underlying themes are hope and rebuilding; [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking even the color palette is happier than its predecessors']]. Then you go to the Glowing Sea, a haunted wasteland where the bomb meant for Boston actually hit. After 210 years, the ambient fallout is still lethal.[[note]]At least according to Doctor Amari; in-game it's a measly few rads per second and can be out-healed via Radaway and Rad-X.[[/note]]
* ''VideoGame/Fallout76'' has the Ash Pile, where the majority of West Virginia's coal mining industry was centered. Twenty-five years of the machines running out of control since the Great War has caused this region to be coated in soot and ash, enough that entering the region without a gas mask means possibly contracting Sludge Lung disease. There are also areas that are eternally burning, especially old coal mines where flames have been burning nonstop for over two decades.
* The City of Ancients in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII''. Hardly any enemies, strange scenery, and unsettling music that only plays there.
* In ''Videogame/FinalFantasyVIII'', sorceress Edea's act of retaliation against the Gardens for the assassination attempt on her is to order a missile strike. The heroes only managed to save Balamb Garden (by turning it into a mobile fortress), while Edea converts Galbadia Garden into her own base of operations. The last one, Trabia Garden (where Selphie, one of the protagonists, was from), was not so lucky. When the heroes visit, the entire garden is in ruins, and its students are living like squatters, and there is even a giant improvised cemetery dedicated to those who died in the attack.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX''
** Kingdom of Burmecia, the last dungeon of Disc One. By the time the heroes made it there, the kingdom is in ruins, and its citizens are running for their lives from the Black Mages. The dungeon (and Disc One) ends with the heroes facing a HopelessBossFight against General Beatrix for the first time.
** Lindblum after Alexandria's invasion. Some sections (like a part of the Theater district) are completely destroyed, and Alexandrian soldiers now patrol the city, although they don't engage the party.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'':
** The Baaj Ruins, the first area where Tidus wakes up in Spira. There are no RandomEncounters (just a fixed unwinnable fight), but there's a perpetual storm raging outside, and the ruins itself is abandoned and derelict, giving Tidus an atmosphere of loneliness.
** Thunder Plains is an entire plain of grey, dreary darkness, only [[{{Pun}} lightened up]] by the constant lightning strikes that make it such an unhospitable wasteland. However, all this is offset by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ax45TprB4A this]] adorable soundtrack.
** Zanarkand itself, which is when the story catches up to its flashback-telling and the entire party is shown to have become resigned to the upcoming fate of Yuna. Zanarkand is nothing but ruins upon ruins, night doesn't end anymore and the area is filled with Pyreflies, which let the player see memory upon memory of previous summoners and guardians making it to this place. And as [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic amazing]] as the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xRCjjiTR7I background music]] may be for this area, it's still melancholic. And then the BackgroundMusic changes to a much more subdued and very low note, with barely any music playing inside the Zanarkand Dome itself.
** Mushroom Rock Road. Located in the already dark and gloomy looking Djose region of Spira, the party visits just in time to see the catastrophic failure of Operation Mi'ihen and take stock of the casualties after. Overall the entire region of Djose marks a dark and gloomy point in the game.
* Mag Mell from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles'' has some very unsettling music and is blanketed in fog and seemingly uninhabited when you first get there. If you revisit it enough times, though, you find out it's actually inhabited by hibernating carbuncles, who turn out to be not all that bad when they finally wake up. A more traditional example is Tida, a town who's caravan never returned home, and is now a miasma and monster-infested DungeonTown.
* ''Videogame/FinalFantasyXIII'' has [[spoiler:the ruined, [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Cie'th]]-infested]] village of [[spoiler:Oerba.]]
%%* Meanwhile, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'' has [[spoiler:A Dying World and New Bodhum, both in 700AF.]] %%Example needs context to make sense on its own.
* ''VideoGame/LightningReturnsFinalFantasyXIII'' has the Cathedral in Luxerion on the Final Day, which couples as the [[VeryDefiniteFinalDungeon final area]]. It starts by showing people trying to break down the gate to get into the cathedral, running away from the Chaos and getting turned into monsters. The sky is full of dark clouds and the few [=NPCs=] found outside are lethargic or praying, hoping for salvation. The inside isn't much better, being nothing but blue-grey stone walls and floors and the player is following the [[OminousLatinChanting ominous chanting]] that gets louder, the closer they get to their goal.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''
** ''Stormblood'' has an endgame dungeon called "The Burn": a region bordering Doma and Garlemald that is completely devoid of aether, purportedly due to repeated primal summonings in the distant past. Without aether, the entire region is little more than a continuous expanse of grey, dead earth.
* 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.]]
** ''Endwalker'' ramps it up in the final chapters of the game with [[spoiler:Ultima Thule, a zone created around the nest of Meteion, the one responsible for the [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt Final Days]]. Ultima Thule is made up of three regions modeled after worlds that Meteion observed in their waning days: the dragons' homeworld, where a war with machine invaders left the star polluted and desolate, leading to the dragons' slow and agonizing extinction; the world of the Ea, a scholar race who abandoned their physical bodies in pursuit of knowledge, only to learn about the [[NaturalEndOfTime eventual heat death of the universe]], driving them to despair; and the Omicrons, the selfsame machine race that invaded the dragons and created Omega, who became mechanical overlords as a matter of self-defense, only to realize that there would be nothing for them to do once they eliminated all perceived threats. The last dungeon of the 6.0 MSQ, The Dead Ends, introduces yet more downer areas with another three worlds in decline: one that succumbed to disease, one that was destroyed in a nuclear global conflict, and one where the inhabitants became so enlightened that life lost all meaning and they summoned a primal to end their lives.]]
* ''Videogame/FinalFantasyXV'' has [[spoiler: '''the entirety of Chapter 14.''']] The game already lets you know all bets are off the moment Noctis [[spoiler: steps out of Angelgard, a good ''[[OlderAndWiser ten years older]]'' at that, and seeing that the world has been plunged into TheNightThatNeverEnds. And just as one would expect, {{D|emonicSpiders}}aemons that the player once took solace in knowing only appeared at night have '''''completely overrun the world and drove humanity to near extinction, with the final bastions on the verge of collapse at that.''''' The sky that was once a vibrant blue and at least two towns the player once went through and enjoyed the sight of company and fellow humans are now [[AftertheEnd devoid of any and all life besides the murderous Daemons, with a heavy implication that the once our-world-level population has dwindled from billions to a mere city and a gas station's worth,]] with the sky now perpetually a sickly black-and-green combination with flecks of darkness falling like snow.]] And to top it all off, the only way to end this horrific nightmare is [[spoiler: to [[HeroicSacrifice have Noctis sacrifice himself]], alongside potentially the rest of the party, all to set the world right again and end this twisted perversion of the world.]]

* ''VideoGame/Mother3'' has the abandoned Clayman factory in chapter 7. In previous chapters it was quite lively, in addition to the rest of the game at that point. But here, it's empty save for a few scattered sentry robots, all the machines have stopped running, and there's a unique piece of music playing: a very dark and depressing remix of one of the first mini-boss themes in the game.

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'' has two: [[spoiler: The Land of Morytha, the remnants of our world reduced to a wasteland infested with zombie-like creatures that are actually people that used Core Crystals in a last-ditch attempt to survive the results of Klaus' experiment, and Elysium, a desert with no signs of anyone having been there, human or monster, save some town ruins and its sole inhabitant being Klaus himself. The latter really exemplifies this trope, as it served throughout the entire game as humanity's last hope. To say that the sight of the real Elysium was a punch in the gut would be an understatement.]]

* Luigi's Mansion in ''VideoGame/MarioSuperSluggers'' has ghosts, graves and a mysterious music in the middle of the night.

* The section in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' where Raiden escapes imprisonment on Arsenal Gear and has to survive with no gear, while also receiving strange calls on his Codec.
* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'': The setting of the fourth Cobra battle, namely against "The Sorrow". Snake is forced to wade through a waist-high mangrove swamp during downpour, while the boss and [[WhatMeasureIsAMook the ghosts of every person the player has killed thus far]] tries to kill Snake. Considering everything goes from [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism campy/realistic to gritty/grim in a few scenes]], ''creepy is an understatement''.

* While ''VideoGame/DontStarve'' is a dark game, it's actually pretty easy to forget the dark themes due to the bright and colourful environments. Then there's the swamp biome. The ground is purple, tentacles pop up from the ground seemingly at random, and the few trees there are are all dead. And frogs and the fishmen. No, not fish''er''men, ''fish''men. Then comes Winter, and every plant dies for its duration, several animals disappear, and you realize that you are all alone in a barren enviroment, but you still need to eat, stay warm and fight back the insanity lurking in the darkness...

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBrosWonder'' is as bright and cheerful as any other ''Super Mario Bros.'' game, until the player reachers Muncher Fields. Set in a dreary, rainy environment with unsettling music completely unlike anything seen up to this point, Muncher Fields is also situated right in front of Castle Bowser on the world map, so Bowser looming ominously on the horizon is a constant fixture of the level as well.

** 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.