Top 10 Depressing Video Games Worlds

The foggy town of Silent Hill is quite literally a nightmare come to life. Infested with ghastly creatures and creepy residents at every turn, the town’s dark secrets will slowly come to light to the player. Prior to the events of the first game, a cult known as The Order had attempted to birth their god by torturing Alessa, a young girl with supernatural powers. However, Alessa’s powers allow her to turn her nightmares in reality, casting a dark curse on the town. The town is almost entirely occupied by malevolent forces, with little hope to be found. That is, unless you’re able to reach the good endings.

Ignorance is bliss, right? “We Happy Few” exists in an alternate timeline version of Earth where Britain was occupied by Germany during the 2nd World War. Eventually the citizens of Wellington Wells were then forced to do “The Very Bad Thing;” Which was to send away all their children in exchange for their freedom. In response, those who remained were forced to take the drug ‘Joy’; which causes them to be unquestionably happy, at the cost of memory loss. Those who refuse to take the drug are known as “Downers” and are left to fend for scraps in abandoned towns. It’s a dystopia that feels like it was pulled straight out of “The Twilight Zone,” removing all human free will and knowledge of reality, resulting in this truly chilling alternate reality.

In addition to being a fan favorite, the seventh installment of “Final Fantasy” had a lot to say about our own world. The power-hungry and malicious Shinra Electric Power Company has been harnessing the planet’s natural Lifestream, creating Mako energy in order to make super-powered soldiers. This is slowly killing Gaia, primarily the area around the large city of Midgar. Shinra, one of the main antagonists of the game, holds essentially all the power in the world, with little care for the people or environment. A sinister, powerful corporation prioritizing profits over the good of the people makes this more resonant than some of the other worlds on this list.

Sera is an earth-like planet that enjoyed a long reign of peace, until Emergence Day, when the Locust Horde arose from the planet’s depths and wiped out a quarter of Sera’s human population. The response from the Coalition of Ordered Governments (or COG) helped reduce the threat, but also killed billions more humans and scorched the earth. The war would last for 17 more years before the Locusts are finally defeated, but even when the war is over, things aren’t much better thanks to the newly rebuilt COG now ruling over Sera with a totalitarian iron fist. All the while, the planet is now susceptible to a new deadly weather phenomenon known as Windflares. Sera’s population just can’t catch a break.

“Agony” may not have impressed critics with its lackluster gameplay, but its dark, atmospheric vision of Hell was hailed as a major achievement. This survival horror adventure tasks the player with escaping from Hell, featuring some of the most disturbing imagery in recent memory. From brutal murders to tortured victims to the gallons of blood spilled throughout the campaign, the levels appall and disgust at every turn. We really can’t say enough about just how disquieting the content in this game is, but after playing it, you’re gonna want to go to church the next Sunday.

At the climax of the original “Half-Life,” during the final battle with the Nihilanth, a portal storm opened, which the Combine Empire took advantage of to overtake our planet. The Combine, consisting of various interdimensional species, both allied and enslaved, captured Earth in only seven hours, with the goal of conquering as many parallel universes as possible. They enslaved humanity, sending some to uninhabitable dimensions, and casting a suppression field, which prevents human reproduction. If this didn’t sound apocalyptic enough, other sinister acts include mind control, memory replacement, the complete depletion of earth’s resources, as well as straight-up genocide.

Little is actually known about the world of “Inside,” a bizarre but artful 2D platformer. The player controls a young boy who traverses through a variety of environments, pursued by masked guards for unknown reasons. Locations include a forest, a dystopian city, underwater passageways, and a laboratory. As the boy progresses, things become stranger and stranger, as he takes control of zombie-esque humanoids, avoids deadly shockwaves, and ultimately assimilates into a fleshy blob. Though everything is up to the player’s interpretation, there’s a dreadful sense throughout that nothing about this world is quite as it should be.

There’s no shortage of zombie video games on the market, but none come close to “The Last of Us” in terms of depicting the moral ambivalence of lawless humanity. Joel and Ellie journey through a world in which humans trying to survive are just as dangerous as the Infected. Ellie, at age 14, is forced to come to terms with this reality, even having to murder her way through a cannibalistic group at one point. That being said, the horrors of the new world are juxtaposed with the beauty of life and love, as our protagonists find reasons to keep going in a world without morals.

The “Souls” games likely have some of the most disturbing imagery to be seen in a non-horror game. These images stem from an equally dark lore, hidden in item descriptions. In Lordran, the Age of Dark is said to begin after the fade of the First Flame. Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, prevented this by sacrificing himself, but this began the Undead Curse. Now every living being returns to life upon death, rapidly losing sanity upon death. In Lordran, the undead walk the earth, alongside all manner of heinous creatures in a bleak world entirely devoid of hope.

Taking the subway is horrific enough, but being forced to live in the tunnels is a whole other kind of torture. In “Metro,” many major cities has become a wasteland due to nuclear war, and the survivors have been forced to occupy Russia’s underground metro system. The nuclear war has mutated animals and humans into horrid, dangerous beasts that the humans must fight or avoid, and the air is too toxic for humans to breathe without gas masks. What’s worse, Nazis and Communists continue to battle for dominance. Of course you could take your chances outside of the major cities, but good luck dealing with the warring splinter factions out there.