For every cosy Animal Crossing island, there's a video game world that is as terrifying as it is dangerous. In fact, most video game worlds are like this — dangerous, uncertain, and a complete nightmare to live in.
Among the sea of dangerous worlds, there are some that stand out as especially deadly, universes in which it would be a miracle to survive and live happily. Count yourself lucky that you're not a citizen of these unforgiving video game worlds.
10 Kalos - Pokemon X & Y
The Kalos region might not be the first world that comes to mind when you think of danger, but it deserves a mention all the same. Despite the Pokemon universe's attempts to seem family-friendly, there's no doubt that living there would be incredibly dangerous.
In a world where every ten-year-old is given starter Pokemon that can easily kill dozens of people, it's a miracle that there are any humans left at all. The Kalos region is an especially dangerous part of the Pokemon world, thanks to the legendary Pokemon Yveltal, which is destined to wipe out all life in Kalos upon its death.
9 Cvstodia - Blasphemous
Cvstodia is the backdrop to Blasphemous, an action platformer that sees you battling with gory personifications of Middle Ages religious fundamentalism. Its landscape is utterly stunning, which makes it a shame that its so full of death and misery.
A church-turned-government rules the beautifully desolate landscape with an iron fist, brutally punishing any citizen that it deems unfaithful. Unfortunately for anyone who lives in Cvstodia, there's no escaping the church's eye once it suspects blasphemy. The fates of the unfaithful are often worse than death, and far too horrific to get into here.
8 Paradis Island - Attack On Titan
The Attack on Titan games are based of the hugely popular horror manga of the same name. Although the games haven't reached the point in the manga where the world is at its most dangerous, their version of Paradis Island still deserves a spot on this list.
The world of Attack on Titan is a bleak one, being overrun by giant man-eating creatures named Titans. The few humans that are left cower behind enormous walls that are designed to keep the Titans out. Unfortunately for them, no barrier can hold forever. The Titans will break through eventually, dooming the humans inside to be eaten and digested one by one.
7 Yharnam - Bloodborne
In true FromSoftware fashion, Bloodborne's Yharnam is a once-great kingdom that has fallen to a deathly plague. Men have turned into beasts, and animals have turned into abominations. The few remaining humans are addicted to drinking diseased blood, sold to them through a mysterious church with ulterior motives.
Those that die at the hands of a beast or to blood addiction are the lucky ones. Humans that stick around long enough are at risk of slipping through the veil that shrouds Yharnam, and seeing the Eldritch horror that hides behind the curtain.
6 The Underground - Noita
Noita is often touted as one of the hardest, most unfair games of the last decade. Most of the game's difficulty comes from its world, an ever-shifting labyrinth of caverns where every molecule of sand and every living thing is out to kill you.
Danger lurks around literally every corner in Noita's underground, often appearing out of nowhere or for absolutely no reason. Even the planet itself seems to want you dead, making it a uniquely inhospitable world.
5 The STEM Network - The Evil Within
The STEM Network is the mysterious machine that creates the horrific creatures and impossible world of The Evil Within games. Created from the mind of a criminally insane doctor, the STEM network is a machine that links minds together, so they may think as one. This manifests as a world conjured up by the thoughts of those who are connected to STEM.
For this network to work, it must have a core, a mind through which all parts of the world are created. Unfortunately for those trapped in STEM, this core is the psychopathic creator of the network, Dr. Ruvik. The influence of Ruvik's twisted ideals shapes STEM into an incomprehensible horror from which there's no hope for survival or escape.
4 Isaac's Basement - The Binding Of Isaac
The Binding of Isaac is a game full of strange events and mysterious, vague storytelling. What's clear, however, is the immense dangers that inhabit its world. Isaac's basement, and the hideous landscapes below, are representations of a neglected child's personal hell.
Religious trauma, parental abuse, and suicidal ideations are made manifest as Isaac and his alternate personalities travel through a world that demands the child's death. Don't let the hand-drawn art style fool you — Isaac's basement is a bleak, deadly realm with an evil conscience that aims to end any life inside it.
3 Earth - Doom Eternal
Hell comes to Earth in Doom Eternal, in the form on an alien invasion that leaves over four billion people dead. Those lucky enough to survive the first month of slaughter are forced into hiding within huge fortress cities ruled by a totalitarian regime.
Doom Eternal ends with one leader of Hell's forces dead, but the invasion still underway. How many more will die before the Doom Slayer can finish the job and banish Hell from the Earth? Even if the endless hordes of demons are stopped, there's not much of an Earth left to go back to, unless you count giant seas of lava, rubble, and blood.
2 The Raptured Universe - Iron Lung
Iron Lung is set in an empty, dead universe. A few years before the game begins, every planet disappears from the universe instantly, taking every living being with them. The only humans spared this fate are those on spaceships and space stations.
This 'Quiet Rapture' also had another consequence - moons all over the universe became covered in oceans of human blood. In Iron Lung, you play as one of the few remaining humans, tasked with descending into one of these blood oceans in search of a way to explain the Quiet Rapture. No one who's ventured into a blood ocean has ever returned. What answers did they find that sealed their fate?
1 Mythological Greece - God of War 3
Mythological Greece was never a safe place to live. Conniving Gods and impossibly large Titans fought and schemed amongst themselves, uncaring of the untold destruction that their conflicts brought upon human lives. Being a citizen of God of War's Greece makes a tragic death a certainty.
Once Kratos begins climbing Mount Olympus in God of War 3, Greece goes from dangerous to apocalyptic. Each of the Olympian Gods die one by one over the course of 24 hours, bringing about disaster after disaster. In the earliest minutes, realm-wide floods drown the low-lying regions. Shortly after, the spirits of the dead rise from the underworld and the biggest plague of insects ever seen ravage the world.
Even if you manage to live through each of these events, there's one final calamity you can't escape — the death of Zeus. With this, the world comes to an end. The lights go out, and every mortal being dies an inescapable death, leaving Kratos alone to ponder on what he's done.