As anyone who glances at the sheer number of post-apocalyptic video games on offer might be able to tell, video games have something of a fascination with abandoned, ruined worlds where all of the modern trappings and conveniences of today have been replaced with zombie shooting, resource-scavenging excursions to formally tourist locations, and elaborate crafting systems. While the gray and brown gritty settings of the 2010s went out of fashion, artists started adding a spot of color by depicting cities and towns overrun by nature, with humanity's creations slowly reclaimed by verdance.

Related

8 Best Casual Survival Games, Ranked

The survival game genre is often filled with tense and gripping games where players struggle to survive, but these casual games are much more relaxed.

These explorable, overgrown ruins offer a reminder of human civilization's impermanence and nature's enduring power, even if it seems to be suppressed by the concrete and constant trimming of modernity. These games also offer somewhat hopeful depictions of the future, given that life survives despite nuclear armageddon, a plain old climate-change-induced ice age, or some other planetary scorching. While nature moves at its own pace, these games shift players into a possible future where ferns and vines have conquered concrete, for good or for bad.

The Last Of Us

A Reminder That Nature Can Return In A Click

• Unlike other post-apocalyptic worlds reclaimed by nature, The Last Of Us takes place a mere 20 years into the future
• The infrastructure of the world collapsed and gave way to nature simply because there weren't enough people to maintain it

Although the glass towers, concrete bridges, and dizzying, suspended freeways may give the impression of eternal stability, with only a few years without maintenance, this modern infrastructure would quickly give way to burgeoning mother nature, freed at last from her cage of asphalt and steel, as Naughty Dog's The Last Of Us lovingly depicts. Skyscrapers and sky-high apartments lean like forgotten monoliths amid fields of ravaging vegetation 20 years after the "Cordyceps brain infection virus" reduces humanity to a primitive state in perpetual and petty civil war.

With half of humanity gone, modern technology and infrastructure began peeling away. Those who have not become infected by mushroom-headed "clicker" zombies steal and murder from those who are unwilling or unable to fight back, making Joel and Ellie's journey across the ruins of the United States deadly even without the threat of being devoured by dark-dwelling, flesh-eating fungi. Although the last humans have fallen into a spiral of revenge, hatred, and baseness, a feeling of hope persists in seeing the world come alive with green once again.

Stray

The Story Of An Outside Cat Who Got Stuck Inside

• Much of Stray takes place inside a sealed city, with the fate of the "Outside" being left ambiguous
• Robots have remained to maintain Walled City 99, so nature is only able to creep in on the outskirts and slums

After getting separated, one lone cat must traverse the not-quite-empty city, inhabited solely by robots (and flesh-eating bugs), to return to his family. Because the robotic citizens of Walled City 99 have stuck around to maintain the city, the vegetation seen in the opening of Stray from the "Outside" hasn't quite covered the entirety of the deteriorating cyber city. Whether the vegetation is actually far spread beyond the walls and deeper out into the Outside is one of the game's central mysteries.

Related

7 Games That Explore The Mundane Life Of Pets

Though pets usually live in comfort, these games spice things up by diving deep into the secret life of domestic animals.

As a cat, the player can't exactly ask the robotic inhabitants what happened to all the people, although a small group called "The Outsiders" has made it their mission to find out what the world looks like beyond the great walls. This rag-tag group joins the cat on his journey to find his siblings, and as the game plays out, the mystery of what happened to humans and the planet at large unravels through hints and tidbits of lore.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

The Concrete-Jungle-Turned Jungle For Real

• After the fall of humanity during a cataclysmic war, deadly robots are still roaming around hunting for people
• Enslaved takes place in a long-ruined, overrun New York City, complete with rusted cars and wonky skyscrapers

In the rusty ruins of NYC, years after a conflict has all but erased people from the face of the world, machines are still carrying out their orders to irradicate every living human. A spunky but hot-headed survivor by the name of Monkey is captured by slavers and put on a flying slave ship, where he meets Trip, a tech whiz, who, ironically, binds his will with a shock-inducing headband.

The story of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West plays out exactly as its name might suggest. The two must travel across the jungle of New York and beyond (in a story based on the ancient Chinese story of the same name, albeit in a more postmodern setting), traversing dead trucks and cars, stagnant streets, and moss-covered skyscrapers still yet to collapse into the surrounding wilderness.

NieR: Automata

Endless War Amid Humanity's Memories

• Much of the planet in NieR: Automata is covered in sand, but some areas are home to fresh plant growth
• While the nature-reclaimed ruins of civilization are still being observed and revered, they are simply the backdrop for a proxy war

While much of the Earth's surface has been covered in sand by the time of NieR: Automata, a few residential districts and urban patches remain, although they are slowly being degraded and returned to the natural world. Humanity's true fate and the cyclical nature of the world are unfolded in a truly unique way throughout the narrative.

Related

8 Best Post-Apocalypse Games Set In Japan

These games place their post-apocalyptic game settings in Japan and do so with great success.

Meanwhile, androids and robots carry out their proxy wars in lieu of the blood bags who started them, set to fight and philosophize until the sun runs out of plasma. While humanity is absent, their echo lives on in the great wreckages scattered across the world, striking awe in the mechanical hearts of the automatons who lay their eyes upon them, blindfolded or not.

The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

A Hyrule Under Nature's Law Alone

• After 100 years, Link awakens to a forgotten Hyrule and is tasked with defeating the technological Divine Beasts to stop Ganon's rampage
• Nature plays a crucial role in Link's survival and exploration, as rain, thunder, and rugged vegetation can help or hinder

The apocalypse usually takes place in contemporary settings, but that isn't to say that fantasy kingdoms can't have their own calamities. In Breath of the Wild, Link awakens 100 years after Ganon has completely destroyed Hyrule and scattered its inhabitants to small pockets of refuge. Link is tasked with defeating the Divine Beasts, ancient and still-functioning magitek creations built thousands of years in the past, and stopping Ganon's continuing rampage.

This nature-reclaimed Hyrule was the perfect setting for The Legend of Zelda's first non-linear, open-world adventure, littered with ruins, towers with ancient treasures, sweeping meadows, and climbable mountain ranges. Nature isn't just a backdrop, as players will have to hunt to replenish their health, use their environment to deal with larger groups of enemies, and watch the weather, as rainfall can mean the difference between climbing a mountain and crashing back down to the bottom.

Horizon: Forbidden West

An Adventure Across The Waterlogged West Coast

• Aloy continues to explore the overgrown remnants of the United States while taming robotic creatures and meeting with the last dregs of civilization
• The underwater ruins of Los Angeles and San Francisco may be familiar to gamers from the West Coast

From the sunken shores of ancient LA to the jungled ruins of San Francisco, Horizon: Forbidden West depicts a future in which nature continues its relentless reclamation of the Earth after humans predictably lost control of the very technology they created to improve their lives. As Aloy embarks on a westward quest, she navigates through an open-world landscape teeming with robotic wildlife and overgrown ruins in the long-dead United States.

While the first game had clear elements of a ruined human civilization, Forbidden West hammers home the fall of great humanity with its water-warped guard rails, tree-topped bridges, and crumbling concrete stubs matted over with lush foliage. Players from the West Coast will likely be able to recognize a few familiar landmarks under the thickets and grass as they tame robotic mounts, spelunk through underground bunkers, and group up with what is left of the human world.

More

5 Post-Apocalyptic Games With Strong Female Protagonists

As the post apocalyptic survival genre continues to enjoy popularity, gamers are finally seeing strong, independent women in leading roles.