Hub Level



In the beginning, levels were their own separate entities, completely disconnected from one another—beat one, and you go straight to the next, no intervening events or backtracking. Later, games added the idea of a "World Map" that connected the areas: you could now travel between worlds at will, perhaps unlocking shortcuts or alternate routes—but the map was a bland, uninteresting area in and of itself, existing only to carry you from one location to the next.

This concept was fleshed out and improved with the invention of the Hub Level, in which the space between the levels became a sort of pseudolevel in and of itself, using the same engine as the rest of the game, with geography and secrets of its own. The Hub Level is usually larger than the other levels but lacks the dangers, detail, and unique features that characterize the more specialized areas. It is still essentially a gateway area, but more developed. In many cases, you'll find individual rooms which contain the entrances to each level, with the scenery in the room being similar to that of the level itself, as sort of a preview of what the level will be like.

A common tack when using this trope is that the Hub Level is the area where the plot is really happening—the stages are "side areas" of sorts. The characters only need to go into the levels in order to collect the Plot Coupons necessary to proceed further into the Hub Level, where the Big Bad usually awaits. Events that take place in the stages usually have no effect on the Hub Level.

This is most frequently used in Platformers. RPGs usually stick to the classic World Map device, or use the Global Airship to fill the same function. Adventure Games usually don't make use of distinct, separate stages.

If you have to spend a lot of time Talking To Everyone in the Hub Level just to unlock the next stage, then you're looking at Fake Longevity.

Playable Menu is this trope taken to the next (ahem) level.

Not to be confused with Boston, or the cable channel.

Literature

 * The Magician's Nephew, the (chronologically) first book of The Chronicles of Narnia, has the 'Wood Between Worlds'. Put on one ring in Earth, Narnia, or Charn (and presumably many others) and you get magicked to a forest filled with ponds. Stand in one of the ponds and put on a second ring, and you get transported to the corresponding universe.

Live-Action TV

 * Hikari Photo Studio in Kamen Rider Decade. However, the way Tsukasa and company go to different worlds relies on pulling some chains, though sometimes other methods are used, for example, the way they entered Den-O's world was that Tsukasa and Yuusuke gave each other a high five.
 * Plus, they can't really select a world it seems, as random chains open different worlds, the same chains used to open some worlds open others (making them inconsistent) and also, the different methods as mentioned above.

Tabletop Games

 * Planescape has Sigil, connected via portals with pretty much all the Multiverse. Also, the top (i.e. immediately accessible with non-specific planeshifting) layer of Abyss is called The Plain of Infinite Portals - it's riddled with portals to the innumerable deeper layers.

Action-Adventure

 * In Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2, Dark Docks serves as the hub. There are, thankfully, ducats in them, making raising the bribe money that much easier.
 * The hubs in the Lego Adaptation Games are gradually populated with characters as they are unlocked... and you can even pick fights against them for the hell of it.
 * In Lego Batman, the Hub is the Batcave, where you can access settings and minigames from the Bat-Computer, and explore the Trophy Room. Villain Mode comes with its own Hub: Arkham Asylum.
 * Rayman Revolution, the PlayStation 2 port of Rayman 2, had a set of three large hubworlds as an upgrade from the previous versions.
 * In Cave Story, Mimiga Village (including Arthur's House) sort of fits this, though there are many plot-significant events which take place far from there.
 * The Devil's castle in Graffiti Kingdom.
 * Taz: Wanted, a GCN game about Taz the Tazmanian Devil destroying wanted signs, has 3 hubs. One hub is for the 3 "zoo" levels, with various tutorial books. The second hub is for the 3 town level, and the third is for the 3 Wild West levels. While there is a 10th level, it hasn't a hub.
 * Despite being by far the largest area of the game, Dracula's Castle in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is a hub of sorts, because the rest of the game is in paintings which are scattered around the map. Often you go into a painting, beat the boss of it to get an upgrade, allowing you to progress further into the castle.
 * The castle in Maze of Galious. Uncharacteristically for this trope, it's a labyrinthine complex bigger than some of the actual worlds, the entrances to which can be a bit hard to locate.
 * Thorntail Hollow in Star Fox Adventures serves as the hub of the game world, with paths going to many places on the planet's surface, a Warpstone to send you to two of the other places, and the Arwing to take you to the chunks that are floating around out there. (The planet was split into pieces before the game begins.)
 * Mean Street in Disney Epic Mickey.
 * Dynasty Warriors Online has 6 different hubs, one for each faction as well as the peach garden. Since there's not always 5 factions fighting, not all of them are always available, and you're usually not allowed to go to any more than two of them at a time.

Action RPG

 * In Demon's Souls the player's souls is bound by the Nexus after dying, which is the game's hub level that connects the land of Boletaria through archstones.
 * The Marvel Ultimate Alliance games have many of these. Exemplifying with the first game: after saving the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, the heroes are relocated to Stark Tower, which serves as a hub until the Mandarin's Palace stage. After that, they are relocated to Sanctum Sanctorum, Dr. Strange's home. Then, after beating Mephisto's Realm, everyone heads off to Asgard (which seemingly works more like a hub than the others, since all other levels - except possibly for Niffleheim - ARE in Asgard), and from there to Attilan, when Uatu saves the heroes' bacons from Dr. Doom. After fetching the items necessary to beat him, they go back to Earth, as it is being modified by Doom, and stay at a Doom-themed Stark Tower before heading off to Latveria. In total, five hubs (or four if you count both iterations of Stark Tower as the same).
 * Spiritual predecessor series X-Men Legends used the X-mansion in the first game and various temporary bases in the second.
 * Folklore uses the town of Doolin as a hub for getting into the various Netherworld realms and forwarding the plot in the world of the living.
 * The sub-games of the Kingdom Hearts series like to use this trope: Castle Oblivion in Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, The Castle That Never Was in Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2, and Disney Castle in Kingdom Hearts coded.
 * The village in Arcanus Cella in Cla Dun.
 * The original Diablo had the town of Tristram, where you were given quests and sold loot. Also, every four or five dungeon levels, a portal directly to that level would open, making backtracking easier. The sequel gave us a hub in each of the four (five with the expansion) Acts: Rogue's Camp, Lut Gholein, Kurast Docks, Pandemonium Fortress, and Harrogath. They served the same purpose as Tristram, though the portal mechanic has been enhanced with Waypoints, which allowed you to go anywhere you already visited.
 * The town of Redmont in Wanderers from Ys and The Oath in Felghana.
 * Most of the major areas in WonderBoy III: The Dragon's Trap/Curse are directly connected to the starting town.
 * The main plot of Bastion revolves around rebuilding it using city cores that picked up from various levels in the world map. The levels are not directly connected to the Bastion; rather, the hero flies to the levels from the titular Hub Level.
 * Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure features a similar mechanic, rebuilding the Core of Light in the Ruins Hub Level using collected Plot Coupons from one stage after another.

Adventure

 * Myst used the titular island as a sort of hub from which the protagonist traveled to other odd locations.
 * Riven (the sequel) similarly had a hub area from which any of the other areas could be quickly accessed, but in an inversion, reaching it was one of the main goals of the game.
 * Myst III: Exile also did it with J'nanin, and like Myst, it used the other ages as Plot Coupon-retrieval levels.
 * Myst IV: Revelation continued the theme with each of the three game worlds being connected only to the first world, Tomahna.
 * In Myst V: End of Ages the various game worlds were connected by interdimensional platform things to the first area, on K'veer.
 * Finally, in Uru, any area the player reached could be quickly returned to from the hub world Relto, which in turn could be instantly reached from any area.

First-Person Shooter

 * An interesting variant in Halo 3: ODST: You start the game playing as The Rookie; during the combat-drop at the start of the game, the Rookie gets separated from the rest of the squad, and the landing knocks him unconscious for six hours. When he wakes up, he wanders the nighttime city streets (the hub) trying to find his squad. When you find a clue as to what happened to them, the game goes into a playable Flash Back where you control the squad member related to the clue you just found as the Rookie. When the flashback ends, you return to the Rookie, and go looking for another clue.
 * Possibly the most surreal example is in Quake, where it even functions as a menu system and can be played as a deathmatch map. This allowed for the hardest difficulty to be hidden within the hub. (The other three difficulties? They are the hub's entrances.)
 * Clive Barker's Undying had whatever themed enemies populated the next level begin infesting the Covenant estate as a hint of where to go next.
 * The faction-specific Sanctuary in PlanetSide. The planet doesn't have a name, it's just NC/TR/VS Sanctuary. This is were platoons ready themselves to travel through a warp gate for a vehicle/dropship assault or use the HART Shuttle.
 * The first two Turok games had these. The one in the second game was even named The Hub.
 * Wolfenstein (2009) has this in the form of the town of Isenstadt; all locations in the game are either in or around it, and can be accessed via its streets or sewers.
 * Hexen introduced support for hub levels to the Doom FPS engine. Their presence both increased the areas players needed to search to find keys and triggers, and by ensuring the player would keep moving between them, allowed the side levels to be more strongly themed than would be the case if they were standalone levels as with the game's predecessor.
 * Tek War was one of the first games to feature a Hub, in this case a subway station.
 * Catacomb Apocalypse might have been one of the first games to feature this.
 * Though the earlier Catacomb 3-D also had elements of this, as far as I recall.
 * The Marathon total conversion Erodrome is one of the few mods of this engine to do this; it uses multiple copies of the level with different entry points. Likewise for the fan-made sequel Marathon Rubicon.

Mario games

 * The Hub Level really came into its own with Princess Peach's Castle and the surrounding grounds in Super Mario 64. The castle even had 15—well, nine, really, if you don't count the cap course and Bowser's world stars—stars of its own.
 * Super Mario 64 was so successful it can most likely be seen as the Trope Codifier.
 * Delfino Plaza in Super Mario Sunshine.
 * The Comet Observatory in Super Mario Galaxy is rather small with relatively little to explore, compared to the previous two examples. No secret stars, but it did have extra galaxies outside of the main observatories, though that doesn't really count.
 * The Starship Mario in the sequel can't really be called a hub in the classical sense, since the game returns to the World Map format used in the 2-D games and New Super Mario Bros.. It's more a sandbox where you can practice all your moves and get basic advice on how to play the game - more like the Castle Garden from 64 than the castle itself.
 * Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time used Peach's Castle like in Super Mario 64, with warps to the past, in a (fairly) rare RPG example.
 * Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has the Pipe Cavern late in the game.
 * And the Paper Mario games had Toad Town, Rogueport/Rogueport Sewers, and Flipside/Flopside.
 * The Wario Land series has a few Hubs. Wario Land 4 has the Golden Pyramid, and Wario Land: The Shake Dimension has his erm... Garage.
 * Wario World has Treasure Square.
 * Averted in Super Mario 3D Land. It's the first 3D Mario game not to have a hub.

Platformer

 * Epic Games' first Jill of the Jungle game uses this between levels. At first things are linear and it seems like a gimmick, but soon the same key-collecting and powerup-collecting mechanics from the levels themselves become necessary to progress between levels, and reaching the secret level requires some backtracking in the hub. Mercifully, the hub doesn't provide any enemies or ways for you to die. The second game had a purely linear progression while the third game adopted a top-down overworld.
 * Kirby's Adventure may be the first game that used the same engine in the "between levels" segments as in the stages themselves.
 * Kirby and the Amazing Mirror had a MASSIVE hub level that had more and more accessible areas as you hit switches in the levels.
 * Whoopie World in Rocket: Robot on Wheels.
 * Station Square, Egg Carrier, and Mystic Ruins in Sonic Adventure.
 * Soleanna in Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (split into three hubs), of the Talk to Everyone Fake Longevity variety.
 * Each world in the 360 and PS3 version of Sonic Unleashed has its own hub; the Wii and PS2 versions have to contend with static World Maps instead.
 * Sonic Advance 3 features hubs for all seven zones.
 * The 360/PS3 version of Sonic Generations has one big 2.5D White Void Room Hub that serves as an "interactive menu" for selecting levels/bosses, talking to Sonic's friends, accessing extra content, etc.
 * Various Theme Park Versions of real-world locations in the Sly Cooper series.
 * Only the first game actually played this straight. The second and third game actually made the locations itself the main stages of the missions. There will be some few "mini-areas" in it, but generally a lot of the missions take place in the hub itself.
 * The Gallery of Shame in Stretch Panic.
 * Whispering Rocks Camp in Psychonauts is a good example, since the actual levels are inside the brains of the residents.
 * The Collective Unconscious serves as a mini-Hub of sorts, allowing you to access people's brains even when they are not present in the actual Hub.
 * Many Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon games have a Hub to connect their different levels.
 * Most Crash game hubs from Crash 2 onwards were small rooms with a bunch of doors, but Crash Team Racing had a bigger hub akin to Diddy Kong Racing. Twinsanity and Tag Team Racing have one hub per world.
 * The original Spyro somewhat adverted the trope, as the hubs were actually levels on their own, complete with foes and the like (with the exception of the last world, which played this trope straight).
 * Gruntilda's Lair in Banjo-Kazooie.
 * Banjo-Tooie subverts this trope both by making its hub, the Isle O' Hags, one of the biggest, most intricate hubs ever and by having lots and LOTS of secret connections between levels without needing to pass through the hub.
 * And then they topped that again with Showdown Town in Nuts & Bolts. Rare claims it is the largest hub level it has ever created. It's only the size of a small city, apparently.
 * DK Isle in Donkey Kong 64.
 * Arguably, Windy in Conker's Bad Fur Day.
 * Chakan: The Forever Man on the Genesis/Mega Drive.
 * Used rather jarringly in Metroid Fusion, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid: Other M in the form of the Main Deck, Temple Grounds, and Main Sector respectively. Jarring in the sense that the game series is much more well known for organically connected areas that don't particularly revolve around a central point. Though to call these three areas simple hub worlds isn't particularly fair, as they are just as fleshed out as any other area, they just happen to be the main connections to the other areas of the games.
 * It's justified anyway, in Fusion and Other M you're inside a space station so a hub is understandable, and in Echoes the Luminoth specifically built the great temple at the center of their other three dwelling areas on Aether, hence, the hub area.
 * The Mega Man Zero series has the three incarnations of the La Résistance Base as a hub for missions: one is set in a city deep underground (1st game), the second is more elaborate with a harbor and turrets (2nd and 3rd), while the last is a two-truck trailer, with Area Zero just next door.
 * All of the 3D Gex games have one of these. The second game has just one, the third has four, three of which are also proper levels.
 * The Outback in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue. However, instead of walking around it normally, you drive around it in a four-by-four. It's faster than walking, thankfully, because the outback is pretty big...
 * Rainbow Cliffs, in the first game.
 * Lode Runner 2 had one, aptly titled World Hub. It was rather nice to look at, partially because one of the coolest of the game's seven tilesets (called Jump Station) was dedicated to it exclusively. You couldn't even use it with the in-game Level Editor unless you hacked your level files.
 * Braid plays this straight with Tim's house, but uses it to shed some insight on the internal nature of his journey.
 * An early example for platformers is The Addams Family for the SNES. Entering the mansion leads to the Hall of Doors. Each one leads to a different series of rooms which in another game would count as a world. Some of these "worlds" even connect one another.
 * Jett Rocket's ship is a tiny version, with switches that lead to the level maps.
 * Spelunky features the hub in which you unlock shortcuts to deeper levels by paying increasingly exorbitant prices which you will have to pay for within at least three playthroughs.
 * The first Jak and Daxter has three hub worlds, each providing access to three different areas. Getting enough Power Cells in a world unlocks a fourth area which connects to the next hub world (or, in the case of the third, to the final level), giving the impression of traversing across one massive world instead of between a few disconnected areas. While the hub worlds themselves have no enemies, each one does have eight Power Cells of its own, though most are of the "bring X Precursor Orbs to Y person" variety.
 * Jak II has Haven City, which has several gates scattered throughout that provide access to outlying areas which act more as levels in the traditional sense. However, unlike the first game's hub worlds, the vast majority of the game's plot occurs in Haven City, and the city itself houses quite a few of the game's missions as well.
 * While Daxter also features Haven City as a hub world, in this game it's only a small section of the city, and it's a hub world in a much more traditional sense than the Jak II version.
 * The pod in LittleBigPlanet.
 * Dustforce originally had a single massive hub level with stages scattered around it, clustered according to theme. This tended to confuse players as to where they should go, and as to the relative difficulty of stages, so early May 2012, coinciding with the release of the Mac version and the level editor, it was overhauled. Now, there's a small central hub containing the multiplayer, tutorial, level editor, and custom maps, as well as doors to the four areas or "themes." Within these, doors are arranged so that easier levels are easier to get to and usually closer to the door back to the main hub.
 * Levels in FHBG are grouped into sets of four behind doors. After all four are completed, the player can enter an elevator to the next set of four.
 * Yooka-Laylee has the Hivory Towers, which is intended to act as a throwback to Gruntilda's Lair in Banjo-Kazooie.

Puzzle

 * Portal 2's co-op mode features a hub area that connects the mode's five test courses. What you can access is determined by the farthest test chamber you or your partner have made it to, with any test courses/chambers beyond that locked and inaccessible. This effectively means that a first-time co-op player can access every test chamber from the start if their partner has completed them all, but then may find later chambers locked if they later switch to a partner who hasn't progressed as far. It also allows players to skip test chambers or even entire courses if they want. Because of this, a first-time player can literally go from the calibration course to the final test chamber and see the credits in a whopping ten minutes if they have the right partner.
 * In a rare example, you can literally kill your robot off by jumping into the Bottomless Pit below while in the hub, which GLaDOS proceeds to mock you or even be confused at how you died in an area that wasn't a part of the test. Since your robot always respawns after death with no ill repercussions, this example is most likely Played for Laughs.

RPG - Eastern

 * Makaitoushi SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend had The Tower, which fits this trope in spades.
 * Chrono Trigger has (after a certain point in the plot) the End of Time, where you can access all the gates you've been through, as well as where your extra party members wait for you to use them.
 * Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls, with most of the trainers and relatively quick and easy access to most of the rest of Lordran after you unlock the shortcuts.

RPG - MMO

 * EverQuest originally did not have a Hub Level, and instead let characters wander the entire world on foot to get to the various dungeons and adventure areas. With the release of the Shadows of Luclin expansion a Hub Level called "The Nexus" was created that had portals to and from 4 of the 5 continents in the world and merchants that would sell to any character (and was located on the moon, essentially a sixth continent for gameplay). With the release of the next expansion, Planes of Power a new Hub Level called the "Plane of Knowledge" was created: an extraplanar city with trainers for all classes, shops selling almost everything that Player Characters would ever need to buy at a store, and portals to every single city in the game (which seriously cut down on the games Nintendo Hard travel element)
 * One of the dungeons in the MMO Asheron's Call became known as the Hub because it contained within it portals to most of the games major towns and cities. As a direct result of this the large chamber at the start of the dungeon became the best place to meet other players and trade items. It ended up being the most populous place in the game.
 * While rather small in comparison to some of the other examples, the Null Chamber from zOMG serves as both a respawn point, a transportation hub (provided you've attuned yourself to the relevant crystal), and the only place in the game world that allows you to power up and rearrange your rings.
 * Arguably, the Jita system in EVE Online.
 * Partially why people have begun to avoid the system. Everybody uses it as a hub and now it just kills them with lag.
 * Also it just kills them in general. Undocking in a hauler? Enjoy getting suicide ganked for your cargo.
 * Toontown Online has not one, but six hubs: the Playground in each of the six neighborhoods. These areas are Cog-free and slowly restore your HP. The central area of each Cog HQ could also qualify, as they lead to more areas within the HQ, but they are treated more like the streets are: if you lose your HP, you return to the last Playground you set foot in.
 * This ended up happening inadvertently in World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King. There was already Dalaran, a city with portals to all the other cities. Then that was combined with the ability to enter a queue for nearly any dungeon (within your level range) or PVP area in the entire game from the UI. It led to people never going out into the world for anything once they hit level cap except for the occasional raid (dungeons using a large number of people) or grinding professions. Blizzard has attempted to fix this, but now they've added a way to queue for raids from anywhere alongside the system for dungeons and PVP, which is kind of the opposite of solving the issue.
 * The Frozen Throne makes a dramatic break from tradition with the Orc campaign. Instead of a long 6-9 chapter linear campaign like the others, this one has three chapters, each consisting of multiple areas. The first one has a large main area, with pathways leading to remote valleys and caves that must all be visited at one point (sometimes multiple times too). The second one has a main area with various dungeons and side quests, and several equally large areas where the main quests take place. Some of these aren't seen again after your first visit. The last chapter only consists of two areas: a search and destroy mission and a massive Defense of the Ancients style battle.
 * The city of Stormreach in Dungeons and Dragons Online is essentially this, though it was more prevalent in earlier versions of the game.
 * Vindictus has the town of Colhen and the city of Rocheste, from where you travel to instances that make up the majority of the game's action.
 * Adventure Quest Worlds has one in the town of Battleon, where everyone first spawns upon beginning a game session and where the latest content can be accessed.
 * The Republic and Imperial Fleets in The Old Republic are the Hubs for players instead of the capital planets Coruscant and Dromund Kaas, surprisingly. The fleets contains shops for everything you need in the game, skill trainers for class/crew and also the entrances to dungeon raids (Flashpoints and Operations) via shuttles.

RPG - Western

 * In Ultima Underworld II, Britannia acts as something of a hub for the various worlds you must visit.
 * Depending on the chapter, The Witcher demonstrates this in variations or averts it completely. The Epilogue has no clear Hub, the first and fourth chapters are too wide open a sandbox to identify a Hub. The second chapter has an entire city district as a Hub, in the third chapter when the range of exploration expands, the Hub contracts to a single tower. The war-torn battlefield in the fifth chapter appears to be a Hub at first, but it's really the swamplands. The Epilogue is a linear rail of No Return.
 * BioWare games since Throne of Bhaal often have this:
 * Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal gave the protagonist a personal Pocket Dimension where he/she could escape to with their party from almost any location and come right back. Notable for the fact that neither of the original games had anything similar.
 * Knights of the Old Republic gave you the Ebon Hawk, a Cool Starship where you always returned before traveling to another world. KotOR II recycled the Ebon Hawk, despite replacing most of the main cast including the protagonist. Additionally, it serves as the residence of the party members who are not on your current strike team.
 * The SSV Normandy plays the same role in Mass Effect 1 and is replaced with Normandy SR-2 in Mass Effect 2.
 * The Warden's Party Camp in Dragon Age: Origins is, perhaps the straightest example: it is a (for the most part) perfectly safe location where you can travel to whenever you have access to the global map to heal, sell loot, and talk with your companions. It is implied that the camp is set up anew when you enter a major location (which is why you never have to travel far to reach it) but the layout is always the same. Also, becomes your hub in Denerim late in the game (though the Party Camp is still accessible).
 * In the Expansion Pack Awakening, your own castle-fortress Vigil's Keep quite naturally acts as your hub, though the city of Amaranthine is just a frequented. In the endgame,.
 * Dragon Age II doesn't have a single designated hub, as each companion, as well as Hawke, has their own Home Base across Kirkwall. However, you will likely be visiting the Hanged Man tavern very often, considering how it is a) a mostly safe location, b) the Home Base for two characters at once, and contains c) a merchant (Act II onwards) and d) an item for changing your active party roster.
 * Dungeon Siege had a teleporter system in its Utraen Peninsula multiplayer maps. The actual central location was just a small platform floating in blackness with a fountain and a bunch of teleport pads. It was called the "Helios Utrae Basilicus," or "H.U.B." for short.

Shoot 'Em Up

 * No More Heroes takes place in the city of Santa Destroy, which may seem like a Wide Open Sandbox to the untrained eye, but is practically more of an extremely elaborate hubworld where the player can take menial part-time jobs and low-paying assassination gigs between tackling the game's boss levels.

Roguelike

 * The guild and the surrounding town in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games.
 * Your home base in Zettai Hero Project.

Simulation

 * Timber's Island in Diddy Kong Racing for a rare Driving Game example of a Hub Level.

Survival Horror

 * A trope in horror games is to have the hub level become less safe every time you return to it. Since the hub level is usually a safe area, it can be a good way of invading the player's sense of security.
 * The Roivas Mansion in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was one of the first to do this.
 * It may have been perfected in Silent Hill 4: The Room, in which the titular room was the Hub
 * Amnesia: The Dark Descent has multiple hub levels. As you complete the levels within them, weird bloody growths come out of the walls and fountains fill with blood, but you're always safe from monsters.

Turn-Based Strategy

 * Nippon Ichi strategy games frequently use these:
 * The Disgaea games have relatively small hubs with a gate and a "Dimensional Guide" to help you through to each of the levels. In the first game, it's the Overlord's Castle. In the second game, it's Adell's hometown. The third's is the lobby of Maritsu Evil Academy, and the fourth's is the lobby of the Hades prison facility (Though it can later be any map that you've cleared/made).
 * Phantom Brave uses the island Marona lives on.
 * Makai Kingdom uses Zetta's little pad in the void.
 * Zettai Hero Project uses the main character's secret base. You can even customize the facilities.

Wide-Open Sandbox

 * In Yume Nikki, the strange world outside your dream home serves as a Hub Level, called the Nexus. It featured a weird Aztec silhouette floating in a black background, with bizarre doors, all of which were unique, floating the in the abyss as your gateways.
 * Your home planet/colonies in the Space phase of Spore.
 * The X-Universe games starting with Terran Conflict have the "Gate Hub". It's a large Big Dumb Object that fulls the entire sector, which allows you to modify the jump gate network. The Hub has 3 sets of jump gates, which upon your command, will link "between" two sets of gates, allowing you to link the edges of the X-Universe together. You could for example, set the HUB to link a race's homeworld to their distant colonys, so that only one jump is needed instead of say, twenty jumps. A popular location for the Player Headquarters, as the sector rarely has enemies in it (unless you link it to a Xenon or Pirate sector), and is one jump away from the rest of the sectors in the universe.

Real Life

 * Disney Theme Parks: Central Plaza, located at the end of Main Street, USA in both Disneyland and Disneyworld, connects directly to the four major themed "lands"--Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland, as well as Mickey's Toontown Fair. It is even has The Hub as an alternate name.
 * The novel Utopia has the titular theme park being very similar to this.
 * In the same Vein as the Disneyland Example, the Port of Entry at Islands of Adventure, (part of Universal Orlando Resort) originally functioned as a Hub of sorts. Seuss Landing and Marvel Superhero Island were easily accessed, while the other islands could be accessed quickly by boat. The boat service is now defunct, however.
 * Citywalk, also at Universal Orlando, is a straight example, connecting all the hotels, parks, and attractions. It even features scenery shifts when someone is approaching one of the theme parks. The area closer to Islands of Adventure begins to resemble the Port of Entry, while the entrance for Universal Studios contains it's iconic globe fountain and giant arc entrance.
 * Real-life cities are usually like this, especially in sparsely populated areas such as the Midwest US and eastern Russia; the spread of railroads in fact turned nowheresvilles like Worcester, Massachusetts into major hubs by virtue of being convenient transfer points. (Subverted in the case of Bielefeld, Germany, where the "Bielefeld Conspiracy" (the meme that Bielefeld doesn't actually exist despite having a population of 300,000) has to do with the fact that a) Bielefeld is a major city essentially in the middle of nowhere (at least by European standards) and b) the nearest major railroad trunk never goes anywhere near the city center).