Cruel Player Character God: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
A subtrope of [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]], this deals with games where the unseen God-like player character can manipulate the in-game universe in such a manner that those little digital souls suffer as much as virtually possible.
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* ''[[Sim Ant]]'', which lets you eat the enemy's babies (and the level editor lets you starve your ants or run them through mazes just to get food)
** Even better, you can feed your enemy's babies to ant lions. You can also completely surround the enemy queen with rocks and she'll slowly starve to death. There's also a setting that allows ants and the spider to talk. If you get a mob of ants to go after a spider, you can watch it freak out.
* In ''Sid Meier's SimGolf'', why build a nice green fairway between the tee and the hole when you could build a giant sand trap, [[media:simgolf-
* Both ''[[Black and White]]'' and its sequel allow for a considerable amount of cruelty, as the player is a literal god. Mortals can be violently thrown, telekinetically battered, or dropped into the sea. While Fire and Bolt miracles are the most obviously violent, even Water can be used sadistically against your own mortals, or opposing factions. Many objects can be ignited and used as projectiles. Additionally, humans can be sacrificed, and torture chambers can be constructed.
** The fact that your people are [[Too Dumb to Live]] makes this a popular approach.
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* Since the ''[[Spore]]'' Creature Creator's release, thousands of videos on [[YouTube]] have been cropping up of horrible, useless creatures made in Spore. Such as the delightful [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnHI_CkK27o "The Depressing Stick."]
** In addition to the comic shown above, [[VG Cats|Leo]] [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=198 has "fun" playing] ''[[Spore]]''.
* ''[[Creatures]]'' may be second only to ''[[The Sims]]'' in pure, unadulterated cruelty potential. For the uninitiated, it's a game where you raise and take care of a collection of cute, cuddly little creatures called Norns, Ettins, and
** The "deadly disease turns them near immortal" variant was actually used in an official (buyable) breed: the Toxic Norns. On the flip side, these critters were harmed by medicines and by ''not'' being infected with anything. Breeding them with "normal" creatures (especially the fragile Treehugger Norns) could have interesting results...
* [http://www.addictinggames.com/interactivebuddy.html This game]. Sure, you can toss the little guy baseballs to catch, tickle him, lead him around, or squirt him with a hose. You can also toss him grenades to catch, set him on fire, make the screen randomly explode, and hit him with all manner of dangerous and painful objects.
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**** The first time you chuck the buddy a grenade he picks it up and examines it with a ? above his head. Then it explodes in his face. Satisfying.
* ''[[Viva Pinata]]''. Yes, ''[http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=227 Viva Pinata.]''.
* ''[[Rollercoaster Tycoon]]'' allows quite a bit of this. You can build roller coasters to nowhere and still run
** You can also drown people by simply picking them up with the tweezers and dropping them into a convenient body of water. This seems to have no real consequences, making it an easy way to deal with the occasional stubborn bastard who never seems to be happy no matter what you do.
** This trope combined with [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgXD11ivcFQ ragdoll physics] is pretty much one of the few reasons why people are still playing ''RollerCoaster Tycoon 3'' nowadays.
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* ''[[Zoo Tycoon]]'' allows you to be cruel to both humans AND animals, satisfying all of your abusive needs. Create one of every animal and set them loose in a zoo (which has an electric fence around the entrance) full of guests. After they virtually kill all of the guests in the zoo, they start killing ''each other''. Last one left standing is the winner.
** The winning combo: setting the T-Rex (any dino, but the [[Shout-Out]] is only really funny with a T-Rex) loose. The dinosaur expansion pack allowed the big ones to rampage through buildings, reducing them to rubble. What happens when he smashes through the bathroom? [[Jurassic Park|Exactly what you would think.]]
* In ''[[Dungeon Keeper]]'' the sheer variety of tortures you can inflict include: Slapping your creatures (and any unfortunate enemies who you've captured) with your omnipresent hand, dropping ANY creature (including captured enemies) into a torture room once you've built it (though the Mistress creature [[Too Kinky to Torture|enjoys that a little too much]]) where they'll either convert to your cause or die after (presumably) long hours on a rack or electric chair, leaving creatures to rot in your prison to later rise as a skeleton, intentionally locking creatures away from food or rest, building a stone bridge over lava and then '''selling''' it out from under a creature (though this doesn't work on flyers or heat-resistant beings), and casting your damaging spells
** The game encourages 'Pour encourager les autres'. Imps working slowly? Fireflies slacking? Put them all in a room with a locked door, pick one, and ''slap it to death''. The survivors will work ever so much better.
** There is an exquisitely cruel detail in how torture works. An enemy creature is usually brought to the prison after having having had its butt owned by the player's creatures, and so being rather lacking in health. Torture will ''always'', eventually, convert enemy creatures to your side, but will slowly decrease their health during the process. Hence, if the creature has enough health it'll convert (some random time variables are thrown in), otherwise it'll die. The solution is to nurse the creatures back to health ''while torturing them'', by feeding them or healing them through magic.
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* The iPod Touch/iPhone game app ''[[Pocket God]]'' makes you the god of a tiny group of islands. You can either give them gifts (coconuts and fish) and make them dance... ''or'' you can maim/kill them in one of a dozen or more ways: drowning, lightning electrocution, hurricane, fire ants, [[Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass|magnifying glass]], vampire attack, shark feeding, manipulating gravity, volcano eruption, meteor crush, earthquake, squid feeding, Tyrannosaurus Rex attack and more to come.
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' allows you to get very creative with the dwarves' fates, including but not limited to locking them in a room with no food, drowning them, dropping them from great heights and flooding their bedrooms with lava.
** Since [[Game Mod
# Edit the game files so that cats have a body temperature more than three times the surface temperature of the Sun.
# Watch the cats all explode into mushroom clouds of fiery death and destruction which kill all the dwarves and lay waste to the countryside.
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*** More recent versions have hidden this particular bit of information in a rather <s>difficult to access without crashing the game</s> fun place, making this impossible. However, you ''can'' set the boiling point for, say, goblin fat at nearly absolute zero, causing them to explode into a cloud of pink mist the moment they walk onto the map.
** [[Screw You, Elves|No one likes elves]]. [[The Scrappy|No one]]. So in many cases, elven caravans arriving to trade at your depot will abruptly find that someone has inexplicably locked them in with floodgates and started filling the depot with water. And after they drown, you can steal their stuff.
** And, of course, there are the enemies. Sure, you can rig the outside of your fortress to turn invading goblins into [[Chunky Salsa Rule|a faint red smear]], but that's boring. Why do that when you can [[Pointless Doomsday Device|flood the planet]] [[Kill It with Fire|with magma]] and turn them into [[Man On Fire|!!invading goblins!!]]? Or there's the... um, "humane" alternative: cage traps. When they go off, you will ''always'' get one nasty thing in a cage, be it a goblin, kobold, rampaging zombie carp, or dragon. So what do you do with the things you can't tame?
** If you can think of it, there's a Dwarf Fortress player out there thinking up ways to do it. This extends from "[[Video Game Caring Potential|build a mist-generator in your main room to make your dwarves deliriously happy]]" to "[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=25967.0 figure out a way to trap and slaughter friendly merpeople because their bones are worth a lot of money.]"
*** Note that last one was considered so cruel the maker of the game dropped the value of mer bones in the next patch. For those unwilling to click the link, can you say {{spoiler|"Force-breeding merfolk to slaughter their mer-babies for valuable, valuable ivory?"}}
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* ''[[Doshin the Giant]]'' gives the player character a [[Super-Powered Evil Side]] primarily to allow the player to smash and torture the islanders to their heart's content.
* The mobile game ''X Construction'' sees you building bridges out of steel girders & support cables so that trains can cross a gorge. ...Or, you can deliberately build a bridge that will snap when the train is halfway across and laugh at the screams of the passengers as the train tumbles into the pit.
* ''[[Trainz Railroad Simulator]]'' is meant for railway enthusiasts to simulate managing and operating trains. However, some twisted people use the game solely for the purpose of doing things like derailing the trains, crashing the train when it crosses a turntable, and doing what [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDUOmzOrJ_4 this guy] did and initiating a huge crash at 1000
* In the ''[[Lightning Warrior Raidy]]'' games, losing against a floor boss will result in a scene with Raidy being sexually violated by said boss, followed by an endgame message about how she spent the rest of her life as a submissive sex slave. This being an eroge, most players will have Raidy lose at least once against each boss just to see this (and it is necessary to unlock the secret ending). Of course, if Raidy wins, ''she'' is the one who violates the boss in turn, so the player wins either way.
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