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== Action-Adventure ==
* Perhaps the oldest example of this is the Atari 2600 game ''[[Adventure (
** Possibly subverted in that almost any room can contain items in Game variation 3 (where all objects are placed randomly), and two of rooms that appear in Game 2 and 3 as dead-ends instead appear as important locations in Game 1 (where the layout of the kingdom is smaller and simpler). It's only in Game 2 that those rooms are entirely unimportant.
* Subverted in ''[[Avalon Code]]''. ''every'' room has at least three unique points of interest in them. Even in the cookie-cutter dungeon cells, the points of interest are ''all different''.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** A seemingly empty room in the fourth dungeon of the Dark World turns out to be important later. After bombing the cracked floor in the room above it, making light shine down into it, and bringing a girl you rescued into it, and having her stand in the light, she {{spoiler|freaks out and reveals herself to be the boss}}.
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Oracle
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
*** There's also the hallway at the top of the Kakariko windmill that you need the Longshot to get into. When you get up there and climb to the top you'll find....a chicken. And nothing else. This is presumably to make sure that Kakariko Village doesn't lose its signature sound of clucking, but it's still a strange place to put it.
** The giant egg in ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
* This is the reason one spends hours upon hours of exploring every nook and cranny in ''Super [[Metroid]]''. Even though the game tries to throw you off with several apparently meaningless rooms complete with the 'dead end' background music. Sometimes there really is nothing there, but the player remains unconvinced.
** When you get the X-Ray Scanner, you can finally be sure -- a quick sweep with the scanning beam will reveal any false or breakable walls and any hidden items.
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** The original ''Castlevania'' had a very odd, if not unique, version of the empty room psych: the manual itself told you to be on the lookout for hidden doors to...well, it didn't say what kind of rooms specifically, but it doesn't matter, because in twenty-four years no one has ''ever'' found any such secret doors, because they aren't there. It's still a mystery why the manual even ''said'' they were there. So you could say this was a ''nonexistent'' room psych.
*** The MSX version does have a level with [[Magical Mystery Doors]].
* ''[[The Goonies (
* The ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' games have a lot of these, mainly because lots of the content was cut, leaving areas you can get to, but not leading anywhere. There's even [http://www.thelostworlds.net/ a site about exploring them].
* ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]'' averts this [[Trope]] to legendary degree by filling one of the largest open space virtual worlds ever with almost nothing but [[Scenery Porn]]. There are only 16 enemies in the entire game and unless you get horribly lost, you will only visit half the map getting to them. The remaining half is miles of gorgeous open fields, dark valleys, caves, ruins, cliffs, lakes, deserts, and mountains, all fully explorable and stuffed to the brim with absolutely nothing. However, there are several minor and mostly pointless features scattered around the map.
** Eating white lizard tails increases your strength and eating fruit increases your maximum health. They are in fixed locations but will continually respawn so it doesn't qualify as a [[Treasure Hunt]] sidequest. Lizards are usually (but not exclusively) located at the shrines where you can save your game. [[Captain Obvious|The fruit grows on trees.]]
*** They only respawn if a [[New Game+|new game]] actually, except those at the shrines that respawn once or twice. Once you get the lizard detection stone you realize there are ''a lot'' of them that are not around shrines. The [[
** If you increase your stamina enough you can make it to the secret garden on top of the temple. There you will find an extra special fruit that will affect your maximum health much more dramatically than regular fruit. Unfortunately, in the negative direction.
*** While making your way to the Garden you will pass the very, very long bridge Wander first used to access the temple. If you muster the <s>boredom</s> patience it takes to traverse it you will come to the one and only entrance/exit to the sealed land. A tremendous wind prevents you from walking through. As time wasters go it's a pretty respectable one.
** There is wildlife to be found. Hawks will buzz you as you ride your horse. If they fly close enough you can grab them for a short glide. The same goes for the [[Disturbed Doves|doves]] hanging out back at Mono's place. If you happen to see any fish they can also be grabbed for a ride. Normal lizards everywhere can be killed and eaten to regain health but your health regenerates anyway so why bother? Here and there an invincible turtle.
** In the 5C section of the map you will find the only genuine [[Easter Egg]] in the entire game. Near the shine there is a path down the cliff. Follow it and you will find the beach where Yorda and the horned boy washed up at the end of ''[[
* The ''[[Lord of the Rings]]'' game for the SNES was filled with enormous, sprawling, gigantic... repeating screens. Literally ninety percent of every dungeon is absolutely worthless and serves no purpose other than [[Guide Dang It|confusing the hell out of you and getting you lost.]] And because of lazy graphics design, ''every room looks the same.'' Half the time, you think you're going in a circle, but you're not. It's just another goddamn empty room that looks just like the empty room you passed through a few minutes ago.
* ''[[
* ''[[Enter the Matrix]]'' had an Empty Level Psych. One level in the vampire mansion consisted of walking from one door to another in the same room, then loading the next level. Considering how dodgy the game was, chances are it was just oversight on someone's part.
* The ''[[.hack]]'' series contains a well-known example in an area (field) named Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground - the Hulle Granz Cathedral. It is an entirely vacant map, originally with a constantly overcast night sky, with a single short stone walkway leading from the cathedral to the middle of nowhere, around which was a lake of mist as far as the eye could see. There is absolutely nothing there and it serves no perceivable purpose in the MMO The World as it currently exists. Despite that, every subseries of the ''[[.hack]]'' franchise has featured a plot-relevant visit to the cathedral and many plot-relevant events have occurred there.
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* ''Thief: Deadly Shadows'' had this as almost an entire ''level'', and it was ''the creepiest thing''. Throughout the game, you overhear people talking about an abandoned building called "the Shalebridge Cradle" that's supposedly more haunted than an Indian burial ground. So naturally, you eventually have to break in there. Since this is ''Thief'', the player at this point has been attuned to trying to hear everything going on around them to discern where any enemies are. And there ''are'' sounds, echoes of mad men and children who all died in a fire (the place was an [[Orphanage of Fear|orphanage]] and an [[Bedlam House|asylum]]... ''at the same time''). But that's all there is: Sounds. Shifting shadows. A weird green apple that moves by itself. It's creepy as hell. So of course when you have no place to go except up the stairs, and the door to the attic starts banging REALLY LOUD, and you finally get the courage to open it only to find... nothing there? Complete [[Mind Screw]].
** Oh, but then you find a portrait of a little girl who looks like a minor character in the series up to that point. Turns out she's there as a (friendly) ''ghost'' because that "minor character" is actually an ageless Keeper who ''killed the girl ans stole her skin'' and ''oh God'' life was so much simpler when it was just robbing mansions full of guards!
* The "Adventure Fields" in ''[[
== Adventure ==
* Empty rooms are found painfully frequently in amateur [[Interactive Fiction]]. Many authors implement houses with bare-bones bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, and so on; smarter authors either make these locations more interesting, or omit them with a [[Hand Wave|hand-wave]] along the lines of "There's nothing you need in there."
* There is a 400-story skyscraper in ''[[
* The church in ''[[Shadow of Memories]]''. Exists in every time you travel to, but is nearly always closed off or otherwise unenterable. There is ''nothing'' in there. {{spoiler|Well, you can pick up an energy unit there in medieval times, but that's about it.}}
* One of these was removed from ''[[Myst|Riven]]'' but can [[Dummied Out|still be found in the code]] and in the background of one node. It takes the form of a bookmaking press on Crater Island (because, logically, there ought to be a bookmaking press on the island where they make books) that can be manipulated but serves no purpose. It was removed because playtesters kept assuming it was part of some puzzle.
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* Same goes for ''Yume2kki'', Yume Nikki's fanmade "sequel." There is one room in the graveyard world that is particularly spooky – players call it the "weird room". All it contains is a long hallway with turquoise and green paint splotches and a small gray room with a weird, non-moving twisted creature on the floor. Not exactly an empty room, but the creature does not respond to anything you try to do to it in any way, so it may as well be a wall. There's some [[Hell Is That Noise|really]] [[Musical Spoiler|creepy music]] playing in this area, but nothing actually happens here, and nothing changes when you leave. {{spoiler|Well, at least [[Shmuck Bait|25 out of 26 times nothing happens,]] provided you walked all the way up to the thing before leaving.}}
* Subverted in ''Safecracker'', where what initially looks like a dead-end laundry room actually does contain {{spoiler|the ceiling trapdoor that leads to the final goal}}. Your character at first assumes that this trope is being invoked as a joke by the mansion's late owner.
* In [[
** Not to mention that {{spoiler|if you follow any of the storylines that lead to you entering that room, you are automatically killed before you can actually control the character to do anything in there.}}
* ''[[The Secret of Monkey Island]]'' has the church on Melee Island - one of the first places you see...which is utterly empty for most of the game. Its only use is in the very final part where you are taken there automatically {{spoiler|1=to stop LeChuck and Elaine's wedding.}} You can therefore play through the game without choosing to go into it at all.
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== MMORPG ==
* ''[[
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' initially suffered from this. The earlier games in the 'verse had established the existence of certain places, but the developers simply didn't have time to flesh out the entire world. Placeholders, [[Insurmountable Waist High Fence|Insurmountable Waist High Fences]] or other obstacles were added to (unsuccessfully) keep players away. Many of these locations were fleshed out in subsequent patches or expansions. Notable examples include Silithus, Searing Gorge, Maraudon, Dire Maul, Naxxramas, Karazhan, Zul'Gurub, Ahn'Qiraj, Mount Hyjal, Forlorn Ridge, Outland, Northrend, Black Temple, Icecrown Citadel, Ulduar, Uldum, the Emerald Dream, Grim Batol, Quel'Thalas, Zul'Aman, Gilneas, Blackwing Lair, the Caverns of Time, Undermine, Kul Tiras, and Old Ironforge.
** There is a ''truly'' empty room in Silvermoon City. It has pretty scenery that matches the rest of the city but no [[NPC|NPCs]], no items, no mobs, nothing. Several players have had their brains broken by the presence of this room that is simply ''there''. Even when new trainers for a new profession were added, they were put in an already occupied room rather than in the empty one. It draws large crowds of roleplayers who find the empty room cool. Perhaps this was actually its purpose - to act as a playground for RPers.
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* Rareware are veritable masters of this. Perhaps the most notable is the empty pillar room in Creepy Castle of ''[[Donkey Kong]] 64''; a room with a stone pillar in the middle, a hanging light, and what appears to be an open shaft pouring light down. It's only accessible by one character through a series of transport pads, has a balloon for 10 bananas in it, but is otherwise empty and totally functionless. It borders on [[Mind Screw]] if you try to understand what effing purpose it has.
** It's worth noting that 10 bananas isn't worth much in this game. You need quadrillions of things to get 101% completion, but only about 75% of the bananas.
* ''[[Banjo
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== Western RPG ==
* ''Avencast: Rise of the Mage'' has an area in the academy of magic with three seminar rooms you can walk into... and one, apparently unremarkable, that you can't. Some players nearly drove themselves mad trying to get into that room.
* ''[[
** Certain mods that allow you to run ''Baldur's Gate'' on the [[BG 2]] engine make this almost a [[Game Breaker]]: Some items are cleverly (read: sadistically) hidden in containers that are only [[Pixel Hunt|a few pixels wide]], and these items tend to be very powerful. Using the cyan-highlight trick makes getting these items trivial. One notable example is a powerful Ring of Wizardry, obtainable ''[[Disc One Nuke|twenty minutes into the first game]]'', and making wizards able to cast about five more spells than normal. No big deal for a 15th-level wizard, a ''huge'' deal for a 2nd-level wizard.
* ''[[Divine Divinity]]'' does the same thing ''[[
* ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'' and the Mosaic Crypt in the Weeping Stone Catacombs. The mysterious rusted vents, the worn-to-illegibility scribblings on the tomb walls, the suspiciously lethal traps and even one of the recently deceased Collectors (Gris: ''"...it smells different."'') all suggest there's something special hidden in there. Aside from the massive, conspicuous sarcophagus with an enchanted hammer and some old bones inside, there really isn't. It's been one of the more maddening red herrings in recent CRPGs, most likely caused by the [[Dummied Out|budget/manpower/time/sanity constraints]] so obvious in the Black Isle games of the time.
** The chamber also contains an acid trap, possibly as a [[Shout-Out]] to ''[[The Cube]]'', where a character determines a room to be trapped because of its smell (noticably dry air to be exact) {{spoiler|and the same character's later death via an acid sprinkler}}.
* ''[[Might and Magic|Might And Magic IX]]'' was loaded with these, albeit [[Obvious Beta|somewhat unintentionally]].
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== Eastern RPG ==
* ''Pokémon'' Players have been searching the answer to the following question, ever since ''[[
** It is possible to get into the grass if you go all the way north to Viridian City, where the patches end, then use the walk-through-walls code to enter the patch of grass from the north, onto a panel of grass one tile beyond the east or west edge of the grass. Walking in it will encounter Route 1 Pokémon on Route 1, and (I think) nothing in Pallet. Walking far enough from Pallet will find...[[Wrap Around|a glitchy version of Pallet Town]]. Kick in the face or what?
** And the whole truck issue. There's a singular truck in the game by the S.S. Anne, that's only reachable if you learn Surf before having the SS go away. Since decoration in the game was rare, there were loads of rumours about it holding a Mew. The remakes FireRed and LeafGreen gave a [[Shout-Out]] to this by placing a rare Lava Cookie there instead.
** In ''Pokemon Silver and Gold'', you had Ruins of Alpha Cave. There was [[Urban Legend of Zelda|quite a story about those caves]], a whole special type of pokemon & pokedex associated to it (Unowns & UnownDex) and even an odd radio-station playing. Yet, the players who spent their time exploring it and capturing all Unowns would eventually discover they had been wasting their time, since there is nothing special about it. This was changed in ''[[Pokémon Gold and Silver
** The cathedral (officially called "Foreign Building") in ''[[
** ''[[
*** Rumour has it that the Scorched Slab is a homage to the tale of Amaterasu, and that cave represents the one the goddess hid herself in the myth. And that would be the reason for having TM11 (Sunny Day) there.
** A rom hack of the Generation 3 games had a similar truck, which would reference the original rumor if examined. There was also a patch of grass in ''Gold and Silver'', similar to the one near Pallet, only accessible by wallhacking; there ''were'' actually Celebi in there.
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*** Many of the areas in the Sevii Islands don't really serve any purpose. The ending areas usually hold a somewhat rare item or move tutor at best. The only exception is Mt. Ember which has Moltres.
** There's a house in the Survival Area of Sinnoh that you have to go onto the route just east, walk through grass of tough Pokémon, use Rock Climb to reach the ledge above and run back into town to get to. When you get there, the hiker living there tells you that you just did all of that for nothing, but it was great to finally have guests for once. (At least, he did in ''Diamond and Pearl''. In Platinum it's one of the three move tutor locations.)
* Players of other ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games will find the rooms in ''[[Final Fantasy II (Video Game)|Final Fantasy II]]'''s dungeons strange -- most of them are red herrings, not just empty but rigged with very high encounter rates. You almost always have to fight to leave the room. ''[[
** Savvy players will abuse these rooms to do the game's equivalent of [[Level Grinding]]. In the remakes, where stat increases are much harder to come by, these rooms take on a whole new meaning as ''training'' rooms instead of ''trap'' rooms.
** ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' throws some of these at you in the Sealed Cave. There aren't that many, but getting into one requires that you defeat a Trapdoor monster, which is very powerful and uses an instant death move which is almost impossible to avoid entirely.
** In ''[[
** ''[[
* While there are more than a few rooms empty of enemies or treasure in ''[[Vagrant Story]]'', they all at least lead somewhere, except for one room early in the game which contains only a few enemies and nothing else, leaving you to simply leave the way you came in.
* In ''[[
** Also in "[[
** A popular theory was that Raine's [[Evil Weapon|Devil Arm]] was inside the lighthouse, as it can be found {{spoiler|among the city's ruins}} after {{spoiler|Palmacosta gets destroyed mid-to-late game}}.
* In the first ''[[Paper Mario (
** ''[[
*** The squares on the bookshelf are not unique. They're in most houses in Twilight Town. This only adds to the weirdness. It's possible that it was meant for Beldam and Marilyn to be found there, since after the game, they're friendly (or at least no longer hostile) toward Mario and aren't found anywhere else (they would also seem to fit in in a place like Twilight Town), but they aren't there. Considering that Twilight Town is meant to be creepy (and some think it is) its current use may be an attempt at [[Nothing Is Scarier]], just to confuse the player.
** There are a couple places in Rogueport that serve no important purpose. The house in the background of the flooded sewer area contains a single Star Piece and nothing else. The weird little enclave next to the harbor contains a single Star Piece and a badge. Nobody seems to live in either of these places and, but there's evidence that somebody does and they just sort of went missing or something.
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== Action RPG ==
* This is one of the biggest complaints about ''[[Quest 64]]''. Don't expect most rooms to have anything, lest you be driven to madness; the ''whole gameworld'' is mostly empty. {{spoiler|Just don't get frustrated and ignore the conspicuously large patch of desert in the Barrens...}}
* Dungeons in ''[[
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** There's also two ''incredibly'' hard to access rooms that don't give you anything (possibly something was intended to be there; [[Dummied Out]]?) First, there's the prison level. You're given a code that will open the door of the guy you're trying to rescue. However, there's a cell that opens with a code that isn't written ''anywhere.'' Should you stumble onto it by trying different combinations, the door will open, giving you... nothing! Later, on Jabba's ship, there's a chute you drop through with a switch on the wall. With inhuman split-second timing, you can trigger a door to open... in the lower area you end up in if you fall into a hole in a certain part of the room (it's filled Gamorrean guards, the pig guys from ''[[Return of the Jedi]].'' In this game, they're big-time [[Demonic Spiders]] material, very durable and their axes taking a lot of damage. Close quarters with a zillion of them? YOU WILL DIE.) Fight your way through what was intended to be ''certain death'' for the player, and you can get to a room... that has nothing.
* Many rooms in the ''[[Descent]]'' games contain no useful items (or items you already have), and worse, are rigged with [[Monster Closet]] or [[Teleporting Keycard Squad]] booby traps.
* The ''[[Marathon
* ''[[Killer 7]]'': Despite the intense music in the background, nothing ''ever'' happens to you inside the Vinculum Gates.
* Some maps in ''[[
* ''[[First Encounter Assault Recon|F.E.A.R.]]'' pulls this off with aplomb when you first enter the Armacham office building. You survive an intense firefight on the roof, and then... spend around ten minutes walking through a dimly-lit office building with ''nothing happening'' and you very likely jumping at every little shadow or slight noise. Worse is that there are signs of a struggle everywhere: broken windows, blood, the occasional corpse... but no indication as to what caused any of it. It's almost a relief when the enemies start showing up again half a level later.
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** ''[[Silent Hill 3]]'' has many rooms exclusively filled with monsters and featuring no health, ammo, plot points, nothing. Many players will remember [[That One Level|that one room]] with the decapitated mannequin, or the one with the mirror in Brookhaven Hospital.
** ''Silent Hill4: The Room'' literally and almost entirely ''takes place'' in an empty room.
** ''[[Silent Hill: Shattered Memories]]'' is ''made'' from empty rooms. Considering that enemies appear in scripted sequences built around major plot points and always signaled by a [[Musical Spoiler]] immediately turns everything else into an empty room expedition. The fact that the game manages to remain scary despite of this speaks boldly of its designers, though some might disagree on this point.
* ''[[Galerians]]'' has bathrooms in practically every floor of every building the player can visit in the game. These bathrooms always offer at least one mirror that has the neat effect of actually reflecting the room and player [[Scenery Porn|(kind of a big deal in PSX-era games)]], several open stalls that cannot be entered or even looked into, and almost all (sometimes every bathroom you can enter in a building will) contain urinals. The player can usually "use" the mirror to prompt a thought on the current situation by the main character, but these rooms are otherwise universally useless.
* There's an empty room in the original ''[[Resident Evil]]''. No enemies, no items, no traps, no exits except the one you came in. Turns out it contains a key item in the playthrough with the ''other'' character.
** Rooms like this abound throughout the series, containing nothing at all, a worthless item, or an enemy ambush. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOLiohZMzf4 The music] in ''RE 3'''s empty rooms [[Nothing Is Scarier|is one of the creepiest]].
* ''[[Clive
* ''[[Clock Tower (
* ''[[Fatal Frame]]'' does this a lot. Granted, most of the rooms in the games will ''eventually'' have something in them, but it is often the case that the first time you go through them they will be totally empty. The games also make a point of having you backtrack through previously explored areas which will frequently be empty. [[Nothing Is Scarier|It is really, really creepy.]]
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== Text Adventure ==
* Parodied by ''[[Homestar Runner]]'''s "Thy Dungeonman 3" game, where there really is a room that has nothing in it. It says so.
* Parodied in [[Infocom]]'s ''[[The
* Played incredibly straight in ''[[Glowgrass]]'' where a room is pretty much described as empty. {{spoiler|The cupboards are concealed by touch panels.}}
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