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Empty Room Psych: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|'''''Never''''' provide a dungeon without treasure. The longer they search and find nothing, the more your players will be ''convinced'' that the treasure is bountiful and exceptionally well-hidden. If left unchecked, they will eventually dismantle and excavate the entire site in their search for loot.|'''[[DM of the Rings]] XIX''', "[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=713 A Pinata of Stone]", [[The Rant]].}}
Over decades of play, gamers have been conditioned with the notion that there is no such thing as an "empty" room -- [[The Law of Conservation of Detail]] demands that if a room is placed in a game, it must do ''something'' of value, be it a scripted plot event or NPC, [[Dungeon Shop]], [[Level Grinding|monsters to slay]], [[Inexplicable Treasure Chests]] containing [[Healing Potion|healing items]] or weapons/ammo, [[Plot Coupon|Plot Coupons]] to pick up, etc etc. After all, programmers and writers have limited time and money to do this, so they won't needlessly create a majestic cathedral and fill it with ... empty white space to distract the player from [[Notice This|more important stuff]]. Plus, why torture those players out for a [[
The purpose of this trope is often to keep players on their toes, either by filling the room with enemies (essentially a trap room) or to get the above confused reaction. Players who run into enough consecutive Empty Room Psych's may overlook or ignore a new one, thinking there's {{color|white|[[Self-Demonstrating Article|nothing]]}} in it, which is of course the one that ''does'' have a goodie. Other times it is entirely unintentional, when the developers [[Dummied Out|forgot to remove a room]] that was part of greater expansion. Then again, it could be the designers really ''do'' just want to give us a [[Scenery Porn|pretty room]] for the sake of it.
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** ''Dawn of Sorrow'' has the piano. It plays notes, has two oddly-labeled keys, and has absolutely no significance beyond that it makes sounds. No items, no secrets, nothing.
** ''Symphony of the Night'' has a few, including the one with the confessional.
*** The confessional room is needed to get a specific item for [[
*** You can get grape juice which provides a few hit points. Late in the game, when your constitution is higher, it doesn't amount to much, but when you're first there in the chapel, you can just repeatedly collect grape juice (you can always tell when an attacking ghost shows up instead by the color of their outfits) to build up food items for mondo health increase. Though it does take a while, it's not useless: it's an ever respawning source of hit points, whereas meal tickets are limited.
** ''Portrait of Ruin's'' empty rooms actually serve a purpose: to distract the player. Completing at least one quest requires the player to find a dead-end, seemingly empty room...and wait. Nothing else needs to be done, just...wait.
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== Platformer ==
* There is exactly one intentionally empty dead-end in ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]''. It's called the Game Over Room, from the decoration that matches the message you get upon [[Everything Trying to Kill You|everything succeeding at killing you]]. It's the safest room in the game-- in the Game Over Room, the only thing that can kill you is the suicide button. It even says so right there. {{spoiler|Except it's not actually empty in the full game. It has one of the secret items needed for [[
** The {{spoiler|Ryu Hayabusa room}} has a fake error message box that falls and kills you.
* Similarly, one of the World 3 fortresses in ''[[Super Mario Brothers]] 3'' consists of a few very large, empty rooms (though there is a boss at the end). There is, however, a time limit--and no obvious way out.
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* In ''[[Seiken Densetsu]] III'', in the town of Astoria, there is a house in the top-right corner of the map. Inside the house is... nothing. Just a single room. No treasure, no NPCs, no character monologues, nothing. It serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever and is the only house in the entire game not to feature at least a token NPC. This is somewhat vindicated by {{spoiler|a minor battle occurring in the house during an eerie revisit of Astoria, in one of the game's three final gauntlets.}}
* Most of ''[[Crisis Core]]'''s mission dungeons are made of this. Most would only contain 2 or 3 treasure boxes. Some of the missions on the large plains even contain none.
* ''[[Sailor Moon: Another Story]]'' does this massively, and often in no-encounter settings. The hospital, elementary school and university in Tokyo have many repeated identical rooms with nothing but background objects. Later in the game you come across towns and ruins with whole buildings that contain nothing. Even worse, there are many barrels and similarly-inviting background objects, and only three of these in the whole game have items (necessary for [[
== Action RPG ==
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* 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 Trilogy|Marathon]] 2'' level "Come and Take Your Medicine" has a large outdoor area that serves no purpose other than to get lost in. There's also a destroyable circuit that does nothing, and a door that can only be opened by enemies. "Nuke and Pave" also has a few redundant rooms, and the series as a whole has many "Locked Door Psychs"(doors that never open), and the occasional [[Dummied Out]] (inaccessable) secret room.
* ''[[
* Some maps in ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' are built as such. These are usually meant to be staging grounds for engineers, since the lone entrance makes it easy to defend, but lack of anything inside said room means the engie must leave his nest to retrieve precious metal to build with. These can also turn into serious [[Oh Crap]] moments if you take a wrong turn while running from the enemy and wind up in a room like this, with about a split second to realize the mistake you made before you're gibbed.
* ''[[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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