10 Video Games That Let You Destroy The World

9. Stellaris

Stellaris Colossus planet killer
Paradox Interactive

Set in the distant future, Stellaris is all about navigating the vastness of space, growing your budding civilization into a full-on intergalactic empire.

Depending on your choices, you can either be a little goody-two-shoes and engage in diplomatic relationships with various other life forms, forging trade agreements and alliances for the overall good of the galaxy. Alternatively... you can blow all other sentient life out of the sky. The choice is yours.

Unfortunately for those who favour destruction over peace, the game didn't feature any world-demolishing mechanics in its earlier days, but the Apocalypse DLC added in a planet-killing ship called "Colossus", a mighty super-weapon that can eradicate entire worlds with an enormous, Death Star-esque beam of energy.

The trade-off here is that Colossus has no weapons to defend itself, and you can only construct one at a time. Still, considering how utterly helpless other planets are against its laser beam, it's the perfect tool if you want to become a scarily dominant force within the galaxy.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!