10 Video Games That Punish You For Being Unlucky

Legendary educational game The Oregon Trail was designed to teach children about the grim realities of American pioneer life, and that it certainly did.

The entire game is centered around the idea that a frontiersman can die at any time for one of many unexpected reasons, through no real fault of their own.

If Bad Luck ever had its own video game, it would surely be The Oregon Trail and its various sequels, whereby players and their party of settlers can catch cholera, measles, or typhoid, get bitten by a snake, be devoured by a bear, shot, crushed by a wagon, drowned in a nearby river, or most infamously succumb to the throes of dysentery.

There's rarely a rhyme or reason to any of it - characters will catch illnesses out of nowhere and die without sentiment. The sequels also introduced the mechanic that once the leader of the party dies, it's Game Over.

This ruthless approach is of course part and parcel of the game's design, to underline the harshness of 19th century life and how far civilisation has come since.