Lost in Blue



A series of wilderness survival games by Konami, for the Nintendo DS and Wii. Lost in Blue games tend to be only thematically related to each other. In the US, the Lost in Blue series is treated as a Spiritual Successor to the earlier Game Boy Color game series Survival Kids, while in Japan, the series has been continuously branded with the Survival Kids name and there's no true difference between them.

The premise of the games is generally that you are stranded on an island with different areas to explore. You have meters that cover different human bodily functions, and you need to find food and water in order to survive, and eventually your goal is to escape from the island. The games usually feature a male character and a female character that in the different games, can range anywhere on the Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality from The Load, The Chick, to Action Girl.

This game provides examples of:

 * Action Girl: Amy from Lost in Blue 2 and the original Survival Kids girl, as well as in Shipwrecked.
 * Bittersweet Ending: One of the possible endings in Lost in Blue is unlocked when you spend 365 days on the island without finding a way off. Suddenly there's a cutscene where the two characters realize that they'll never get off this island, but it doesn't really bother them anymore. There two similar cutscenes in the original Survival Kids, found after 100 days--one if you've rescued the other kid, and one if you haven't.
 * Blind Without Em: Attempted justification for Skye's inability to do anything in Lost in Blue.
 * Block Puzzle: For the most part, puzzles in this game are insultingly easy. The real challenge of the puzzles is keeping yourself alive while solving them.
 * Boss in Mooks Clothing: The Leopard in Survival Kids.
 * Bottomless Bladder: You have a hunger meter, thirst meter, health meter and fatigue meter, but no bladder meter.
 * Cool Clear Water: Averted. In the beginning of Lost in Blue, there's a freshwater river that has fish swimming in it, and your character comments that it looks safe to drink. There's also a small hole in a temple you have to go through that is apparently safe to drink from.
 * The Chick: Skye
 * Darker and Edgier: The third game is considerably darker than the others.
 * Deserted Island: Although it wasn't always deserted, as the ruins show.
 * Door to Before: The ruin stages.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending
 * Edge Gravity
 * Emergency Weapon: Should Jack run out of spears in Lost in Blue 2, he can take enemies on with his bare hands. Punches hit for puny damage, but successful dodging can lead to him taking down a tiger like a man.
 * Escort Mission: Since Skye is practically helpless, you have to aid her in doing difficult things like crossing stepping stones, or climbing up ledges.
 * Fake Difficulty: The puzzles are not challenging. Keeping yourself from dying of thirst and hunger is challenging.
 * Fishing Minigame: There are actually three methods of fishing--traps, spears, and fishing rods. In the Lost in Blue games, fish is the most efficient food source.
 * Feminine Women Can Cook: Skye is in charge of making the meals, and finding special ingredients is a minigame you can do while playing as her.
 * Gotta Catch Them All: There are many different kinds of fish, animals and plants that you have to collect for Hundred Percent Completion, and that's not even getting into the different kinds of tools, furniture and food you can make.
 * Guide Dang It: Want 100% completion? Better look up a guide! Especially in Lost in Blue 2, where the final plant is little more than a pixel.
 * Hundred Percent Completion: There's an encyclopedia of items that you can fill as an Self Imposed Challenge.
 * Hyperspace Arsenal: An odd example. Your characters' bags have enough capacity to hold exactly twenty items. It doesn't matter what they are. Just twenty items. One has to wonder how Jack and Amy can only manage to hold twenty leaves at one time, yet somehow manage to shove twenty logs down their asses.
 * Insurmountable Waist Height Fence: Generally averted with the male characters who can climb. Depending on the game, female characters may be hindered by things actually intended to aid mobility like bridges, ledges or stepping stones. In Survival Kids, both male and female characters are unable to cross shallow water.
 * Island Help Message: In Survival Kids, the way to get the quickest ending was to build one of these on the beach. You'd then get rescued. (It is, of course, a long ways from the Best Ending, which you need to unlock New Game Plus mode--in which your character rescues the other child on the island, befriends them, the two of you escape on a Lost Technology ship, and grow up to get married.)
 * James Bondage: Ken, the male character from the first game, is this if you play as a female character.
 * The Load: In Lost in Blue, whichever character you don't choose ends up as this due to their being badly injured.
 * Item Grinding: Required for Hundred Percent Completion.
 * MacGuffin: The keystones in the original, needed to unchain the ship.
 * Market Based Title: Lost in Blue in the US, Survival Kids in Japan. The first game was called Survival Kids in the US, though.
 * New Game Plus: In the first game, the change is mostly cosmetic, as it allows you to make wolfskin and foxskin caps. In Lost in Blue, this lets you play as Skye, the female character.
 * Nobody Poops
 * No Export for You: The Japan-only sequel to the original GBC game, Survival Kids 2.
 * No Periods Period: Probably justified in Survival Kids at least, as the characters are presumably young enough to have plausibly not hit puberty yet.
 * Not Distracted By the Sexy: The player character in Lost in Blue 3 is willing to give the best possible bath they can allow to any character by focusing on the fire underneath the makeshift bathtub instead of staring at said character.
 * Oxygen Meter: In Lost in Blue 2 onwards, characters have a limited swimming ability.
 * Pixel Hunt: In one game the last slot in the plant section of the glossary is a dandelion located in a corner of a certain area of the island that is inaccessible until you get really far along in the game. You have to go hunting for a little weed that is almost indistinguishable from the background. And even though a little box pops up whenever you walk over an item, it's still agonizingly hard to find.
 * Poison Mushroom: There are eight different kinds of mushrooms that you can find. Their effects differ from game to game; some will burn your throat and thus make your thirst meter go down faster, some will keep your energy meter from going down, some will induce stomachaches, and some will do nothing. Which is which is randomized from playthrough to playthrough, though there are certain ways to tell which is which without chowing down.
 * Robinsonade: Premise of the games.
 * Ruthless Modern Pirates: Some of the games feature other human inhabitants on the island--very, very unfriendly people, though.
 * Simulation Game
 * Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: Varies from game to game.
 * Survival Kids: Purely Aesthetic Gender. The only real difference is that, in New Game Plus, female characters can make fox-skin caps, while male ones can make wolf-skin ones. Otherwise, they're identical.
 * Lost in Blue: The female character is The Load, unable to use stepping stones without assistance, gather resources, or even leave the area immediately surrounding the cave. When playing her as a character all she can do is cook, make rope and take care of animals. The creators attempt to Hand Wave this by stating that the reason she can't stray far is because she lost her glasses.
 * Lost in Blue 2: Due to the complaints about the inequality of the first DS game, Lost in Blue 2 features a female protagonist that has abilities which complement those of the male character. In this game the female character is more of an Action Girl, who excels in some non-traditionally female activities like hunting and swimming.
 * Lost in Blue 3: Better than the original, a step down from Lost In Blue 2, and but not as bad as first impressions. Every kid has their own set of skills. Females have full cooking skills, while males can climb better and hunt. All other skills are unique to the character or shared. The first two kids are very typed though.
 * Lost in Blue: Shipwrecked: About the same as 3, and she comes with a pet dog to boot. Lucy can either be left home while Aiden forages, or can come along to help explore.
 * Standard Status Effects: Poison, paralysis, confusion, and energy boost are the typical ones.
 * Stay in The Kitchen: Skye
 * Team Pet: The monkey in Survival Kids, which you get to name. Shipwrecked also has a dog.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the original Survival Kids, you can feed your partner character anything at all--it won't harm them. If you're feeling mean, you can stuff them with toxic mushrooms or raw seafood.
 * We Cannot Go On Without You: You're dead as soon as one of your characters' health meters reach 0%.