Survival sans the Horror: Let's Play Survival Kids!

Okay, typical licensing screen.....



Our gracious publisher/developer.....



Here we go. Let's Play Survival Kids! Released in 1999 by Konami, this black cart Game Boy Color game is a Zeldesque survival adventure with some mild roguelike elements, where you take control of a boy or girl stranded on a deserted island after a shipwreck. Your main goal is to get off the island or die trying, and there are multiple endings available.

Explore the island! Make your own tools from sticks and rocks! Partake in exotic foods! Get mauled to death knife-fighting with bears! All this fun and more trying to survive in the wild!



First things first, we need to choose our protagonist. Spiky-haired boy, or pig-tailed girl? We'll also need a name for the one we choose. The boy's default is Ken and the girl's default is Mery, but I'm sure you guys can think of better names to fit in a four-letter limit.

Okay, vote away!

Been waiting for this one since it's the one game in the series that came out in English that I haven't played.

Since I'm -pretty- sure that this is one of the few games in the series that doesn't make life more difficult for choosing the girl, I say go with her.

Don't really have a name preference, but rename her to Mary or Meri because my brain doesn't like processing Mery for some reason.

I vote for Mary, because I'm too lazy to think of other names ATM

Oh man this should be good! I vote Girl, too.

I love this game to death, though I almost always get to the part where you get the girl and end up starving to death.

I vote girl, though, since its different than what I always played. Regardless of gender, name the character Bear.

This one's new to me; looks cool!

Go with the lady. A four-character limit? Sheesh; is this the hardest part of the game? Um, here are some really dumb options:

Aura, Buny, Coco, Dufy, Edna, Fany, Grub, Huba, Ixne, Jam, Kali, Lips, Mufy,
Nuh, Ohno, Pami, Qiki, Rump, Slik, Tug, Ur, Viva, Wizi, Xuxa, Yumm, Zap

Okay, I spent too long on that and I should be working, so it's not going to get any less lame. Buny, Fany, and Mufy seem tops to me.

Seconding Bear for a name.

Oh man, it would be great if you could swap out character portraits.

Maybe she's Bear's little sister, Ursa.

Boy named Gili.

Boy named Bear.

Girl.

Okay, the votes favor girl, and I liked gudfooht's alternative to Bear, so we name her Ursa.



Wow, that's a nice looking vessel.



Seriously? Papa Bear, err, Dad, must be loaded to have a boat like that. You never see any of his face but the lower half, by the way, which is still better than most other faceless parents get.



A knife? For your little girl? You're the best dad ever.



Uh oh. This can't be good.



This is definitely NOT GOOD! That's the closest I could get to capturing the lightning effect in screen caps.



Really not good. The ship is gone, and daughter gets separated from father. And so ends the only full-color cutscene in the game.

I'm serious. The opening is the only cutscene that actually takes advantage of the Game Boy Color's color. You'll see soon enough.

Ursa's ended up unconscious on a beach now. Hopefully there aren't any giant eggs with shadowy nightmares on this island.



Awwww, it's a little monkey!



Wait, what are you doing, little guy? That's no way to treat a girl! You're not getting ideas, are you?



Ursa's awake! She freaks out the monkey in the process. Look at his eye bugging out!



And then the monkey runs off before we can make a meal or indentured slave out of him. Darn.



I don't know, drowning? Sitting around somewhere drinking hot cocoa and hoping you'll get rescued? Buying masks for the unseen half of his face?



Wow, that's awfully mature thinking for a ten-year old girl. Papa Bear's raised you well, Ursa. Let's search the beach for loot.

No, no you didn't. We all saw the ship sink.



Nothing useful there.



However, after digging in a more different sand dune, Ursa finds her knapsack! Let's see if there's anything worth digging out of it.....



All right! Pay dirt!



A knife, a radio, and some matches. We've got our first items! One will be our most valuable tool, one will be a key to one of the endings, and one will be useless crap.



Alright, food! It's not a good idea to eat it raw, though. We swipe the clam for when we get a means to cook. Whenever an item has a worthwhile description, I'll show a shot like this.



Because when they don't, they're just a stick. We swipe this anyway, though. Sticks will be one of our most reliable tools for making stuff.



Stupid way-obstructing grass. If only we had something to cut it down with! Oh wait! We do! Let's go to our inventory.



Here's our commands. Items, Merge, Map, and StopGame. The first speaks for itself, the second is used to make useful crap from useless crap, the third's a map, and the last is one of those quicksave features. Let's take a look at our gear for now.



Wait, you have a radio but no batteries for it? You fail at survival, Ursa.

Unless....the batteries got wet, in which case that totally makes sense.

Okay, here's our dud item. The matches will never be good for anything ever, unfortunately. Still, they're a good clue that we should make a fire source at some point.



We equip the knife that lacks a description besides "Knife" and introduce it to the grass.



Yes, we know a canteen is something we put water in. That's why it'll be one of our best tools for quenching thirst. Of course, we'll have to find fresh water first.



There's nothing we can do about this rock on the east side for now, but something to move rocks with will be very handy to have for further exploring the island. We leave it alone for now and head to the west side.....



Which is only blocked by way-obstructing grass. We cut it down and get off of the beach.



Uh, I don't think you'd want to meet any "people" on these kinda islands if TV and movies have taught me anything, Ursa. But wild indeed.....there are goodies everywhere!



Yes. Let's go. Grab all that stuff.



Okay, there's some damp grass here, with no explanation of what it does. Well, there's only one way to find out. Down the hatch!

Thank you, Redundant Jane. Of course you lose the damp grass when you eat it, Brain Sister. =/

Anyway, stomach bloating in Survival Kids is usually a sign that something's bad for you. We probably shouldn't have eaten that grass, but it's the only way to get its description. Grass, mushrooms, nuts, and fruits have a set pool of names, but they have different effects each game.



Okay, a feather, abbreviated as BrdFeather when we pick it up! Yeah, like anything else has feathers. This'll surely be useful for something.



And here's some tree bark. We'll make use of this soon.



Here's our first mushroom, of the soft variety! We should really know better than to eat strange mushrooms we find laying around.



But this is a game, and we learn by trial and error. It's not like it'll kill us, right? ^^;

But it is bloating, though. Not a good sign.



A more different tree? That's useful to know. And then.....



The soft mushroom's nasty side effect kicks in. It inflicts confusion, one of the nastier status effects in the game. It screws up your movement controls until it wears off. Good thing there aren't any bears or wolves around. Ursa blunders around like an idiot until it wears off.

Cutting some grass nets us another stick.



And heading northward we find a hut.



And here's the hut shown in cinematic view. No, I'm not playing on a Super Game Boy; the opening cinematic's just more generous with color than the rest of the game's detailed 2D cutaways.



An abandoned hut on an island? Guess there is (or was) intelligent life here at one point!



Yeah, that's a great idea, Ursa! Just sleep in some hut on an island! Maybe we'll find out it's not actually vacant when the owner comes back and makes Bear Stew out of you.

Nah, the hut's actually abandoned. Still, seems too convenient.



Well, looks like this hut will be our home base.



Okay, here's our base commands, a few being ones we already have on the go. Cancel, Items, Merge, Rest (if you just want a certain amount of sleep), Sleep (the only one we can choose right now), Save, Map, and StopGame.

I'll also take this opportunity to explain the stats on the right.

Day: How long we've been on the island. This matters for at least two endings.

L and Heart: Our life total. If this reaches 0%, it's Game Over.

H, W, and F: Our hunger fullness, water, and fatigue meters. We wanna keep the first two high, and the third one low. If H or W hits 0%, or F hits 100%, life starts draining away.

Speaking of which, the H, W, and F stats start fixed at 70%, 70%, and 50% respectively in our first day, before finding the hut. Of course, H is up to 100% and W's at 60 now. I think it's safe to assume that the damp grass is the kind that makes you thirsty.

Anyway, we go to sleep for the day.



Here's the "days of survival" screen. You'll see this whenever you sleep, die, or get an ending.

After a good night's sleep, we're ready to head out!



And from here on out, we'll have to keep track of those meters while we explore the island.

And last for this update.



The Merge command! This will be one of our most used commands on the island, and it's used to combine two or three items to make something new. For lack of a better comparison, it basically works like alchemy in the Level-5 Dragon Quest games.

We're gonna need something to cook our food with, so we merge one of our sticks and the tree bark together.....



Voila! We have kindling! This'll be our means for cooking food on the island, and the best thing is that it doesn't have any stupid home base only restrictions like certain other DS sequels do! You can light a fire almost anywhere as long as it's not raining.

And that's it for today's update. Our current inventory is:

A knife for grass-cutting
A radio that currently doesn't work
Some useless wet matches
A couple of clams off the beach (didn't screencap one)
An empty canteen
A BrdFeather (hehehe)
A stick
Kindling for fire-make

As I get more inventory, I'll be open to suggestions for item-merging. See you next update.

Next Time: Finding a fresh water source.

It could be a raptor feather. Watch your back!

Heh heh, good one. I bet poor Ursa's craving a luxury banana right about now.

♪♪ Runnin' around, merging planks all whacked up on mushroom stacks! ♪♪

Anyway, this is cool. Boy, lucky that Papa Bear gave Ursa a knife the night before. You'd think someone savvy like that would wax his matches on a sea-faring vessel, though. Ursa needs to survive just so she can give ol' Dad a scolding for that one.

Can't say I'm surprised the boat crashed when Captain Bear attempted to run a luxury cruise liner with his 10 year old daughter as his only crew.

I'm sorry, Metal Man Master, but because of Youtube, I will never be able to take Survival Kids seriously.

Oh my God. Did they just get some surfer dude to narrate the text? So ridiculous. XD

Anyway, it's no prob. There's plenty of stuff not to take seriously about this game, especially later on.

I'd ask how I ever missed this game back in the day, as it's really quite up my alley, but I can already see how: the title. Survival Kids? Seriously, Konami? I mean, really? It sounds more like some sort of promotional tie-in for McDonalds than a semi-RPG survival game. Even Lost in Blue is a more attention-getting title (and looking it up, Lost in Blue is the sequel to Survival Kids; go figure). That said, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

This game looks rad.

Well, somebody has to say it. Merge knife self.

Sharpen a stick and begin slaughtering coconut crabs?

Okay, I take way too many images. @.@ I'll try to keep these to a minimum.

Anyway, here's the latest update! When we last left off, Ursa had found a hut to use as her home base.



Here's where we'll be stashing our extra stuff. There are plenty of items on the island, but we only have a 12-item limit to our on-hand inventory. This will become much more annoying very soon. I stash the radio, BrdFeather, and one of the sticks in the home base.



Heading out, we decide to check out the right path first.



Oooooh! A beehive! Maybe we can get honey here and...



Oh crap! Bees! Or...hornets or whatever. Fortunately, they don't seem too interested in a direct assault, so I try to avoid provoking them and get to the business of cutting through the grass for goodies.



Hey look! It's a Soft Mush like the one that confused us last time! Now it has a description of its terrible side effect. We leave it alone.



We also find a dried leaf here! No description besides that, but I'm sure it'll come in handy for something on this island.



And here's a plain mushroom, or Plain Mush. Ursa scarfs it down, and there's no talk about bloating this time! Guess this is a good mushroom.



Hey look! A cheetah! or leopard. Or jaguar, or whatever. Let's try to kill it!



Oh crap! That kitty's got bite! C'mon, Ursa! It's not like it'll kill you! You have a knife and.....



Oh shit.....at least the giant kitty we pissed off trying to go Psycho on got a happy ending, right?



There's the Game Over screen, along with our days of survival before dying. Let's.....pretend that didn't happen. And with the magic of savestates, it didn't! Mostly.

This time, we ignore the overgrown feral feline and go west.



And we eat some more strange grass! This dry grass is bitter, but doesn't seem to wreck our circulatory system in any way.



We get a plain old rock here.



And these animal tracks look suspicious. We can't do anything with them for now, though.



We find some thin grass, and having nothing better to do than eat anything eatable, eat it! It's bloating though, and a short time later.....



Paralysis. Oh boy. All Ursa can do is just keep trying to move until she can move again.

Anyway, this is the perfect opportunity to talk about some of the game's more roguelike mechanics! We've already covered edible stuff with random effects in each file, but time in the game world and your deteriorating physical condition meters only advance when you move. And when animals appear in the world (via grass rustling sound), they only move when you move! It gives you a chance to plan out your course of action before you take it.



Shortly after recovery, a fox appears! It knocks off some of our health, but is a much easier to kill with our little knife than bigger animals.



Hot damn, our first kill on this island! Get used to meat being described as "Meat from some animal", though. The game doesn't differentiate between species as far as meat goes.



I don't want to eat it raw, though....I'll make a barbecue!

All right, time to put our kindling to use!

USE KINDLING



USE MURDERED FOX MEAT on KINDLING



USE COOKED MEAT OF STUPID FOX A TEN YEARS-OLD GIRL KILLED WITH A DINKY LITTLE POCKET KNIFE on SELF

FULLNESS and +10 HP recovery GET! Anyway, we head northward bound now.



Look, it's Damp Grass again! And I was correct in thinking it makes you thirsty! Damp grass that you makes you thirsty, though? Th...That's fucked up there. O.O;



And there's another rock blocking our progress further northward! We ignore this for now and head east. *rustle rustle*



Duck! Duck! I just had delicious fox to eat, but what the hell? Kill that duck!



Ursa traps the duck in the corner and stabs it to death. I could swear the bird squawked something about a lack of Fs or something in its dying breath.

Anyway, ducks don't really fight back, and when you kill them, you get a BrdFeather in addition to the cartoon meat chunk other animals give.



Oh boy! Fruit! This Hard Fruit makes for a decent thirst-quencher when you're out of water, though some other fruit would do that in another file.



And there's some of that paralysis inducing thin grass again. No thanks, being frozen in place at the mercy of any ferocious predators that might pop up while I'm trying to recover once is enough. We head eastward, into new territory.