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Lost
in Blue for the NintendoDS is the follow-up to relatively
elusive, yet innovative Survival Kids for the Game Boy.  You
are stranded on a desert island trying to stay alive, with a fellow
survivor of the ship-wreck. You must search for (and even make)
food, make weapons and fires and explore the island in an effort to
try and find a way off the island.
You
have a meter which measures how hungry and thirsty you are, along
with a strength meter which presumably would decrease as you get
tired from your exploring and lack of nutrients which makes it a
driving force to keep a balance between looking after your
immediate welfare as well as obtaining your long term objective of
finding a way off the island.
Your
avatar appears quite small on screen, which helps to give an
overall perception of being in a large disquieting place, and the
items you collect are not immediately obvious until you are right
upon them as a little icon appears telling you what it is. As you
press the A button it takes you onto another screen where you have
to find the item - often fruit - in the dirt by rubbing the Stylus
over it to uncover it completely before it is added to your
Inventory.
You
can cook any food you find by mixing together different
ingredients, picking your cooking style and playing what is
practically a Mini-Game to slice, stir and peel your way through
the meat and vegetables to make it into an edible dish. This takes
a little getting used to as it is quite fast paced but it is an
interesting addition to the game which adds a light-hearted break
in the main action, although part of the cooking instructions
involved shutting the  NintendoDS
case which wasn’t possible on the E3 demo model!
In
addition to this you can make tools and weapons (which you have to
learn how to use), implying that it is something other than mere
survival of what nature has to throw at you.
It
looks like it will be a well balanced package with the small
objectives providing a welcome distraction from what looks like
quite a heavy going game, although I’m very much looking forward
to what the game has to offer as a whole, as will the many fans of
the original title.
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