Lost In Blue can be a highly enjoyable game if the player is interested in the premise and doesn't mean a few hardships.
The game introduces the player first to Keith, a teenager washed ashore after his cruise ship met with a vicious storm at sea. Initially alone, Keith finds a companion when he meets Skye, a girl who ended up stranded on the same island via raft. The two are forced to work together if they want to survive, let alone try to discover a way home. It’s hard not to draw comparisons to films such as “Cast Away” when talking about Lost In Blue. If the premise of gathering food, making tools, crafting furnishings, and exploring an island don’t sound appealing to you, then you’re going to have a very hard time getting past a few of the game’s quirks. You may find it hard to enjoy the game at all, given that surviving on the island is the entire objective of the game.
Lost In Blue plays out with a top down view of a 3D polygonal world on the bottom screen of the Nintendo DS. The top screen can be cycled to view the characters’ life meters, a map of the current area, or a picture of the island showing how much has been discovered. Mostly the player will stay glued to the meter screen but occasionally the map layout comes in very handy. Movement is controlled by the directional pad with the B button causing the player to run if held down (which incidentally can be a big drain on the player’s strength meter) and the X button opens up the game sub menu offering the back item inventory, the rest command (which let’s you take a quick break to recover strength), the “make tool” option, and the scrapbook. The Y button is more context sensitive allowing for a variety of commands including pushing objects, using tools, and talking to Skye. The A button also does some double duty allowing the player to jump and to search the ground. For more in depth searching the player can tap the bottom screen with stylus which causes the screen to shift to a first person view of the ground, which the player can dig around in with the stylus. Similar methods of interacting are implemented when most tools in the game are used. By and large, Lost In Blue controls well, but it definitely feels like it could use a little tweaking. It often feels like it takes more time than really necessary to perform actions. For instance while running up to a ledge which you want to jump across, the player must come all the way up to the edge before the jump command can be issued. Should you run too far, you’ll be forced to watch as the character acts out an animation of teetering over the edge. Rest assured that the game won’t allow you to fall over, but show you this animation over and over. Should the player be too far from the edge when they stop running and press A, the character will instead search the ground. The sweet spot for jumping is also fairly narrow, so a lot of time can end up being wasted teetering or searching unnecessarily.
The similarities to games in the Harvest Moon series are readily apparent, with the main difference being that if you can’t schedule properly, become self-sufficient, and take care of all of your tasks, you die. But much like Harvest Moon, Lost In Blue has no set linear path so players are allowed to experiment and discover how they best like playing the game. Lost In Blue has its own time schedule that equates a matter of real-time seconds to minutes within the game, so the player has a construct around which to plan his or her actions. You’re going to need to sleep every night or you’ll begin to start collapsing due to sheer exhaustion. There’s even an in-game weather system that changes from day to day and even hour to hour. Weather can heavily affect what you can get done in a day because hot sunny weather will tire out a player faster and make them thirstier, and stormy weather floods streams with rain making crossing them impossible. Besides the ever ticking clock, there are four other meters to keep an eye on: thirst, hunger, strength, and overall life. The way these work is that you need water to quench your thirst, food to banish your hunger, and rest to keep up your strength. When any one of these three meters dwindles down to 0% your overall life is negatively affected, so it’s important to keep them all in safe amounts. And multiply these four meters by the two people you have to care for. Including the clock, that’s a total of nine steadily counting meters that you need to keep an eye on at all times. These restrictions are one of the other major hurdles mentioned earlier that players must overcome, especially early on in the game. As time in the game progresses the players will make or discover items that make these less of a dire threat and more of a lingering concern. Containers can be acquired to store water and even carry it with you while you explore allowing the player to cover a larger area because they can stray farther from fresh water sources. The player will eventually be able to hunt larger game using a bow and arrow, as well as fish with either a spear or fishing rod. Hunger becomes less of an issue with more substantial food than just clams, potatoes, and coconuts. Building more furnishings for the cave the two characters call home is also essential to besting your own limitations. Building shelves will allow players to store extra food and supplies; while crafting better beds helps the characters gain more rest and thereby more strength every evening.
Building is one of the major highlights in the game and it adds an interesting dynamic by having to scrounge the required supplies over a period of time and discover new items to build. Usually Skye will tell you about new household items that would be a benefit to your cave, but things such as weapons for hunting are left up to Keith to figure out on his own. These weapons amount to essentially combining items to create a new one under the simple command “make item”. But making things for your home requires a bit more work on the player’s part. A sequence is initiated where the player must quickly copy simple commands with the stylus (and sometimes the microphone) to create something new. However, while it’s fun to build up your new island home, the process feels a little gimmicky. The commands don’t correlate directly to actions so it doesn’t really replicate the feeling of building something. And only a few errors are allowed before you fail, at which point you lose all of the items that were required for the process. It’s not really a big deal in the end but just an area that feels like it could be tightened up. Tools can be a lot of fun to use such as timing alternating presses of the shoulder buttons and then blowing into the microphone to simulate rubbing a stick and blowing on tinder to start a fire. Spearing fish as they dart across the screen by carefully stabbing with your stylus can be a lot of fun, too. One of the other stumbling blocks is that Keith has a certain level of responsibility in taking care of Skye, often more than it seems the developers intended. Skye is totally responsible for preparing meals and taking care of all the household chores, but she can’t venture far on her own. This means that Keith must guide her by the hand to drinking water and wherever they need to go together. There are even some tasks that require the combined efforts of Keith and Skye, and the player will be forced to help create paths for the slightly less athletic Skye. Usually Keith can head out to do some exploring and hunting on his own without worry, but Skye’s AI has a few hiccups which means sometimes she forgets to eat and drink on her own, even when your cave is well stocked with food and water. This can be frustrating when you’re halfway across the island exploring and Skye has forgotten to drink water, forcing you to return and lead her to the stream, lest she perish of thirst.
The graphics are fairly well handled, if a little simplistic. But the variety of terrain is nice and the water has some nice effects to it. Sometimes the graphics dip below what seems possible for the DS (particularly some of the flat 2D art), but it’s not generally an issue. Sound in the game is about on par with the graphics. There are little musical intros played that the start of each day and upon entering each area along with some music for the cave, but not too much to speak of in terms of a soundtrack. There are lots of fitting sound effects for the weather, wildlife, and everything else on the island. Lost In Blue has a few generic voice clips like “hmmm”, “whoa”, and “ok”, but it would have nice to see a little bit more content.
Ultimately Lost In Blue can be a highly enjoyable and rewarding experience if the player is interested in the premise and willing to brave a few hardships in order to survive. It feels a little disappointing when it seems like a little more work in a few areas would have gone a long way. But all of the elements are there even if they are a little rough.