Survival Kids

"A lot of fun in a new, innovative adventure title"

In Survival Kids, you are a ten year old kid (you can choose your gender) on a cruise with your father when the boat sinks, stranding you on a deserted island. Thankfully, your father gave you a nice knife for your birthday, and you set off across the island to find shelter, construct items to make life easier for yourself, and to find basic items like food and water. If you're lucky and you play it right, you might get rescued.

This was a new concept for me in portable gaming. On the home consoles, we have the eternal genre of Survival Horror. This is just Survival. No zombies, no guns. Just you, berries, mush, grass, tree bark, and rocks.

The interface is very reminiscent of Zelda: Link's Awakening. The island is laid out in various subscreens, that scroll as you walk, the plants and trees growing in perfect 90 degree angles around the perimeter of the areas. In the meantime, you cut down high grass (looks almost exactly like Zelda: Link's Awakening), and pick up items. Once you have a few items, you hit Start to access the subscreen and can Merge items to make other ones. For example, you need to get kindling at some point in the game to make fires. To do this, you merge Stick with Tree Bark. The screen will darken, and give you a picture of the resulting merge with a message that you now have Kindling! Some of resulting items (like the Big Fan) are completely useless, but it's fun to see what you can get from merging things.

So far, I have yet to escape the island, but I don't really care all that much to be honest. It's fun to run around, and see how long you can last, especially since the various items will repopulate themselves, so you really don't have to worry about running out of food or water. You also have access to a hut where you can store items to merge later or get to later.

All in all, Survival Kids is a simple adventure/simulation game that's just fun. You can pick it up anytime, play it for a few minutes, save, and put it down until you can get back to it. It has the kind of fun that makes Harvest Moon so addictive. No lightning-fast reflexes to worry about, no replaying the same section over and over until you beat your head against the nearest wall. Pick it up and enjoy surviving on the go.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/02/99, Updated 12/02/99