 Hey, thanks to Brent from my Patreon page for the request, doubling into the Game Boy Color Catalog for this one titled Survival Kids or Stranded Kids in Europe. So you start up the game, you pick a boy or a girl character, and just like that you're on a ship. It capsizes, and you wash ashore onto a deserted island. And uh, now what? Yeah, that's right. This is one of those what the hell do I do kind of games, but this is one of the best possible examples of an open-ended non-linear game done right. Survival Kids keeps it very simple. I mean, it's right there in the title, you gotta survive, and maybe even find your way off the island. You do that by monitoring your fatigue, hunger, and thirst levels, as well as your regular health meter. So yeah, you're wandering around aimlessly before you find your backpack buried under a sand dune, which of course contains lots of helpful stuff, like a knife which you use to cut down grass, among other things, a radio, and some matches. You explore the island a bit more, and you find a few more new, useful things here and there, and the game does a nice job helping you along without being overbearing. You do eventually explore caves and dungeons and such, but you can't be reckless. You gotta plan ahead with plenty of food and plenty of water in your canteen, and you also have to be careful about what you eat, or you could poison yourself. Pretty simple stuff, but it's done well. Handling your thirst meter is pretty straightforward, obviously, but you can approach food a couple different ways. You can go after wild animals, everything from rabbits to foxes to bears. You can collect stuff like clams, be careful though, because they go bad after only one day. Or you can get creative and do stuff like smoke out a beehive and take all the honey. That leads me to one unexpected aspect here, the ability to combine items to create things, like putting together tree bark and a stick to create kindling and start a fire, which of course you'll need both to see at night and to cook food. Of course you do get rewarded for surviving, besides like, you know, being alive. You discover all sorts of odd stuff on the island, and spoiler alert, maybe even other people. There's eight different endings here, and not all of them are pleasant. I mean, that's pretty out there for a simple Game Boy Color game. I don't know, maybe this all sounds boring to you, but I really had a lot of fun with this game. It has the same kind of vibe as the original Harvest Moon for Game Boy. The same top-down perspective and a similar open-ended structure that allows the player to control the pace. You know how Harvest Moon eventually led to stuff like Stardew Valley? Survival Kids feels like the precursor to indie survival games like Don't Starve. You can draw the same kind of connection between the two. Survival Kids isn't perfect though, there's some odd quirks that are no doubt the result of the Game Boy's limitations, like the fact that time only passes while you're moving, and night seemingly shows up out of nowhere, so getting a feel for the day-night cycle can be tricky. Survival Kids also received a direct sequel, but sadly it was only released in Japan. The series continued on several years later, however, under the name Lost in Blue for Nintendo DS, including Lost in Blue Shipwrecked for the Nintendo Wii in 2008. I haven't played any of these games since I was just introduced to the series, like, just the other day. But if they're anything like Survival Kids, then they must be at least pretty decent. So yeah, Survival Kids is yet another example of the quaint little Game Boy color surpassing expectations and delivering a game that might surprise you. I honestly had a hard time putting this one down. This game is a bit pricey for a Game Boy color title at around $35, but I'd recommend playing this one anyway you can. If you like open-ended survival games like Don't Starve, you won't be disappointed in Survival Kids.