Sandbox / Vocaloid Story

VOCALOID STORY is a series of and Vocaloid fan games by Dr. Nekosuki. Its main premise is about the Vocaloids as A.I.s that fought the malignant lifeform known as Bugs and Viruses in worlds inside PCs and cellphones.

Since 2010, the series has three main games and a side-game released:

• VOCALOID STORY: first announced at February 6th 2008, full game first released at August 22th 2008, made with RPG Maker 2000. Taking place in Digitalia, a world inside a computer, the Vocaloids were just enjoying their lives when suddenly their hometown, Install Town, was invaded by massive amount of Bugs. They tried to fight back, but eventually had to retreat after a Bug kidnapped Len with Meiko hot on its trail. They eventually taking shelter to a neighbouring town, Folder, and trying to figure out what to do next.
• VOCALOID STORY: mobile install: first announced at August 16th 2009, full game released at August 23th 2009, made with the rare RPG Maker α for Japanese cellphones. Miku, Rin, and Len are summoned by XP to pick up Luka, a new Vocaloid whom got lost in the digital world of a cellphone. However, when they were transferred from Digitalia, the Virus inside the phone intervened, causing Miku to be separated from the others.
• VOCALOID STORY: The Lost Song: first announced at August 23th 2009, first demo released at May 5th 2010. Master sends Miku, Rin, Len, and Luka to investigate when Kaito and Meiko went missing. However, they soon ran into a Virus and they realized there's something much more ominous is coming. Meanwhile, the Big Bad from the first game had returned and now has an ally named Alice.
• VOCALOID STORY: Time is NEGI: Released at March 31st 2011. A short Gaiden Game with three parts where Miku goes to a supermarket after she saw a green onions time sale in a flier. Unlike other game, this was released as a web game for Nicogame.

The first and second game features OS-tan characters, most prominently XP. The Lost Song is still in demo phase and last updated at March 31st 2014.

The original game could be downloaded here, while the newest demo for The Lost Song could be downloaded here. Unfortunately, mobile install is considered lost, and Nicogame is shut down per April 27th 2011, which means Time is NEGI also became unavailable.

Tropes that featured in the series:

In multiple games

• Bag of Spilling: mobile install has a justified example. Thanks to a Virus interference when transferred to the cellphone world, Miku, Rin, and Len had their level reset to Level 1. The Lost Song plays this straight, which is blatant as the Vocaloid are shown using high level spells in their battle with the Big Bad from the first game, yet they can only use their basic skills when the game start proper.
• Bland-Name Product: Employed in most of the medicines.
  • Unker Kote Eki, which restores HP, is Yunker Kote Eki.
  • Teovita: which restores MP, is Tiovita
  • Lipopotan D, which resurrect fallen party member, is Lipovitan.
  • Makiros Disinfectant, which removes Poison and Deadly Poison, is based from Makiron Disinfectant.
  • Rotoh V40, which removes Blindness, is based from Rohto V40.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In the original game, when the Vocaloids are about to save Len in HDD Archives, the Deadly Poison Virus became panicked as it noticed the BGM plays a fanfare.
  • In mobile install, an NPC in Misshime Town explained that MP can be only restored by resting at a Inn because of the game's engine limitation
  • In The Lost Song, the first Virus the Vocaloids fought interrupted the battle for a while and changed the BGM to keep things fresh.
• Cosmic Keystone:
  • In the original game, an entity called Mother is the core of Digitalia itself. The program reside in the deepest floor of the dungeon beneath the East Tower.
  • In the Lost Song, the CPU of a world is this, as it control the balance of a world. As the CPU of Raku's world suffers from critical damage by the Water Virus, the entire world collapsed and destroyed with a huge explosion. Kaito and Co was barely made it to the Net Road.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Variants of Bugs and Viruses could be distinguished by the color of their glowing eyes.
• Cyberspace: An unusual example. Worlds inside computers and phones are represented as a JRPG fantasy world. Websites in the Lost Song, on the other hand, are represented as public facilities.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Present in the first game, but most prominent in the third game.
  • In the original game, Fire and Cold are weak to each other. Thunder and Wind also mutually weak against each other.
  • In The Lost Song, it goes like this: Fire beats Ice, Ice beats Wind, Wind beats Earth, Earth beats Thunder, Thunder beats Water, and Water beats Fire. Light and Darkness are mutually weak to each others.
• Find the Cure!:
  • The original game has the Odagiri, a flower needed to make a cure for Miku and Kaito. Neru has the plant at her home, but turned out the plant had died of insect infestation when she was away to accompany the Kagamines. To revitalize the dead flower, they must find the Miracle Water from the cave north of Norton's Lab.
  • mobile install plays it straight. The Vocaloids must find a flower to cure the granddaughter of Nibanme Town's chief from her poisoning by Bugs.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: Bugs and Viruses are mortal enemies of the Vocaloids as they're created to destroy or else they would perish. It's telling that almost every Vocaloids, including Rin and Len, will try to eliminate them on sight.
• Hopeless Boss Fight
  • In the first game, the first boss battle on the top of the Northwest Mountain ended with the boss used "Death Howling". It's guaranteed to KO either Rin or Len, whoever the boss target.
  • In The Lost Song Kiyoteru's fight against Alice ends as well as you expect.
• Percent-Based Values: All of recovery items in the series is this.
  • Sample Recovery Medicines, which exclusive to the first game, recovers HP by mere 10%. It's free and could be restocked to 10 by talking to the girl in Folder Town, but only usable out of battle.
  • Unker Kote Eki tonic restores HP by 30%, 60%, or 100%, depending from the tier.
  • Teovita tonic restores MP by 30%, 60%, or 100%, also depending from the tier.
  • Character's Trademark Favorite Food (such as Bananas for Len) recovers said character's HP and MP by 60%.
  • Lipopotan D tonic resurrect a fallen party member and restore their HP up to 20% of their max HP. The stronger Lipopotan D Super restores their HP up to 75% of their max HP.
  • Elixir recovers HP and MP by 100%, also removes all status ailments including KO, Stats 1/2, and Time Stop.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted.
  • The first game has Kaito and Akaito, the later appeared after you cleared the game once. Akaito returns in The Lost Song.
  • In the third game there's two characters named Miku: the teal-haired Miku Hatsune and the black-haired Miku Hazure.
• Magic Music: In-universe, all of the spells are song-based, made more obvious by the eight note symbol at their names. That's why the "Silence" status effect disables them.
• Living Program: Except the Masters, everyone in the series are sentient programs.
• Spell Levels: Most spells come either in three levels, or more rarely two levels. It starts from "[description] Whisper", then "[decription] Song", and finally "[description] Anthem". Spells that have only two levels start from Song tier, while Whisper is replaced with Voice in mobile install due to character limit.
• Status Effect: The series has several. Every one wears off at the end of battle except Poison and Deadly Poison.
  • Poison drain roughly 5% HP per turn and deal 2 damage for every 4 steps outside battle. Its stronger variant, Deadly Poison, do 15% damage per turn of max HP and 4 damage per 2 step outside battle.
  • Blindness severely cuts accuracy so you will much more likely to miss.
  • Silence seals song-based skills, which marked with a eight note symbol.
  • Amnesia makes the victim unable to use physical-based skills, which has a sword symbol.
  • Stagger makes the victim cannot act for a turn.
  • Burn deals 50 damage, halves Agility, and last for a turn.
  • Freeze halves Defense and renders the victim unable to attack. Its rare stronger variant, Superfreeze, persists longer and drains HP by 2% and MP by 10% per turn. Both instantly ends when the victim is struck with a physical attack.
  • Charm and Brainwash, exclusive to the first game, turns the victim against their own allies.
  • Stat 1/2, exclusive to the first game cuts all of your stat to half. This status can only be removed with an Elixir.
  • Time Stop, also exclusive to the first game, make the victim unable to act until it wears off. This status can only be removed with an Elixir and exclusively inflicted by the Final Boss and the True Final Boss.

Exclusive to the original game

• Apocalyptic Log: In the mines, you can found and read a diary of a worker that describes their gradual transformation into monsters by a leaking gas. Note that you must read this first before proceed; otherwise everyone would succumb to the same gas, which is an instant game over.
  • The last page is a Shout-Out to a particularly infamous diary from the first Resident Evil game. If you read the book again, the year was somehow changed from 2007 to 1998, making the reference even more obvious.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Kaito's ultimate skill completely ignores the target's Defense.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Miku's Miracle Song is an extremely useful skill that removes all status ailments, fully recovers HP of the whole party, and revives any fallen member to full health. It also has ridiculously high MP cost of 350, which made it only worthwhile to use in case of emergency.
  • Meiko's Prominence has a guaranteed chance to inflict Burn, hits all enemies, and has an impressive animation, but it's only barely stronger than Blaze Song and costs 175 MP. Even though no enemies including bosses are immune to Burn, it's better to just stick with casting Blaze Anthem which is much stronger and costs less MP.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The White Flare item is received after completing the game's Golden Ending. It deals 999 damage per use, completely bypass any sort of defense. However, by then, the only thing you could do with it is in random encounters or to challenge the final boss again
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Early in the game, XP was reading archives about a particularly massive Bug and Virus invasion in Digitalia that happened long ago. Much later in the game, it's revealed this was happened because Me forgot to set the security on, and both she and dr. Norton was so overwhelmed by the onslaught that Master installed XP to stop the outbreak.
  • After you saved her, XP gives Miku a hairclip as a good luck charm. The hairclip later used to remove Me's No-Sell OS powers, although it needs several turn to fully activate.
• Chekhov's Gunman: When eating breakfast with Rin and Len early in the game, Miku talked about Me, the OS that used to manage Digitalia prior XP before the world was overrun by Viruses. Guess who the Vocaloids face at the Net Road late in the game?
• Construction Vehicle Rampage: The Kagamines' ultimate skill involves steamrollers. Len used it to run over all enemies, while Rin opted to squash an enemy flat a la DIO.
• Death from Above: Neru's ultimate skill, "Missile Delivery", summons an ICBM from another dimension (presumably human dimension?) with her phone that target an enemy.
• Dirty Old Man: dr. Norton likes to ogle on the female Vocaloids. Neru, Miku, and Meiko all attempted to beat him up in different occasions.
• Distressed Dude: During the Bugs' invansion of Install, one of them kidnaps Len in an ambush and fled. Later, the Vocaloids learn that the Bugs brought him to the HDD Library and they goes there to save him.
• Doomed Hometown: The Vocaloids are forced to flee from their home, Install Town, when hordes of Bugs invaded the town at night.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: As he apologizes to Me, Master questioned from where the Bugs and Viruses that invading Digitalia came from, since O Ses such as XP and Me are unable to create them. Cue the Big Bad, Zero Muon, made their appearance..
• Invisibility Cloak: As the Vocaloid prepare to sneak through the Bug-occupied Install to the Net Road Temple, Dr. Norton give them four Stealth Camo Coat prototypes that run on batteries. After they made it to the temple's entrance however, the coats' circuit fried up and became unusable for the rest of the game.
• Mental World: Kaito, at one point, wakes up in his mental world and must purge the viral infection in his body to wake up back to real world.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Rin's "Roadroller Throw" has high chance to instantly kill the target. Naturally, it doesn't work against bosses.
  • The endgame bosses (spoiler: Zero, Mother, and Zero's Virus) has an attack that instantly kill a target.
• Permanently Missable Content: Items in the Vocaloids' homes will disappear if you don't grab them before visiting the Temple, as Install is inaccessible after the Bug invansion.
• Pocket Dimension: The "Spatial Movement Program", given by XP after saving her, lets you warp to a room where characters not in the party hanging out. In there, you can heal the entire party for 1000 Gems and using the available teleporter to move into major locations.
• Power Nullifier: OS such as XP have inherent ability to nullify damage from any attacks.
• Stealth-Based Mission: Late in the the game, the Vocaloids must sneak into the Net Road Temple whilst avoiding Bugs infesting Install. They must made it before their cloak's battery dies and without touching any Bugs. There's several mushrooms that could be used to recharge the batteries. Beware however, as some of the mushroom instead cause you to fall asleep.
• Supernatural Phone: Neru's cellphone can functions both to make calls and to attack enemies. If you give her the Antenna Booster, she can summons an ICBM from another dimension.
• Telepathy: As the party entered into the Bonus Dungeon, XP contact them via telepathy from the Temple. Supposedly it's another of OSes' innate powers.
• True Final Boss: Only available after you beat the game once. If you have the White Canceller, as Zero finished his speech, Miku suddenly unleashed a beam of light that forcibly separates the Virus from Zero's body. The Virus, desperate to defend itself, then turns into a dragon. Cue the final battle.
• Unwinnable by Design: If you didn't have the Dialight from Norton, which requires the Diatine from the mines and then talk to him again after he gave you the Stealth Camo Cloaks, then the upcoming boss fight in the Net Road Temple became impossible to win.

Exclusive to mobile install

• Escape Rope: Only in this game Miku learns "Flight Song", which allows the player to warp to the last visited town from dungeons.
• The Lost Woods: The aptly-named Lost Forest. It features confusing and looping layout.
• Merging Mistake: Rin and Len are accidentally merged into a single entity due to the Virus messing with the transferring process.
• Party Scattering: When XP was transferring Miku and the Kagamines to the cellphone world, the Virus in that world interferes with the process. This results in Miku ended up separated from the Kagamines.

Exclusive to The Lost Song

• Ascended Extra: Sai and Akaito, originally Optional Party Members in the original game, are now involved in the main plot of The Lost Song.
• Broad Strokes: The Lost Song changed various elements established from previous games. The most noticeable ones is the removal of OS-tan characters (XP, Dr. Norton, Buster, and Me) and the Net Road Temple. Besides that, apparently Haku and Neru never meet the Vocaloids and Digitalia is renamed as simply "Master's World".
• Canon Discontinuity: The Lost Song picked up from the regular ending from the first game, so that game's Golden Ending never happened.
• Combination Attack: The third game introduces this mechanic. An important thing to remember is they used the Agility stat of the last participant in party order.
  • Kaito + Meiko cast "Fire and Ice Preface Song", which deals damage to an enemy.
  • Rin + Len cast "Prayer Winds", which heals the party.
  • Miku + Luka cast "Water Onion Slash", which deals damage to an enemy.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Meiko tries to attack the Water Virus with a Fire spell. The spell has no effect and the Virus retaliated with a Water attack, which instantly knocks her out.
• Fictional Counterpart: Early in the story, Miku and Luka visit Pipuroa, this game's version of Piapro, an online community found by Crypton Future Media as platform for derivative works. Pipuroa has three parts: the music section, the literature section, and the miscellaneous section, which included fanarts used for marking the chapters.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The demo crashes if you used Miku's healing spells outside battle. This makes your option for HP recovery in overworld limited to items.
• Rope Bridge: Miku, Luka, and Sai came across an old rope bridge over a deep chasm in the cave that hold the CPU of Nicholas and Sai's world. Luka crossed first and made it to the other side. Miku then followed, but Sai pulled a prank by jumping on the bridge when Miku is halfway through the bridge, though still made it to the other side. When it's Sai's turn, Miku decided to Troll the heck out of her by doing the same prank several times. The bridge itself is still fine though.
• You Have Failed Me: Alice killed the Normal-type Virus for losing to Miku and co. two times.