Honomi at the start of the game: "dressed" and ready to dive.
Blue Port J: Summer Sky Prelude is a 3D adventure doujin video game developed by Fox Eye in 2012. It's technically a Prequel to the original Blue Port (which is unavailable in English, though you don't need to play it to enjoy this game).
Honomi Shiosaki is a novice pearl diver who enjoys diving to great depths and exploring the ocean with her best friend Chie Konogawa. Chie introduces Honomi to her friend Kokono Namishima, and the three of them spend their time exploring the vast ocean depths surrounding a small island while Honomi is on summer vacation.
You play as all three girls, with control switching between the girls at key points during the story. Your job is to explore the ocean depths, solve puzzles, and make sure that the girls don't drown. As you play, the girls will explore more of the island and the waters surrounding it; and, ultimately, save the island from being shut down from a Corrupt Corporate Executive.
Find the game's website (in both Japanese and English) here
. Both Japanese and English versions of the game can be purchased at DLsite.
Blue Port J: Summer Sky Prelude contains examples of the following:
- The Ace: Honomi is considered this among the trio, mainly because of her being the The Leader of the three, her unlockable skill to swim faster with a Dolphin Kick, having the longest Oxygen Meter time of approximately 5 minutes, and being the one to discover the game's final MacGuffin. This is slightly downplayed, however, as she is actually considered a novice pearl diver, and Chie and Kokono's own unlockable skills are still needed to complete the game,
- Author Appeal: Probably the purest example to come from Fox Eye. Compared to many other games from this developer (including the original Blue Port, itself), there are no monsters, traps, or dangers (for the most part) in this game. Blue Port J focuses almost entirely on three young girls exploring the vast ocean depths. Nonetheless, yes, they can drown.
- Blackout Basement: Some of the areas in the game can get so dark, that luckily you're able to put together a waterproof flashlight to help deal with this.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: It's not terrible, but one rather egregious flub comes from Chie's first line. When Honomi first encounters her, Chie happily says, "Chie...Long time, no see." Chie, who were you addressing again?
- Damsel in Distress: Chie seems to be the one girl out of the three that's most prone to being put through drowning perils within the game's story (though most of this is her own fault for being careless), and Honomi is usually the one to rescue her. Even the game's benchmark test has a Flashback to when she almost drowned on her way back to the surface until Kokono pulled her out of the water at the last second.
- Don't Try This at Home: As much as Fox enthusiastically enjoys creating underwater girl fantasies and drowning perils, the game's boot menu features a health and medical disclaimer that advises players not to imitate the deep sea skin diving and long-term breathholding that occurs throughout this game, acknowledging that performing such acts in Real Life without precaution or supervision from other people can be very dangerous, and can likely lead one to severe brain damage from lack of oxygen, if not outright drowning to death compared to the extremely close calls of drownings that occur in this game's story, mainly ones involving Chie.
- Drowning Pit:
- Chie accidentally locks herself in a cage, which turns into this once the cave this cage was found in starts flooding in. If Honomi wasn't there to bail her out of there, Chie would've definitely lost her life.
- Honomi herself ends up in one in the final room of the game after picking up a platinum ingot from it. The player must then solve a 6-digit padlock (the biggest passcode in the game) to escape before she drowns.
- Eyes Always Shut: Kokono only opens her eyes for soft Wild Takes, or if she's nearly drowned before inhaling a few Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles. Even then, they're just blank white gag eyes. Fox has confirmed on Fantia in 2022 that Kokono does have regular eyes. They're just rare to see as she only shows them for special moments and surprises.
- Excuse Plot: The "plot", as it were, pretty much happens by accident. Honomi is primarily concerned with exploring the ocean with her friends and look for Waterflies. It's only by happenstance that they find out about the plot to shut down the island.
- The Faceless: Honomi’s mom. She only appears as the car that drops her off at the island in the beginning and picks her up at the end, but we never actually get to see what she looks like.
- Fanservice: Compared to Fox Eye's other works (especially their ABYSS works), it's relatively tame, but it's still there. The biggest offender is Honomi, who's pearl diver outfit barely covers her cheeks. Chie and especially Kokono's outfits are more conservative; and because this game features underage girls, Fox avoids depicting them in any explicit sexual situations.However.
- Genki Girl: Chie is the most energetic of the trio, often excited to spend time with her friends and tends to charge head first into new underwater discoveries (sometimes at the risk of her life).
- Gray Rain of Depression: The weather gets gloomy during the time Kokono's illness gets worse from an old island endemic, sending her back to the hospital and worrying her friends on whether she could possibly die. The rain stops once she feels completely better later on through the game.
- Item Crafting: Kokono's primary skill, similarly to Lorile in Water Leaves. Bringing parts to her will let her create useful items out of them, such as a waterproof flashlight, or a visible Oxygen Meter.
- Ligher and Softer/Darker and Edgier: On one hand, this game doesn't feature any monsters, and the girls usually aren't in any danger beyond the inherent dangers of free diving, giving the game the essence of a Slice of Life simulator. That being said, the game does feature the girls exploring sunken ruins and caves that don't always have easy access to the surface. They could easily become trapped with little oxygen left, leaving them to a watery grave. Chie even gets caught in a Drowning Pit situation early on in the game.
- MacGuffin: The girls' first big goal of their summer vacation is to find and collect Waterflies, which are pretty much firefiles that glow and twinkle underwater. Afterwards, a much more valuable MacGuffin is reached in the form of sealed platinum ingots.
- Morton's Fork: During a comatose sleep, Kokono is put through an underwater quiz of sorts in her mind where she must swim towards either Honomi or Chie to answer questions correctly. If she gets a question wrong, both of her friends disappear and prematurely end the quiz, leaving Kokono to drown and have the player start the question over. However, the final question involves choosing between which girl does Kokono like more, only to discover that choosing either one is considered a failure. Ultimately, you must Take a Third Option, and force Kokono to drown on this question to complete the quiz and wake her from her coma, as she's struck with refusing to value one friend over the other.
- Oxygen Meter: As per-usual for a genuine Fox Eye game. The meter starts out completely invisible, but it's always there, and you only get to see it after picking it up as an item. Similar to NATICA STAR SPLASH, even without the meter, you can always tell how much oxygen the girls have left by paying attention to the way they behave. The girls will grunt and gurgle the more air they expend, and they'll be visibly struggling with swimming straight when they're almost out. Each girl can hold her breath for different lengths of time, with Honomi lasting approximately five minutes, Chie for three minutes, and Kokono for just one minute.
- Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles: A rarity for Fox Eye games. The girls can find air leaks that they can gobble up for more air. These leaks tend to be found in depths and situations so deep, that they're the only feasible way for them to survive underwater at all, with the surface otherwise being too far away for any of them to reach in time.
- Pool Scene: Similar to Fox Eye's other works, the game includes a collection of artwork featuring the main heroines playing in the water (and even some artwork of them on land). One of the images features the girls relaxing at the bottom of a 40 foot deep swimming pool. Honomi is, naturally, doing just fine, but in a bit of irony, Kokono (the character with the shortest breath holding time) is cool as a cucumber, while Chie (who has a breath hold time longer than Kokono, but shorter than Honomi) is visibly drowning.note
- Prequel: Takes place before the events of the original Blue Port, although the games are entirely separate from each other in setting, story, and characters while still maintaining the same premise (3 girls exploring ocean depths).
- Speed, Smarts and Strength: Honomi is the Speed, gaining a skill that lets her swim faster. Chie is the Strength, gaining the skill to push heavy underwater blocks for puzzles. Meanwhile, Kokono is the Smarts, being able to craft items, and see hidden numbers near the very end of the game for a big lever puzzle.
- Super Drowning Skills: Obviously averted since all three girls are more than capable of holding their breath underwater and they are all very skilled swimmers. However, if you leave them idle while submerged, they'll inexplicably sink like a (strangely light) stone, regardless of how much air they have left. note
- Talking Is a Free Action: Played straight, but otherwise averted when inputting passcodes. Your Oxygen Meter still decreases during the process.
- Tan Lines: The island's summer rays have given Chie these.
- Timed Mission: Chie seems to really enjoy setting herself up for this, usually having Honomi come and rescue her from an otherwise inescapable drowning.
- At the start of the game, Honomi finds that Chie has gone diving without her. She dives in after her and finds that Chie has locked herself in a padlocked cage with the tide rising. Honomi leaves to find the combination to the padlock, but by the time she returns, the tide has already submerged poor Chie, leaving Honomi to quickly open the padlock and free Chie before she runs out of air.
- Much later in the game, Chie dives down deep to discover an Underwater Ruins that contains the elusive Waterflies she and her friends were looking for, but she runs out of air and passes out before she could collect enough of them to bring back. The game then switches to Honomi to have you rush all the way back down to those very same ruins to find and rescue Chie before time runs out.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: Inverted. The game disallows you from jumping into any water if any of the girls are traveling together. This is mainly because of their different Oxygen Meter lengths, and necessitates the use of their unique abilities once they're unlocked and once they can each be controlled solo.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: Granted, you have to progress the story in order to find new places to explore, but once you've discovered a new area, there's nothing stopping you from exploring the depths below at your leisure (assuming you have enough oxygen to spare), and just because the story ends doesn't mean the adventure ends.
