Survive! Mola mola! is a mobile survival game for Android and iOS. It was developed by Select Button and released in September of 2014.
The goal is to raise an Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) to adulthood. However, this is easier said than done. Molas are sensitive to a wide variety of conditions and can die from stress or minor injuries. Despite this, they are plentiful, so if one dies, just start with a new one. In fact, one of the goals is to die as many different ways as possible.
The Ocean Sunfish starts out as an egg, which hatches into a larval stage called a Sugar Ball. The player taps on food to direct it to eat, and ever time it reaches a weight threshold it will develop into its next life stage. Each new stage unlocks MP (Mola Points) which are used to purchase upgrades, like more food, different types of food, and new adventures. Adventures have the Mola set out in search of meals to grow more quickly, but have a 50/50 chance of ending fatally. In addition, the food itself can be hazardous. In all, there are 28 ways your Mola mola can die. Each time the player discovers a new way to die, a weight bonus percentage increases, allowing the next generation to grow faster.
Tropes featured in this game include:
- Achievement System: There are only a handful, but they can be tricky to accomplish. These include tapping your Molas 3000 times, dying 50 and 200 times, dying on an event with a 99.9% survival rate, and getting the Golden Ending.
- The Ageless: If you choose "Freedom" when prompted at the Aquarium King's aging scene, instead of becoming the elderly Living Legend who has a maximum lifespan, it becomes a Voyager who has no cap on its age and will die only to accidents. If you're playing Hard Mode the Ocean King stages that follow the Voyager all look younger than the Voyager.
- Artistic License – Biology: Subverted. The Non-celebrity and higher levels all have what appear to be whiskers, but are actually parasites latched onto their face.
- Black Comedy: Being that the game is about trying and often failing to keep a fish from dying, it sort of has to be presented in a comical way.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: MP can be purchased with real money to unlock adventures and food more quickly. And having a wide variety of foods makes killing your Mola more likely, which increases its weight bonus and improves its survivability each time.
- Butt-Monkey: The entire premise of the game is how Sunfish are prone to dying from ridiculously mundane problems.
- Can't Live Without You: Seeing one its Mola friends die can shock your own fish so bad that it dies of a broken heart. Or heart attack, either or.
- Crossover: Two collaborations were done in 2015, adding unique adventures and deaths to the game that are now no longer available:
- The Battle Cats featured in Survive! Mola Mola and vice versa, with the titular cats killing mola mola in several ways. While The Battle Cats has repeated the event several times, Survive! Mola Mola has not.
- A Japan-exclusive event featured the music of Vocaloid producer Manbou-P, who got his name from his song A Sunfish is Dead Behind My House. Predictably, listening to this song would scare your sunfish to death.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: If you want 100% completion and a better weight bonus.
- Darkness Equals Death: Playing on a low brightness setting causes the mola to suddenly swim off-screen, crash into something, and die. Thankfully, this will only happen once per mode.
- Death by Gluttony: Every unlockable food item carries a risk of death from eating plastic or sharp shells and bones. The Hard Mode exclusive foods can kill the mola mola by fighting back. Even the survival bonuses only bring the survival rate up to 99.9%, leaving a permanent but minuscule risk.
- Disaster Dominoes: Implied in the Mola Rescue death, where your mola mola dies from the shock of finding another mola mola's corpse. The death image shows a second dead mola further in the background, suggesting the one you just found had also died of shock.
- Edutainment Game: Almost everything in the game is based on dangers that sunfish face in real life. This includes accidental injury due to their large size, poor eyesight, and sub-par maneuverability. But it's wrapped in a darkly comedic pet sim.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Every type of food your fish can eat can make it choke or injure its stomach. Everything your fish can do while adventuring can result in deadly injury. Most of the other animals or objects it encounters can also kill it, usually by accident. In fact, the only thing that can't kill your fish is plankton. Also, all of the special deaths except old age gain a 100% survival rate after encountering them for the first time.
- Evolutionary Levels: As your Mola mola gets heavier, it will age up into its next form. After hatching, it starts out as the Sugar Ball, before becoming a Baby, then Kid, Young Man, Non-Celebrity, Mola King, and then Aquarium King. Choosing "Blessing" when it gets big enough will have it become the Living Legend, the only form that can die of natural causes. Choosing "Freedom and Hope" instead will have it become the Voyager which won't die from reaching its maximum size. And unlocking Hard Mode will allow the Voyager to evolve even further.
- Explosive Breeder: Subverted: The game states several times that sunfish can lay 300 million eggs but only a few ever make it to hatching, and even less to adulthood. This is similar to real-world sunfish whose conservation status is vulnerable in spite of their massive spawn numbers.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Inverted. Your fish can be killed by shaking your phone too much, leaving the screen brightness too low, taking too many pictures in a row, or tapping it too many times.
- Go into the Light: The adventure "Go towards the light" is a literal take on this. The sunfish approaches the surface to bask in the warm sunrise, then panics at how bright it is, possibly dying from stress.
- Golden Ending: Raising your Mola to the Nigh-Invulnerable Living Legend and passing away of natural causes. However, there's still Hard Mode and the various regional forms to unlock, which requires evolving into the Voyager instead.
- Hilarity Ensues: Almost every action your Mola takes, from sunbathing to diving to eating has a pretty good chance of making it die.
- In a Single Bound: One event has the Mola breach to try to shake off parasites. However, it jumps too high and might die from crashing back into the water too hard.
- Last of His Kind: Well, last of his brood - each Mola you raise is the sole survivor of its nest.
- The Many Deaths of You: The game has 28 different ways that your Mola can die, including one for for every type of food except plankton.
- New Game Plus: Every time you die, you get a new generation of Mola that can survive a bit better than its predecessor. But then there's Hard Mode, where your Voyager can evolve further. into distinct geological variants.
- Nonstandard Game Over: Dying as an egg by destroying the rest of your brood while the intro plays.
- Peaceful in Death: While it still gets the shocked belly-up animation, death by natural causes is treated with relatively more dignity than the other deaths: Its description thanks the player for their time, and the mola mola's caption has happy tears.
- Permanently Missable Content: Starting Hard Mode resets your survival rates, meaning that you can get "first death" weight bonuses all over again and double what you had before. However, hard mode won't compensate for any bonuses missed from normal mode, and you can't revert back to normal mode either. The result is that the player cannot maximize their weight bonus if they didn't get all deaths in normal mode.
- Press Start to Game Over: During the intro monologue, swipe at the other eggs to destroy them all, and your Mola will never hatch.
- Random Number God: Unlocking a new death may take quite a while, if the event that causes it has a high survival rate. In fact, there's an achievement for dying with a 99.9% chance of surviving.
- Replacement Goldfish: Once your Mola dies, another takes its place. And the new one is pretty much indistinguishable.
- Shout-Out:
- The sound effect used for evolving and unlocking new skills is the power-up sound from Super Mario Bros.
- The Recommend button shows a Super Famicom/European Super Nintendo controller.
- Soft Water: Averted by the first adventure, where the mola mola jumps too high out of the water and hits the surface with potentially lethal force.
- Sole Survivor: Several references are made to your mola mola being the only one of its clutch of 300 million eggs to make it past being an egg or a fry. The opening text says that your sunfish wants to fulfill their wishes by becoming by largest sunfish in the world.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Anything that could kill your fish does so instantly. Eat a bad oyster? Your Mola's insides get shredded by the shell. Taking too many pictures? The flash stresses it out so bad it just dies randomly.
- Temporary Online Content: Collaboration events offered exclusive deaths that are now no longer obtainable. This means missing their gallery entries and their weight bonuses, the latter of which was also subject to the issue mentioned in Permanently Missable Content.
- Truth in Television: Sunfish are extremely sensitive and prone to injury and death, but also make up for it with sheer numbers. However, they're currently classified as having a Vulnerable conservation status, though that may change due to more recent discoveries in their behavior.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Taking exceptionally good care of your Mola will eventually give you an opportunity to receive a Blessing that will allow it to become a massive, Nigh-Invulnerable Living Legend.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can intentionally kill your Molas by shaking the phone, using the camera too much, or turning down the brightness to make them crash into things.
- Violation of Common Sense: Despite the goal being to survive to adulthood, it's actually better to get all of the easy deaths out of the way first. This way, your Molas will grow and earn MP faster.
- Virtual Pet: A game where you raise Ocean Sunfish while paradoxically trying to get it to live as long as possible, while also finding out all the ways it can perish.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Things like indigestion and being touched too much can make your Mola die suddenly.
- You Are Number 6: Your fish are only ever given numbers. Just as well, especially early on, since they likely won't survive long.
