Eternal Return: Black Survival is a free-to-play Multiplayer Online Battle Arena and Battle Royale Game. The game is developed by Nimble Neuron, and went into open beta on July 29th, 2020. The game's official 1.0 launch came on July 20th, 2023.

The game takes place on the deserted Lumia Island, where eighteen survivors are forced to be the last one(s) standing for an experiment by the organization AGLAIA seeking to create perfect transhumans. Players choose to play one character out of a growing cast with which to find items, craft equipment, hunt animals, cook food, and of course kill the other survivors on the island for the match. The Advancing Wall of Doom standard to the Battle Royale Game genre works very differently in Eternal Return: Black Survival compared to the others - rather than a contracting circle centered around a point, entire set regions become randomly declared to soon be "restricted" and these restricted areas do not slowly damage players within them. Instead, players have thirty seconds per match with which they can freely go into any sort of restricted area until their time entirely depletes and instantly explodes them. Unlike most Battle Royale Games, the vast majority of items are to some degree guaranteed to have spawned - but only within certain areas, making a planned "build path" (similar to that of the strategic patterns in other Multiplayer Online Battle Arena or Real-Time Strategy games) a necessity for players to hope to finish their desired equipment lest the areas with their desired items become out of reach to them or even having been depleted of the necessary items.

The game can be played solo against bots, with multiplayer matchmaking for solo free-for-all play, duos, or squad (threes), and finally custom matches.

Let there be glory to the pawns, who reached the end of despair:

• Adaptational Curves: Some of the characters from Black Survival are curvier than they were in the first game. Examples include Cathy, Sua, Eva◊, Jenny◊, and Dr. Nadja◊.
• Adaptational Modesty: A number of characters from Black Survival had significantly more Fanservice-laden designs compared to Eternal Return: Black Survival. For example; Nadine went from going around to just wearing a tube top and a ponytail above the waist to a black shirt that only causes for exposing midriffs, an short orange camouflaged cape, and an orange cap. Zahir was a Walking Shirtless Scene using a flimsy vest but instead has a closed shirt now. Fiora's pants were see-through. Exceptions to this exist though - Jackie's still pretty close to only wearing sports underwear along with gloves, boots and a torn apron only worn over her waist, and Magnus remains a Walking Shirtless Scene with only a black leather vest over top his very muscular upper body. Cathy also averts it with her Cleavage Window, short skirt and Zettai Ryouiki, as her Angel of Death skin from Black Survival is her default skin here.
• After-Combat Recovery: Played With - players do regenerate their health and SP more quickly while out of combat, but it'll still take a while to be back up to full if one only waits. Players can also use the rest button (which is only usable while not in combat) to more rapidly regenerate at the cost of not moving and taking a second for them to act after ending the rest (which can be forcibly caused by enemies attacking them while they're resting).
• Aggressive Play Incentive: In addition to gaining credits and experience from killing enemy test subjects (and possibly asserting control over an area containing a rare material or even taking theirs), killing enemy test subjects who end were taken down them while they're near enough to their location of death will heal and refund part of the cooldowns (basic, ultimate, weapons, and tactical alike) of them and their teammates.
• Alternate Universe: The Lumia Casino episode frames it - and, by extension, the previously-released skins relating the casino concept despite previous webtoons framing it as something somehow occurring on the island while Aglaia's still doing the experiments on the island - as this trope.
• Applied Phlebotinum: "Vital Force" (abbreviated as VF) is a background element explaining the characters' capabilities ranging from the unlikely to the impossible. At least the scientists of Lumia Island are conducting the experiments to specifically study something so useful. VF is also explicitly titled on the Arcana weapon skill and Echion's VF Prosthetic weapon type and skill.
• A.K.A.-47: Zigzagged - some guns are given fairly exact names (such as the "Beretta M92F" among the pistols), others are less exact (such as the "Springfield" among the sniper rifles, which could refer to a very large number of rifles throughout history, though the icon seems to depict the Model 1903), and some are entirely non-specific (such as the "Machine Gun" among the assault rifles, the icon of which appears to be one of the QBZ-95 rifle family).
• Arbitrary Gun Power: Naturally, for balance reasons, guns aren't hugely different from bows, crossbows, throwing weapons, and shurikens and are not really any more lethal than close-combat weapons on the same tier. They also have to reload occasionally, though this isn't a terribly huge drawback considering the ammunition reserves that you load with are infinite, and wasting ammunition is difficult to do as it is only consumed by basic attacks that are guaranteed to go toward whatever you click to attack.
• Art Shift: In addition to the standard artwork of the characters (with edited expressions as necessary) used in the Lumia Casino episode, entirely different Super-Deformed artwork is used at other times.
• Ascended Meme: An animation depicting Charlotte set to microchip by Oliver Buckland became popular enough that the game's official YouTube channel also hosted the video, the signature 3-second animation became an official in-game emote (complete with sound), and the song was released as pickable menu music.
  • A clip from a preview of the Vertical Launching System feature which is Irem in her cat form spinning around became popular (because obviously it would) and also led to an official in-game emote being created after it.
• Bait-and-Switch: Haze seems to react coldly to Justyna suggesting that she act as a bunny girl while she's failing to find a fourth suitable candidate for the job which leads to everyone else being cowed by her reaction, but Haze actually thinks that's a great idea.
• Batter Up!: Bat weapons!...though funnily enough, none of the icons or names for any of the bat weapons imply that any of them are just baseball bats, though the weapon skill's icon clearly is. Bats' weapon skill is "Full Swing", doing damage to all enemies in front of the survivor and knocking them back. If the enemy was knocked into a wall, they will be stunned.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Some of the challenges' snippets state that some historical events or persons are suspected to be due to VF. The first "Level Up Your Skills" bracket, ends with the conversation's words being attributed to Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Musashibo Benkei (the latter is suspected to be a VF Awakener).
• Blackmail: How Haze has Justyna and Rio working for her, after catching them trespassing in her casino.
• Blinded by the Light: Cameras' weapon skill, Flash, has the camera set on really bright apparently - enemies hit by it while facing it take a lot more damage and are unable to see from a short distance away from themselves.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Viewing characters' models in the character section has them try to maintain their gaze toward you, even as you turn them around.
• Cast from Hit Points: Players that are downed can use abilities that consume their health to try to explode themselves by removing their VF bracelet, move faster, or use an AED to attempt to revive themselves after channeling and being left untouched after 20 seconds. The AED in particularly takes away 90% of the downed player's remaining health and pretty much ensures an enemy could kill them by hitting them with just about anything to activate the healing effect gained from an enemy your team downed dying.
• Climactic Battle Resurrection: After day 6, which closes down the map into only two zones, the singular remaining player'(s) entire team in the respective zones are fully revived and healed to help keep the final fight on day 7 interesting.
• Comeback Mechanic: While nothing in of itself can be done to make up for the opportunities of rare material, credits gained over time and credits gained from killing animals lost, players that are two mastery levels behind the rest of the match gain 25% more experience and players that are at least three mastery levels behind gain 100% more experience to allow them to at least potentially catch up at least in levels with the rest of the match when they can get a moment to kill some animals.
• Commonplace Rare: While plenty of the game's rarer items are suitably Public Domain Artifacts, follow Clarke's Third Law, or made out of Applied Phlebotinum, not all of them are. Stuff like the Scythe, Mallet, Hiking Boots, Sportswatch and Instant Camera are of the higher rarity items in the game. The Bikini and Chinese Opera Mask items are of the highest! Food rarity is also fairly arbitrary with the relative complexity of the actual food seeming to be indicative of the food's rarity, though cooked yellow Sweet Potatoes and Salmon Steaks are on the Legendary tier just as a Hawaiian Pizza is.
• Cool Sword: The two-handed sword weapons set, as well as dual swords. Two-handed swords' weapon skill is Parry, which blocks all damage and becomes unstoppable for 3/4ths of a second before dashing through the enemy.
• Counter-Attack: Tonfas' weapon skill, Quick Spin, which has the survivor adopt a defensive stance for a moment that prevents them from taking any other action, but avoiding all damage and return some of it back to the attacker. However, it doesn't return very much damage back so its real benefit is avoiding all damage and crowd-control during its duration.
• Creepy Cemetery: Plenty of test subjects regularly express unease at the Cemetery. The Battle Logs entries for the area imply those subjects' instincts aren't wrong, as at at least one Aglaia researcher somehow exceeded the allowed number of four burials and their remains had to be incinerated (which implies this has also happened to others), an individual who was interested in the place left an Apocalyptic Log while their "mind is still clear" to declare among other things "Never, ever be curious here.", and the researchers have a phrase for people going mad due to being interested with the Cemetery as "dug their own grave".
• Cute Machines: The Guide Robot Lumi who circles a path on Lumia Island is certainly one. It excitedly waves at players with both hands when one stops by them◊ and plays the in-game default emotes when it does things for further anthropomorphization. When it is full of credits (meaning the next player to interact with it will cause it to go in attack mode and make it able to be attacked by players for a duration), the poor thing looks nervous. If the weather on the island is raining, it'll have a transparent umbrella attached to its back.◊
• Damned by Faint Praise: In scene 4 of the Lumia Casino episode, Justyna finds herself confused about whether she's being complimented after Mai and Rio say that she's silly but charming in its own way, and again when followed by Haze saying she knows Justyna's a bit silly but not actually stupid. In scene 5, she again chooses to take Haze remarking "At least this idiot still has energy" about her as a compliment.
• Dash Attack: The Rapier weapon skill does also this, simply causing its user to dash right to a target and cause damage. Dual swords can do two of them, first performing a much shorter dash that continuously causes damage to any enemies within its distance, and then a much longer dash doing damage once that becomes available if the first one hit a target for at least two-thirds of its potential hits.
• Defend Command: Tonfas' weapon skill will prevent the survivor from doing anything at all, be it moving or attacking, during its duration...but will also avoid any damage or crowd-control they would have taken too. It even returns some of the damage prevented back to the attacker.
• Depending on the Artist: This promotional artwork for Eternal Return: Black Survival has Jackie's clothing being fairly different from the details of any in-game context, the latter of which lacks any sort of text on her clothes, a gas mask left over her neck, and has her apron be entirely orange rather than red with black straps.
• Dual Wielding: The dual swords weapons. While the icons of the weapons portray them as being pretty much alike (aside from the Divine Dual Swords which evoke a samurai's katana and wakizashi "daishō" while mentioning Miyamoto Musashi's dual-wielding technique), the most basic weapon recipe itself brings to mind the more realistic short-and-long weapon pairs by requiring a kitchen knife and a rusty sword to make it. The weapon skill is Dual Sword Rampage, which is a Dash Attack that causes the user to rapidly attack six times to all within a rectangle in front of them as they travel to the other end, and hitting an enemy with it allows for a long-range dash at the end.
  • Rozzi also goes Guns Akimbo, dual-wielding her pistols in combat.
• Elite Mooks: Some animals may respawn as mutant animals which have more health, cause more damage, and provide more credits for being killed. Mutant animal groups periodically always spawn at specific areas. Watch out for those mutant chicken groups if your character doesn't have much capability for Herd Hitting Attacks or you're going to learn what Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder is.
• Expressive Mask: In spite of how she doesn't even wear her goggles on her eyes, Justyna's depicted with her goggles popping off her head◊ like an an Eye Pop after Haze tells her she's going to take her into the police for trespassing within scene 4 of the Lumia Casino episode.
• Hell Hotel: The Battle Logs entries for the Hotel, which are styled as entries in the hotel's management handbook, clearly imply that a lot of strange stuff is regularly happening at the place:
  • It insists that there are no room numbers ending in 2, which needs to be reported to a supervisor who will take appropriate action if they are seen.
  • Red, green or purple staining is to be reported to a supervisor and not to be touched.
  • Something happens in the main hall at 11 AM-3 PM so breakfast is never served there outside of those hours and any customers being seen there at those times are to not be approached but instead reported to a supervisor.
  • The breakfast sausages' containers may leak a liquid that should be reported and if contacted with, dealt with by taking a provided yellow pill and informing the manager.
  • Its phones cannot receive calls, so the phone should never be answered if it rings and instead reported to a supervisor who will take appropriate action. If you or anyone else around feels compelled to answer the ringing phone, a provided red pill should be administered to such individuals to suppress the urge, by force if necessary. If anyone does manage to answer the phone, consume a provided black pill and a modest compensation will be subsequently provided to your family.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Food and beverages are consumables used to respectively replenish your characters' HP or SP over 18 seconds.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Survivors have a limited inventory of ten slots and six spaces for worn equipment and generally clearly lacking carrying equipment. They cook food and beverages with a pan and portable stove or craft other items with a set of tools wrapped up that comes in and out of existence solely for the crafting animation. All worn equipment doesn't show up on their character at all, aside from a single model used for each usable weapon.
• Interface Spoiler: Before Lenox was in the game, the entire line of whip weapons in the game were (almost, as they technically could still be made solely to grant its maker Craft Mastery experience) completely useless to every character, since no-one could use whips...so it was safe to assume that a whip user like Lenox would be added in the future.
• Inexplicable Language Fluency: The test subjects are able to work together with each other in spite of how one would presume that the vast majority of them would be completely unable to verbally communicate with most of the others. Averted by some of the achievement lore entries, which include statements observed from test subjects that some of which have a note underneath which states the words were translated by AI and will be reviewed and localized further in the future.
• Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat: Food found is always entirely edible, even if it was found in a portable toilet.
• Item Crafting: There's a chance you might see an entire finalized piece of equipment you want from airdropped purple or yellow boxes...but trust us that your odds are much better if you instead go to where the items that you need to craft the equipment are. Food, beverages, and special placed items can also all be crafted.
• Just Add Water: We don't know how the survivors are able to craft freakin' Excalibur with just their portable tools, a bejeweled sword and a holy grail in a few seconds either.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": Played Straight in the second scene of the Eternal Return main story episode, after Hyunwoo steps on one concealed under a pile of leaves. Sua tells them that she read about defusing mines in a book before and asks Hyejin to find a big rock to put on the mine for a Weight and Switch. However, the trio don’t get a chance to use the rock since they are ambushed by unseen assailants who kill them with gunfire while they refuse to move away.
• Lucky Charms Title: The ER Pass for Season 5 was titled as Lucky☆.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Despite many of the two-handed sword users being non-Asian and the icons for many of the weapons being that of a European-style straight sword, the 3D models for characters using a two-handed sword is that of the gently-curved katana style.
• King Mook: Wickeline is the game's strongest wild animal and is guaranteed to drop some items required to craft legendary-tier equipment as well as a First Aid Kit. She also grants a temporary buff that causes the defeater's damage sources to cause an extra fixed damage-over-time effect.
• Knock Back: Crossbows' weapon skill does this innately to anyone hit by its cone. Spears' Shadow Stab weapon skill does this conditionally - they always cause some damage and slows enemies hit, but also knock back enemies who are too close to the survivor and causing the damage again.
• Kukris are Kool: The icon for the dual swords weapon type and skill notably use a kukri-style for the blades, in spite of no actual dual swords items actually using a kukri appearance for its icon.
• Medal of Dishonor: Some challenges are completed by repeatedly getting hit by slow, telegraphed attacks, such as getting hit by a bear's stunning stomp or a meteorite falling. Like other challenges, they will grant your account some rewards upon completion, but they won't remove the shame you felt every time it happened.
• Mercy Invincibility: Upon exiting a Hyperloop, you are briefly invulnerable and immune to crowd controls, but you are drastically slowed down and cannot attack or use abilities. This gives you a second to take in your surroundings and briefly protects you from anyone who might be right next to you after the warp, but means you can't take advantage of the invincibility to attack them. To a lesser and similar extent, if a player is unfortunate enough to have died from their timer running out, but is revived at a kiosk by a teammate, they are granted another ten seconds on their timer again to be able to at least run into a non-restricted zone if they were revived at a kiosk in a restricted area rather than just dying again immediately upon revival.
• Mind-Control Music: Guitars' weapon skill, Love &... causes an enemy hit by to be charmed by it, causing them to move toward the guitarist for its duration while unable to do anything else.
• Mithril: "Mythril" is a chunk of a teal-coloured metal rare crafting material used to make Legendary items, obtained from killing an Alpha or bought from a kiosk. It is described as silver strengthened from long-term exposure to [Vital Force, and silver is the metal which is most reactive to the stuff.
• Money Spider: The demise of animals give the player (and their nearby teammates) credits for killing them. They also drop items which may or may not be logical for them to have had as well, such as chickens dropping meat or feathers which makes sense...but all animals also drop leather, which multiple days to produce. They also drop items that are found in the area, which vaguely makes a shred of sense since such objects happened to be around the place already (though it's not very likely these animals would have any interest in them).
• Mooks: The animals scattered around the island are the creeps-equivalents seen in other Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas, existing to be killed by the test subjects for credits and experience, though all of them are completely neutral and provide no safe haven to any player whatsoever (indeed, hitting them by accident while other opposing players are around may quickly prove completely disastrous), though it is still possible for players to manipulate this to their advantage. Mutant animals are also around to provide a tougher fight and reward more credits.
• Multi-Stat Attack Scaling: Far more common earlier in the game's development cycle, but largely Downplayed after release. In most cases, characters are intended to focus on building either attack power or skill amplification even if they may have skills whose value can be increased by both of them which is further enforced by characters' weapon mastery only increasing their basic attack's damage or their skill amplification and the adaptability stat only increasing either a test subject's attack power or skill amplification based off which one has the greatest number in their repertoire. That being said, some exceptions do exist, most likely in the cases of characters whose skills' values also benefit from building defensive stats, like Magnus' 17 vs. 1 skill increasing its damage from his attack power and his skill amplification, and also performing more hits over its duration with additional defense (and it's a Percent Damage Attack!)
• Pineapple Ruins Pizza: The writing snippets for the challenge of eating Hawaiian Pizza, of course, gets into this controversy.
• Pinned to the Wall: Crossbows' weapon skill is Expulsion Shot can do this. It shoots out a cone of bolts that will knocks enemies back. If it knocks them into a wall, they will take extra damage and be stunned.
• Plunder: In addition to gaining credits from killing other players, a player's corpse also contains almost their entire inventory for other players to be able to loot, aside from equipment that is of a higher tier than Epic - instead, that equipment is non-interactable and the corpse contains a credit reward that increases based on each of the Legendary/Mythic equipment that the player was wearing. Equipment that was crafted with only a Tree of Life, Meteorite or Mythril is 20 more credits, equipment that required a Force Core is 30 more credits, and equipment made out of a VF Blood Sample is another 45 credits. A player's current credit pool is unrelated to the loot they will drop, and their entire team will be rendered unable of interacting with any rare materials that was in their inventory (unless another opposing player picks that material up off of their corpse and dies for it to be taken off of them again). Players were previously able to just take any and all equipment from any other dead player and at one point were able to take Legendary/Mythic equipment and destroy it for credits, but this was removed in favor of the reward system.
• Power Fist: The "Glove" weapons. The weapon skill for them is "Uppercut" which causes the survivor to immediately perform a normal attack with greater range and damage.
• Product Placement: The game's own esports are frequently advertised on the map, with the "ER Masters" tournament being placed on walls or billboards.
• Public Domain Artifact: A large amount of equipment is either named after various mythological characters, real people, or is conceptually directly taken from actual mythological items.
• Rain of Arrows: The Bow weapon skill is named this, and pretty much does a one-man version of this exactly. It takes a while for the area targeted by the skill to be struck by the arrows (causing damage and slowing enemies hit, more so if they were at its center), but the Shadow of Impending Doom that warns enemies to get out of it doesn't appear until the last second until the arrows land.
• Resting Recovery: Players may sit down and rest by using the function while not in combat. It can be ended at will but also will be forcibly ended if the player takes damage.
• Robo-Speak: While Lumi does not actually speak in-game, it does in some challenges' lore text wherein ⌜I-t S-p-e-a-k-s l-i-k-e T-h-i-s⌟ to clearly indicate that it does not talk normally.
• Three-Strike Combo: It takes three basic attacks to ready Axes' weapon skill, Maleficent Helix. Arcana's weapon skill VF Dispersion grants the survivor three "spheres of condensed VF energy" to drop onto enemies.
• Schmuck Bait: This is arguably the case for rare materials, including Meteorites and Trees of Life, as well as the androids Alpha and Omega. Inexperienced players will frequently rush to the sites for these resources as soon they become available, even if they aren't finished their build, have low weapon mastery, or will end up in very unfavorable match-ups. This often results in someone camping around them and killing hapless victims with ease, resulting in that player potentially snowballing and dominating the rest of the match (provided someone doesn't kill them immediately afterward). Even if a player doesn't die to this, they will likely waste a lot of time dancing around a rare material and not doing other things (i.e. hunting animals, cooking food, etc.), resulting in them falling too far behind to catch up. Experienced players are far more selective about contesting rare materials since they will be better able to judge whether the reward is worth the risk or not.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: As of Season 7, you can now make use of an escape submarine if you find a rare item and use it to build a Rootkit. Using this, you can warp to a special section of the island and, provided someone else doesn't also warp there and contest you, use the submarine to escape the island. This is a good way out if someone else is dominating the match and you can't hope to beat them in a fight.
• Settle It Without Weapons: Averted. Not having weapons equipped prevents a player from attacking or using any of their skills at all, no matter what the skills would logically stem from. Perhaps the test subjects unconsciously require the weapons as a focus for their Vital Force.
• Shout-Out: One of the randomized names for bots in the English localization is TobiasFunky, which is obviously almost the same as Tobias Fünke. Another name is FatTony. The Blade of Truth tactical skill has a blade◊ that looks almost exactly like an energy sword◊ from Halo spin around the user. The Leather Armor chest armor's flavor text says it's rewarded if your daughter catches a criminal, referencing Princess Maker 2. Xiukai's Dodgeball skin's flavor text of course has another take from DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story's "If you can dodge a wrench," ("you can dodge a flaming volleyball with a drawing of a dumpling on it") line. The challenge for harvesting apples from apple trees is simply called The Giving Tree.
• Sinister Minister: The Battle Logs entries of the Chapel area imply that an Aglaia researcher administered artificially created VF which sees impressive physical results immediately to the user, but soon kills them after, under the guise of "miracles". These were given just to clear the inhabitants out of the island.
• Sniper Rifle: A weapon type some of the characters use! Benefitting such a weapon, its weapon skill is Ballistic Advantage, which increases the user's sight greatly at a distance in a large cone and allows them to fire two long-ranged traveling shots (the second of which causes far more damage the lower the target's health it hits is), but requires they immobilize themselves to continue using it and prevents them from seeing around themselves outside of that cone.
• Stat Grinding: With a lack of endlessly-spawning Mooks running into towers to play wack-a-mole on unlike other Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas, players instead increase their survivors' levels by gaining experience toward masteries. This experience is summed up to allow for leveling up, and can be gained from doing basically anything at all save for standing still:
  • Weapon-specific mastery increases by doing damage, making a weapon, and killing animals or players which further improves the player's ability to cause damage. Doing or taking damage from animals as well as killing them increases Hunt mastery to increase damage done against animals.
  • Crafting items is done for Craft mastery which also increases the effect gained from items.
  • Collecting resources, opening other item containers and using security consoles increases Search mastery and increases vision range.
  • Moving around and making leg armor increases Move Mastery in additional to movement speed in and out of combat.
  • Taking damage and crafting food increases Health mastery, improving your health and mana regeneration while out of combat. ^note It used to increase your maximum HP, but this effect was removed.
  • Crafting armor aside from leg armor, taking damage, and killing animals or players increases Defense Mastery to further reduce damage taken.
  • Crafting, setting, taking damage from and doing damage with traps (cameras count under this) increases Trap Mastery to additionally increase the damage caused by the survivor's traps.
• Stealth Expert: Daggers' weapon skill, Cloak & Dagger, allows a survivor to temporarily make themselves invisible and move a bit faster for two seconds with the first portion. Then they can Flash Step behind an enemy and cause damage to them with the second portion.
• Stock Animal Diet: The challenge for getting salmon from fishing states that, despite AGLAIA performing genetic modification that should have removed this predilection, the writer found that the bears still love salmon.
• Stock Ninja Weaponry: Shurikens are a weapon type, though darts, cards, chakrams, throwing knives and the Petal Torrent weapon are also included within the type. The main distinction between throwing weapons and shurikens seem to be that the former are less aerodynamic than the latter. The shuriken weapon skill is "Caltrops" which damage and slow enemies who run over them.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Each achievement of the challenges system all grant an entry of writing which can be an anecdote of some other story (such as mythology), or delve into the background of Lumia Island, Aglaia, or the character of the test subjects. Get back to the experiment if you want to learn more!
  • Did you notice that the kiosk in the Warehouse◊ seems to have a newspaper of Il Popolo d'Italia, which was founded by Benito Mussolini?
• Super Mode: Assault rifles' weapon skill, Overheat, is one. After using basic attacks with one to gain stacks, activating the skill again will cause the weapon to be immediately reloaded and greatly increase the survivor's attack damage and attack speed for a duration.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: The Nunchucks' weapon skill has the user spin them around for a duration before hurling a powerful gust of wind forward...yes, like some kind of wizard. Vital Force serves as an explanation here.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Most of the throwing weapons, though some of them are instead slings. Their weapon skill is "Smokescreen", which slows movement for all enemies inside and reduces their ability to see around them majorly.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: VF Awakeners' powers tend to be revealed under desperate circumstances. Aiden, for example, had his first appear when he suffered electric torture.
• Tube Travel: "Hyperloop" is available in certain regions for a survivor to teleport them to other regions. As it's only shown in-game as a phone booth overtop a closed sets of two doors and a spinning cylinder that goes into the ground after a survivor uses it, it can only be assumed the hyperloop works similarly to the design released by Tesla and SpaceX.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Players that kill other players gain experience, credits, restore their timer to help them take risks in restricted areas and are left able to kill animals for more credits, secure rare materials and then create better equipment while the dead players will have to wait to respawn or require their team spend a total of 250 credits between two players' credits pools to revive them during which the dead player(s) can do none of these things (they won't even gain credits over time inherently like the alive ones). A player might be inclined to buy a Rootkit and have their team vote to escape in these instances.
• Yank Into Melee: The weapon skill of the Whip weapon type has the user crack the whip along a line outward to pull an enemy toward them after being hit.

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The Daily Life of Our Test Subjects!

A humorous series of comics made by 하지켈록 / SYK, mostly about Fridge Logic or other directly-gameplay-or-development-derived humor. The first bunch can be found here, the second bunch here, and the third bunch can be found here. A separate series of webtoons was also made by 순수한 불순물 / parang9494 named Lumia: The island of dreams and hopes! to tie into Season 5's ER Pass. It is found here.

As the comics are listed only by chapter instead of by title, the chapter's corresponding titles are listed here for ease of reference:

The Daily Life of Our Test Subjects! provides examples of:

• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: "Factory Food" has the probably-very-drunk Li Dailin mistake a portable toilet for a fridge (and later mistake the Factory region for the Hotel). She gave the ramen and frozen pizza in it to Xiukai for him to cook, unbeknownst to him where it actually came from.
• Animal Reaction Shot: The two wolves of a nearby wolf camp are utterly mortified at Li Dailin taking out ramen and frozen pizza from a portable toilet to keep for food in "Factory Food".
• Appeal to Flattery: Darko easily gets Jenny to accept a contract to work for his casino in Fraudulent Contract just by clapping and remarking that only a really good actress can pull off the Playboy Bunny-esque costume after she tries it on.
• Black Comedy: "ETERNAL COFFEE SHOP" has Aiden and Haze open a coffee shop, hear that water is important for the flavor of coffee, and proceed to enslave Adriana, Elena and Leon to use their VF powers to make water for them. "Test Subject" has Irem lit on fire by Adriana which still keeps Adriana's experimental record free of human casualties. "A Twisted Musician" has Lenore torturing Hart while Charlotte tries to help Hart by healing her...while Lenore is still being torturous to her, leading Hart to end the comic with demanding to just be killed.
• The Cameo: "Loan Shark" sees a switchblade and a pair of scissors embedded in a dead Katja's head, indicating that Shoichi and Daniel killed her off-screen.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Garnet is this to Kenneth in "The Reunion", proving incapable of leaving him alone, culminating in her messaging his phone at 3 in the morning and starting a countdown ultimatum when he's not answering back. No wonder he jumped out of a window to escape her.
• Continuity Nod: While Aiden and Haze attack Adriana in "New Outfit", her final words are "Arghh!! Not you again!!", apparently remembering having been enslaved by the duo in "ETERNAL COFFEE SHOP" all too well.
• Cuteness Proximity: Alex tries to use Irem to sneak out documents from Haze's coffee shop in "UNDERCOVER". She is prevented from doing so by Nadine, Nicky and Tia proceeding to want to pet the adorable cat cosplaying as Alex (and Alex beats a hasty retreat to leave Irem in the lurch).
• Development Gag: "Prison Guard" has Johann using Smart Bombs against Bianca, a trap available in earlier versions of the game that has since been removed. It also references earlier versions of Johann being infamous for relying on traps to cause damage since he was The Medic and had little hope to kill other test subjects without them.
• Enlightened Self-Interest: Played for Laughs in "Loan Shark", after giving Katja a loan, Darko defends her life and later revives her at the kiosk (adding the revival cost to her debt) because he doesn't want her to die before paying him back.
• Everyone Is a Super: Emma gets discouraged in "Magic Duel" as she performs her magical tricks while everyone else's VF powers lets them do differently-magical things already. They try to encourage her still anyway.
• Exact Words: Adriana has never lost any human lives in her experiments. And as the final text for "Test Subject" indicates, setting Irem on fire (green fire with copper sulfate, to be exact) doesn't change that.
• Gambling Ruins Lives: The Lumia, the island of dreams and hopes! comic sees Nicky and Rio desperately in debt at Lumia Casino (Nicky was hoping to make enough credits quickly to revive her dead teammates, Rio was trying to win a cat toy).
• Guilt-Tripping: After he's disbarred from the Season 4 party in "Dress Code" due to his lack of a swimsuit, Yuki blabbers on about what happened (completely with Blah, Blah, Blah) to Mai that he'd love to have a swimsuit made by a wonderful and good-hearted fashion designer like herself until she does so.
• Human Shield: Lacking an actual shield, Estelle in her Bestelle skin in "Teamwork" instead holds up Bianca, also in her coffin for her downed animation, for this purpose, much like the actual coffin-shaped shield that her uses in the actual skin.
• Hypocritical Humor: Debi considers it shameless that Eva is trying to skimp on her flight costs by wearing a student bracelet, while she and Marlene are currently being arrested by Aya, probably for trying to pay for only one plane ticket for the two of them like they did at the bus in "Extreme Makeover".
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: "Teamwork" has Mai give Estelle the dress for her Bestelle skin, not the shield she normally uses because "I...I'm a fashion designer, not a blacksmith!"
• Implied Death Threat: Felix is about to apprehend Eva for bringing a white powder which is actually chalk (which is also a Development Gag as the white powder is an item that was previously but now is no longer obtainable in the game) in her airport bag, but he backs down as he sees her about to add chalk to a grenade, though he's emboldened to act again after he sees she's trying to pay only for a student flight.
• Inexplicable Language Fluency: Lampshaded in "Language Barrier", where the Japanese Rio can't understand two Koreans, Hyunwoo and Hyejin, so Hyunwoo builds a smartphone and uses Gxxxxx Translate to compensate for this...and none of them can understand the English Jackie who burst into the scene (and naturally doesn't hold back on her violent and murderous urges despite a language barrier).
• Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat: Food found is always edible, even if, as the "Factory Food comic" is entirely about, it was found in a portable toilet.
• Lost in Translation: "Inspection" ends with the text "Haneul Jeong's biggest crisis in her 17 years of life." While inferable by context, non-Korean speakers will probably be confused at seeing Eva's Korean given name for the first time since the name has otherwise never been used for the game in English - even in Black Survival.
• Medium Awareness: In "Dress Code", Magnus stuns Yuki with his Heavy Strike (normally done by causing the target to be hit into terrain) by hitting him into the right-side of the comic panel. Debi tells what is clearly implied to be a bullshit sob story so her and Marlene only have to pay for one bus ticket, which Marlene adds that it's only fair since they already only have to pay the cost for playing ranked or being revived as one individual.
• Mistaken Identity: Aiden and Haze murder Widriana in "New Outfit", mistaking her for Wickeline, and are confused to find that her corpse does not have a VF Blood Sample on it.
• Mundane Utility: In "ETERNAL COFFEE SHOP", Aiden and Haze enslave Adriana, Elena and Leon to harness their VF powers...to create water for their coffee shop.
• No Fourth Wall: Very often - plenty of comics are just directly based off of recent or upcoming skin releases for the main game. Apparently, Mai made a lot of them. In another example, Yuki does not have a skin where he's in a swimsuit, because "Dress Code" indicated that Mai did make him one, but his vital cufflinks mechanic couldn't stay on with the skin. The same comic also has Mai yell "W! W!" at Yuki when his cufflinks are flying off from him, which is the default key binding for Yuki's Button Up skill to replenish his cufflinks.
• Non-Indicative Name: As a helpful note indicated with an asterisk says, The Daily Life of Our Test Subjects! may not actually be daily.
• Perpetual Frowner: Katja maintains a stony-face frown during her appearance in "Loan Shark". She very slightly shows a little bit more emotion in that comic by: keeping that same expression, but also shedding a tear at the same time, and having her mouth shrink into a tiny dot. Her drone ends up portraying emotion for her, with it wearing a feminine, blushing face for the last panel.
• Real After All: Within the game's writing itself, Adriana talking to her dead sister Lily is her being schizophrenic. Within these comics, Lily is actually around as a ghost who talks back to Adriana and can apparently bring her deliveries.
• Shout-Out: "Loan Shark" has Katja's drone display a Microsoft Windows blue screen on its screen while Katja is dead. "Dress Code" has Hyunwoo, Yuki and Felix sequentially singing the first three lines of the Pokémon Theme song. "Party People" has Sua's bird be named Elon (and Sua also suspiciously says "Go for the eyes, Elon!" like one of Minsc's most famous phrases) and the comic seems to end with a meeting out of Among Us, but with characters wearing the Cadet skin line. "Naivety" has Darkest Dungeon's Arc Symbol the Iron Crown◊ appear over Cathy's head.
• Super-Deformed: The characters are frequently, though not always, portrayed in a chibi form. The epilogue especially mostly uses this style for the characters.
• Super Window Jump: Kenneth does this in "The Reunion", so desperate is he to get away from Garnet.
• Talking Animal: For some reason, Vanya's butterfly is able to say the word "Disappointing." in "Inspection".
• Take a Third Option: Embarrassed and confused with which of her teammates' IDs to say to revive them, Estelle instead decides to ask for a rootkit.
• Technologically Blind Elders: The 59-year-old Alonso has some trouble with the kiosk throughout "Lifesaver".
• Together in Death: Played for Laughs in "New Outfit" - after Aiden and Haze murder Adriana while mistaking her for Wickeline, Adriana's ghost appears out of her corpse and happily joins the ghost of Lily.

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