Returning to the adventure game style that put game studio Don’t Nod on the map back in 2015, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage adds just enough scene-setting, unique mechanics and shiny graphics to make it feel worth investing time into an awkward and incomplete story.
In Lost Records, Don’t Nod takes players through the unforgettable days of a blossoming group of friends as they discover supernatural secrets hidden in their sleepy hometown of Velvet Cove, Michigan. Players choose dialogue options and explore the town through the role of Swann, a shy teenage girl who finally makes close friends in the final days before she moves with her family to Canada.
The game’s greatest strength is the dedication to its primary setting of 1995, and that is where players’ mileage may vary. Depending on their nostalgia for the days of Tamagotchis, home movies and renting tapes from Blockbuster, players could be drawn in or put off by the atmosphere Don’t Nod crafted for this game.
Music reminiscent of Julee Cruise and the Cranberries accompanies the title screen and emotional moments throughout the game. The girls form a strong friendship over the goals of creating a punk band and going to a Bikini Kill concert. The iconography and tropes of the ‘90s stitch together the characters, story and gameplay.
The Lost Records gameplay is headlined by the camcorder mechanic that has players further role play as Swann as they use her camera to record her friends, birds, landmarks and more of what they see around the environment. The mechanic is used both to progress the game and to continue the immersion of playing a girl obsessed with making home movies. There is a “memoir” feature that lets players go through the shaky footage they recorded, either for progression or for fun, and also lets them move clips around to form a cohesive movie.
Recording and making “memoirs” is initially a neat idea, especially because every player will have their own style of filming. Unfortunately, the mechanic grows monotonous after a couple of hours of fiddling around with shooting techniques and catching wildlife on the camcorder.
The overuse of the main gameplay mechanic is just the beginning of where the game starts to feel like merely an iteration of the studio’s past rather than an evolution.
The writing feels just as eccentric as it did a decade ago when the studio debuted its “Life is Strange” series. Although the setting of Lost Records does provide the writers some leeway when it comes to some of the odd dialogue, there are many questionable lines and deliveries throughout the game.
Writers Desiree Cifre and Nina Freeman were hired by the French studio to provide authenticity to American culture and to the characters. The authenticity is done well throughout and is the strongest aspect of the story. Unfortunately, the delivery does not do it much justice.
Characters speak over each other too often or get cut off by making a dialogue choice, making it feel like a jumble of crosstalk that does not matter. A “reminisce” prompt occasionally shows up when players hover over items that start yet another voice clip to play from Swann or other characters from the 2022 timeline, which again layers over other conversations and actions. It makes the game feel cluttered and unfocused.
Another prominent gameplay feature is the cause-and-effect style of dialogue options that Don’t Nod is known for, cementing that this game is a spiritual successor to Life Is Strange. Muscle memory will kick in for anyone familiar with games like Fallout, Baldur’s Gate or other role playing games when those two or three boxes pop up.
Throughout the game, players choose how Swann communicates with her friends. Most of those choices give the player feedback, such as a broken heart or a budding plant, indicating how other characters will think of Swann.
Choosing dialogue options that seem to fit Swann’s cartoonish shyness usually gives indications that the choice was wrong, but making her say something overtly brave or goofy feels like it does not fit her character. Players can choose to remain silent as well, which sometimes seems like the best route.
As of now, it is unclear how important choices are because it is possible they will not have repercussions until part two comes out on April 15.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is only one half of a complete story at the end of the day and there is much room for the story to grow. If the setting is enough to hook players and they are not turned off by the snail’s pace of part one, there is still hope that part two delivers on the tension and mystery.
