Lost Records: Bloom & Rage

Developer: Don’t Nod Montréal
Publisher: Don’t Nod
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S (Reviewed), PC
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $39.99 USD – Available Here

Overview

There was a time when episodic storytelling was all the rage for certain developers, giving players drip feeds of storyline and gameplay over the course of multiple months to try and build suspense and give the developers themselves some breathing room. Over time though, this type of release style has faded to the point that most games that bill themselves as having “episodes” still release all at once in a single package. Don’t Nod was among many developers at the time making use of episodic releases and made their mark with the first two Life is Strange games. Now they are back and have actually embraced episodes once again, or “Tapes” in the case of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. So while we may have played Bloom and kept quiet for the two months that it took for Rage to arrive, has this new episodic adventure paid off?

Story

Set in the fictional small town of Velvet Cove, Michigan Lost Records: Bloom & Rage spreads its story across two different time periods, one in 1995 and one in 2022. In 2022, Swann is hesitatingly attending a reunion with friends she hasn’t seen or even talked to in 27 years. The reason? A mysterious package arrived at one of these friends’ doorstep all these years later, addressed to their short lived band back in 1995, Bloom & Rage. Finally drawn back together after so much time apart and seemingly forgetting many key elements about what actually happened during that fateful summer they became friends only to never speak again. 

Back in 1995, Swann is a teenager preparing to move out of the small town to Vancouver, Canada, but she still has one last summer before the move and while this reclusive girl would rather film things with her beloved camcorder, spend time with here cat, or watch movies, she just so happens to stumble into a group of girls who come to her aid after being bullied right in front of them by a pair that serve a… complicated role throughout the story. These girls are Kat who serves as something of the brains of the group, Nora being the punk rocker with a sense for fashion and weed, and Autumn being the sensible and more down to earth one. It doesn’t take long, after bonding over the bullies and tracking down a set of lost keys, for the girls to become fast friends and them to learn that Autumn and Nora love playing as a garage punk band. Seeing potential for a future where they can all shine, Swann comes up with the idea to film a music video for the band and the group Bloom & Rage is born in a dirty garage. But that is far from all these girls get themselves into.

As the girls venture through the woods, looking for neat spots to film, they discover an eerie cabin they make their “home base,” only for things to get even stranger when a mysterious glowing hole thee girls call, The Abyss, appears nearby. With the appearance of this mystical and potentially dangerous Abyss, the girls’ summer is changed forever, especially when it is revealed that one has a horrific secret they’ve been keeping from the rest, leaving her friends to deal with the fallout throughout the second tape as well as reveal many major secrets about why characters are acting the way they are in 2022.

In an effort to avoid spoiling major revelations we won’t discuss what happens from the Bloom Tape and Rage Tape but it is certainly worth noting that there is a major tonal shift between the two as the first felt like a cozy “coming-of-age” style adventure of teenage girls being rebels as they find themselves and the second being about sorrow, coping with the reality of their situation, and ironically, rage. Player choice also begins to play a major role in how scenes start to play out at this point since early choices generally only involved things like song lyrics, clothing or make-up color, minor elements. Now choices can play a major role in seeing how Swann can try to interact and hold her new splintering group of friends together. 

That being said, it is a little unfortunate that while players can make a noticeable change with a character outside the friend group, another completely regresses to the point of becoming a cartoonish villain, regardless of how Swann interacts with them up until this point, which is disappointing as one of the major reveals does re-contextualize both characters’ actions until any attempt at development was dropped. Similarly, while Bloom felt fairly expansive, giving players new locations to explore, people to meet, and things to film with Swann and her friends, Rage feels less like a “second half” and more like an oddly delayed conclusion. A shorter runtime combined with faster pacing and even the complete removal of Swann’s camera after a certain point make this second act feel lopsided compared to the first. 

By no means does this make Lost Records: Bloom & Rage a bad story, in fact it actually is an incredibly dramatic and impactful one that follows these teenagers struggling to find themselves in a backwater town in an era that saw their grunge-rock lifestyle and potential love-lives as problematic and something that should be tamped down. Throughout Bloom players get to see these girls become fast friends with dreams of the future only for the gut punch right at the end that brings everything crashing down back to earth. Unfortunately, while the emotional connections and interactions with Swann and her friends are the biggest highlights of the story, the actual Abyss isn’t. Perhaps in an attempt to keep things as vague as possible, the Abyss is never properly explained and only rarely even shows that it has influenced the girls in any way until the culmination of the story. Even then, the story fails to properly stick a landing despite landing solidly at first, as it stumbles by showing off not one but two teases for a continuation should Don’t Nod ever make a sequel rather than provide a proper resolution.

Gameplay

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage offers a few interesting takes on the narrative adventure genre. Most of the time throughout the game players will be able to control Swann as she walks around and explores her current location, either in third-person in 1995 or in first-person in 2022. During 2022, Swann can look around and examine things to “reminisce” to bring up some words from the past but in 1995 she will have her trusty camcorder with her, at least until the halfway point of Rage. Swann utilizes her camcorder not only narratively but as the primary way to gather “collectables” as well since most collectables throughout the title are objects, animals, and even people that players can optionally film to put together extra “memoirs” alongside storyline ones. Players can even go back and edit the footage in memoirs by swapping them around or changing it with alternate angles or versions, but this feels superfluous at best as there is very little reason to do so.

Interestingly enough, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage does offer the ability to replay previously played segments in “collectable” mode where they can film subjects they may have missed or interact with an object they may have overlooked without affecting their progress or choices. Unfortunately, this collectable mode is a bit hit or miss depending on what players are trying to do. Not only are some aspects relating to specific achievements not tracked through collectable mode but even when filming missed subjects they will not be saved unless the player finishes the chapter properly, simply quitting out will result in them still being missed. While it is nice that the developers included an option to skip cinematics where no choices are made, this is a bit annoying. It is also worth noting that since player choice isn’t accounted for in this mode, revisiting old scenes to change something like, finding a book or moving a board, won’t matter during later events unless players start over entirely.

One other element that Lost Records: Bloom & Rage does to make itself feel unique compared to a standard narrative adventure game is the way players can choose their dialogue. While many choices are clear cut with dialogue that has no consequences, some dialogue will signal that the player’s choice will have meaning in some way by displaying a sprouting plant or, in the case of bonding and growing close with Swann’s three new friends, a filling or breaking heart if they raise or lower a girl’s affection by making that choice. Alongside this, while silence is usually always an “option” and even a correct one at times, lingering around with a dialogue choice can occasionally make new choices appear, often being the better of the previously available options. Alongside this players can even look around their current location and unlock additional dialogue choices from time to time, creating some unique dynamics to choice making. 

It is also worth noting that, at least at the time of this writing, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is rather buggy, especially the Rage tape. Not only does the title frequently suffer from slow down quite often throughout Bloom, especially when filming “supernatural” scenes but the title crashed completely on numerous occasions to the Home screen throughout Rage. This is more unfortunate than one might think since, despite showing autosaving icons, they don’t appear to have an effect when the game crashes, having to restart the entire chapter from the beginning if it crashed during a scene, even one right before a chapter’s conclusion. It is also worth noting that on more than a few occasions the girls would clip into one another during exploration or, in one extremely unusual instance in 2022, saw Autumn floating in the middle of the bar, sitting as if nothing was wrong and this was only thee most grievous character animation and placement issue that occurred often.

Audio & Visuals

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is a stellar looking title that blends its own art style into every aspect of the game, be it the dingy dive-bar that the 2022 characters reside in or exploring the lush and often creepy forests back in 1995. It must be said that the character designs for the girls, including their outfits and make-up choices (which players can affect through various choices) feel like perfect fits for the era, especially for teenage girls stuck in a nowhere town, two of which are heavily into grunge rock. There are a number of action sequences that range from impressive looking to rather disappointing, with one of the latter being a chase sequence that should feel more dire than it really comes off as. Thankfully at least some of the supernatural aspects come off looking great, even if they aren’t used nearly as much as one would hope. It is also worth noting that, as mentioned before, players should expect some rather janky looking character animations or completely out-of-place characters at times.

The voice work for the core cast of the game is rather impressive, with the voice actors for each character matching perfectly, especially with their jumps between the two time periods. This is especially noticeable whenever a character chimes in during a past sequence, mentioning how they felt during that event. This does wonders to help deliver the emotional impact that some of the scenes aim for and nail perfectly, though some still whiff, but that’s mostly due to the writing. As for the soundtrack the game features a great collection of seemingly original music that fits perfectly well for a game set in the mid ‘90s. This includes Bloom & Rage’s own song and the very poignant moments that it is played during throughout both tapes.

Overall

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage does an excellent job at offering some unique elements to its narrative adventure to keep players interested gameplay wise, what with the filming ability to gather countless collectables and the way hesitating to answer or looking around can prompt new dialogue options and it does a great job telling its storyline of four girls that bonded over a crazy summer in 1995 only to reunite after splintering apart as a result of something terrible. Unfortunately not only does it feel like this story shouldn’t have been split in half, but give a proper ending instead. With Rage’s shortcomings not only shortchanging side-characters but robbing the core cast of having extra developments and showcasing the “magical” side of things even more, this story may be one that is an enjoyable journey even if its emotional finale is completely drained by chasing a sequel.

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