Lost Records: Bloom is a Hazy, Nostalgia-Driven Start to an Intriguing Story
Don’t Nod may have handed over control of the Life is Strange franchise to Deck Nine, but Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is further proof that they continue to make games that follow it in spirit. It’s another choice-based angsty teen drama with supernatural elements, and the first half, Tape 1: Bloom , is a promising spiritual successor.
In 1995, four teen girls from the small town of Velvet Cove spent a long summer hanging out in the woods where they would eventually stumble on something strange. This would lead to an event that shook the girls so much they would forget everything and promise to never speak again. However, in 2022, a mysterious package shows up, prompting the girls to reunite in the town they’d long moved away from. Together they attempt to remember that summer that caused the rift between them, and the terrible events that forced them to forget.
Screenshot by Siliconera
There’s an obvious influence that jumped out to me while playing through this – Stephen King’s IT . The premise is almost entirely the same. Long summer. A group of close friends united by awkwardness. Something supernatural occurs. The friends deliberately drift away for almost thirty years before returning to revisit the terrible events.
I already picked up on it when I first saw the trailers for the game, but the second I picked up a book in the protagonist’s room written by Richie Blackman, I knew the connection had to be on purpose. The obvious nod to Richard Bachmann, King’s pseudonym for non-horror works, plus the almost deliberate change to Richie, one of the original Losers Club? I see what you’re up to, Don’t Nod.
However, despite the clear similarities, Lost Records: Bloom forges its own path. There’s no scary clown chasing the teens down here. In fact, there’s little obvious dread out of the gate. Just a mystery slowly bubbling under the half-spoken secrets of the adults in 2022.
Screenshot by Siliconera
Lost Records: Bloom focuses on Swann Holloway, a chubby, socially awkward girl living in Velvet Cove. She carries a camcorder around with her, hoping to make her own movies one day. However, while filming around the Movie Palace rental store, she gets confronted by local mean girl Dylan and her boyfriend Corey. In the chaos, the girl from the nearby ice cream stand, Autumn, her friend Nora and Dylan’s sister Kat get involved. This results in Corey throwing Autumn’s keys into an abandoned playground and a nighttime search in which the girls first bond.
The rest of Bloom focuses on the growth of this friend group. The four girls are generally seen as weird outcasts and this helps them form strong bonds over a long, hot summer. As well as Swann’s nerdy love of movies and “goblin-core” nature of collecting items from the forest, each girl fits their own outcast stereotype. Autumn and Nora are the punk rebels, obsessed with riot grrl and skateboarding. Kat is the homeschooled antisocial weirdo who loves poetry and horror movies. They don’t have many other friends, but they come together with their own respective quirks fitting well together.
As they head out to the woods to film a music video for the band (the titular Bloom & Rage) they stumble on a mysterious cabin that they clean out and claim as their secret hideout for the summer. However, not all is as it seems with this cabin, and a nearby clearing appears to hold spooky secrets.
Screenshot by Siliconera
Lost Records: Bloom is an interesting start to this story. It’s much longer than I anticipated, clocking in at around six hours, and yet very little seems to happen. It’s a character piece about four friends hanging out in summer, drenched in 90s nostalgia. The hazy summer sun shines down on a world of video rental stores, mixtapes full of Garbage, Sonic Youth and The Cannonballs, and cartridge-based games consoles. The millennials who grew up from being socially awkward teens will find themselves slipping into a melancholy yearning as the game progresses. I say this because it’s me, I’m the socially awkward millennial.
It helps that the girls are all likeable in their own dorky ways. Swann’s actress is fantastic at bringing out her sweet yet ultimately socially awkward side in her performance. You can pick dialogue choices to make her sound badass, only for her to stammer and squeak out the words every single time. The other girls are all excellent, to the point where the game tries to push a romance angle, but I refused to pursue any of it as I just wanted the whole gang to feel happy and loved. Which helps because so much of the game is just the four of them hanging out and getting closer.
Screenshot by Siliconera
This nostalgia, rose-tinted sunny sense of wonder and joy is constantly undercut, however. The 90s scenes are all flashbacks, visited through a fog of VHS static. Whenever we return to the modern day, there’s an entirely different tone. The dimly lit bar and the looming reminders of the COVID-19 pandemic make the town that feels so sprawling and open for exploration in the 90s now feel oppressive, cold and crumbling apart at the seams.
This is enhanced by the deep sense of anxiety that now surrounds the friend group. Anxiety stemming from reconnecting with people they haven’t seen in thirty years. Anxiety of remembering what happened to them they somehow forgot. Anxiety of why they’ve received a package demanding they remember. This anxiety is a huge contrast to the carefree summer of ’95 and it bleeds through into the past. Despite the sunshine, the good times with friends and the gorgeous scenery, the present-day scenes remind us that something is about to go down. Everything in the 90s seems so idyllic, what could possibly have happened to ruin all this?
Screenshot by Siliconera
As with other Don’t Nod games, Lost Records: Bloom is mainly a plot-driven experience. Your main interactions with the world will be some basic puzzles and, of course, deciding how Swann responds to every interaction she has with her new friends. Right now, few of these choices felt all that impactful, most likely because this is only half a game. The biggest impacts my choices seemed to have were the color of Swann’s childhood cat and where Nora would eventually get a piercing. However, most choices seemed to heavily impact the friendship between Swann and the other girls, and I’m curious if this will have major implications on the events of the second half.
The other main gameplay mechanic is Swann’s camcorder. You can bring up the camera at any time to film whatever bits of scenery, or indeed which of Swann’s friends, take your interest the most. Even better, these clips get chopped together as memoirs which you can edit and move around to your heart’s content. Then you can watch Swann’s documentary slowly come together, complete with grainy VHS quality, cheesy low-fi editing tricks and a complete inability to balance audio tracks properly. My knowledge of camcorders and video editing is all digital and post-2000s, but I recognized that awkward learn-as-you-go aesthetic all the same.
I am curious about where all this goes. The darker side of the story present in the 2022 portions does finally show in the latter stages of 1995, as the supernatural elements appear, and a major twist rounds off the climax. However, that big “TO BE CONTINUED” message that follows indicates that this story is just getting started. I’m honestly itching to see where it all goes. I’ve become invested in what happened to these girls and it’s frustrating that I have to wait until April to see it through to the end.
Tape 1 of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is out now for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Tape 2 will release on April 15, 2025.
The post Lost Records: Bloom is a Hazy, Nostalgia-Driven Start to an Intriguing Story appeared first on Siliconera .
Popular Content
Explore Topic
