Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is Half of What Life is Strange Should Be

I’ve been a fan of the Life is Strange series since its inception under Don’t Nod just over a decade ago, and while that series has been under the care of developer Deck Nine since the release of True Colors, Don’t Nod deserves a lot of praise for pioneering the modern “choice game.” The developer’s newest game, Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, is a return to form for Don’t Nod, stepping back into the familiar shoes of a teenage girl embroiled in supernatural goings-on with great confidence and even greater success.

There are no major innovations in the storytelling formula of Lost Records compared to prior games in the genre. For the most part, the game plays out exactly as you’d expect — you explore a specific story, making choices in both actions and through dialog that have the potential to change the outcome of the story later on. Some of these choices seem small and inconsequential at the time but may have drastic outcomes on the story, while others seem like major decisions that ultimately play out the same no matter what you choose.

Not knowing which choices actually matter is a nice reflection of the themes present here — Lost Records‘ main characters are in their mid-teens, trapped in the awkward transitional stage between child and adult, doing their best to figure out who they are and what matters in life. Like an awkward teen, you’ll make mistakes that come back to haunt you down the line, and you’ll spend time stressing over big decisions that mean nothing once the moment has passed. I’m a decade and change removed from their age group, but that tense feeling of not knowing what you’re doing isn’t something anyone forgets, and Lost Records does an incredible job at evoking it.

Lost Records follows four characters – Swann, Kat, Nora, and Autumn – across two periods, one being 1995 and the other being 2022. 27 years after they’d promised to never contact each other again, the gang meets up under strange circumstances after Autumn receives an ominous package addressed to Bloom and Rage, the punk band the four formed in their youth. In meeting up, they discover that nobody really remembers the Summer of ’95 all that well, and take to reminiscing about their youth to try and jog their memories.

These memories are the primary playable sections of the game, with about 80% of the game’s runtime spent during flashbacks. Swann, an insecure girl deep in the throes of adolescence, acts as the protagonist, and armed with her era-appropriate camcorder, sets out to document her first and only Summer spent with her new friends. There’s some neat gameplay with the camcorder, with Swann able to whip it out and start recording at any point, most of which gets compiled into clips shown elsewhere in the game – a music video, for example – but for the most part it’s a literal framing device largely secondary to the main gameplay loop of exploring and talking.

There’s a lot to like about how the story plays out. Hints of something darker peek through moments of joy, as the girls start to get to know each other and grow their friendships while finding themselves in increasingly spooky situations. It’s punctuated by cut-ins from the present day, where Swann and Autumn switch between reminiscing over how simple everything was back then and trying to figure out what exactly happened those decades ago, with the specter of the ominous package looming overhead. It’s tense, knowing that while things are jovial and cute now, something terrifying might be just around the bend, and the stakes feel much higher than any Life is Strange game, not because anyone’s in immediate danger, but because the characters are so much better written and much more likeable.

The newly refined dialog system helps with this tension, too. Unlike past games in the genre, Lost Records introduces a number of timing elements to your responses. Instead of simply waiting for your turn to speak, you can interrupt some lines with a thought of your own, and how and when you respond can change the outcome of a conversation drastically. Waiting can often lead to more dialog options becoming available, as can looking around, and often saying nothing at all can offer unique outcomes, too. The dynamism of this new system means that conversations feel much more natural than in games past, with fewer awkward pauses and many more outcomes overall. Even if those outcomes are largely the same, having more control over how and when you respond is a big step up that makes the game’s characters feel alive.

Adding to that feeling is the work put into creating the teen experience. While dialog can be a little bit awkward and stilted at times, often portraying characters that feel far too young or far too old, the personalities of the main cast and their internal struggles feel well-developed. There’s burgeoning sexuality, body image issues, skin problems – rendered visually with great detail – and social awkwardness built into these characters, and while it doesn’t land perfectly, it’s probably the closest a game has ever gotten to transporting me back to my teens.

The main issue with Lost Records right now is that it’s only half a game, with the first half available now and the second half coming in April. It’s very awkwardly split in half, with a cliffhanger that didn’t really grip me as well as everything else that happened in the first half, none of which has resolved or even reached its climax. The aforementioned box – the main driving force for this part of the game – is never opened, the primary conflict that led to the modern times and the promise never to meet again is largely absent, and yet it feels like there’s somehow very little left unexplored.

I sat through six hours of half a game that sorely needs its second part to feel whole, and I can’t guarantee I’ll ever see that second part. It’s months away, and who knows if I’ll care or even remember by the time that rolls around. While most episodic games feel like episodes of a TV show, Lost Records feels like a movie split in two just before the climax — it’s unsatisfying and frustrating, and having to wait so long to see the parts that matter might just be too big of an ask.