In recent years, we’ve seen a significant decline in episodic video games. Once hailed as the future, a model that would allow games to mimic the release schedules of television, in too many cases, delays and strange pacing simply made these games go down poorly. A lot of players started waiting for the full game to release rather than playing them week to week. Episodic games have become rare enough that it’s surprising to see Lost Records: Bloom & Rage release in two parts, even coming from one of the studios who started episodic releases when making the original Life is Strange.
Perhaps they’d have been better off waiting for the full game to be done. There’s a lot that intrigues during Tape 1 of Bloom & Rage, but the first half of this interesting release is so filled with so much set-up that even upon completing it, I’m not entirely sure what this game is.
Riot Grrrls Unite
At its core, Lost Records is a story of four friends who created a special bond in the ’90s coming back together in the modern day. Throughout the approximately six-hour runtime of this first half, you’ll jump between third-person sequences set in the past and first-person ones set late at night in the modern day. Our heroine is Swann, an awkward kid who didn’t have a lot of friends who has grown up to be an only somewhat awkward adult who is super nervous about reuniting with the girl group she spent a formative summer with all those years ago.
Her crew includes bandmates Autumn and Nora and Kat, who rescues Swann from a pair of local bullies. The experience ends up bonding the four, who quickly start hanging out, despite Swann’s family getting ready to move to Canada in the coming months. All four girls feel distinct and fully drawn, and the highlight of Bloom & Rage is watching them come together and form bonds. You can tell that none of these girls have a lot of close bonds, and they all find something they need in their little group. Soon, they’re hanging out in the woods and taking a ton of videos using Swann’s old-school camcorder.
A Slow Burn
While this crew is relatively delightful, with mostly strong voice acting, even if Swann’s voice actress seems to take a bit of time to settle into the teenage part of the role, you’ll spend most of Tape 1 getting to know them. Even into the final hour, the game provides only the vaguest hints of what is actually going on here. Something tore this group apart and made it so they knew they had to stay apart. A delivery that shouldn’t have been possible has now brought them back together after decades of not knowing each other. There might have been a vaguely supernatural element to what happened to them at the end of that summer, but the game gives little more. Even now, having completed it, I still feel somewhat lost. I know a bit more about what happened but not yet why it happened or what caused these girls to stay apart. The ending here doesn’t feel like the midway point; it feels like we’re maybe a quarter of the way into the story.
A lot of your time in getting there is spent just wandering around. There are certainly decisions to be made and dialogue choices that will impact your long-term relationship with the other girls in your group. You’ll have a chance to build strong bonds with your crew, and presumably that will matter at some point in Tape 2, which is set to release on April 15th. So far, it hasn’t meant much. You also get to break out Swann’s camera and shoot video of all kinds of environmental highlights. You can even edit these clips together into full videos, which do show up at several points of the story. This is very cool, but so far, it hasn’t felt consequential in any way, either. That may change in Tape 2 as well.
If Tape 1 of Bloom & Rage nails one thing, though, it’s the 90s aesthetic. I love the soundtrack, the awkward but authentic dialogue, and the look and feel of its world. Just exploring Swann’s room put a smile on my face as someone who was at least vaguely in the same age group, albeit a few years younger.
Conclusion
I feel like I keep coming back to the idea, though, that things might matter in Tape 2. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1 isn’t bad, but it’s very slow to get going and feels almost entirely like character-building. After completing it, I still don’t fully understand what this game is going to be. Even if the full game was out now this would be a slow burn that could use to pick up the pace, but when all you have is the burn it becomes very hard to justify playing the game. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good enough time. I did, and I can see a world where Tape 2 pays off this character development with a second half that really makes the most of it. Without knowing what’s to come, though, I might recommend waiting to see what comes next.
Final Verdict: 3/5
Available on: Xbox Series X (Reviewed), Xbox Series S, PS5, PC; Publisher: DON’T NOD; Developer: DON’T NOD; Players: 1; Released: February 18th, 2025; ESRB: M for Mature; MSRP: $39.99
Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage provided by the publisher.
