Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Review
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage has been on my list for quite a while, and being such a fan of the Life Is Strange series, I knew that this game was one I had to check off my list. The trailers, the mood, the mystery, the whole “something strange happened one summer, and nobody wants to talk about it” setup had me completely hooked from the jump. So now, over a year later and now that I’ve finally finished it, the big question is pretty simple: was it worth the hype?
The short answer is: Mostly! There’s a lot here to love with this tale, but there was also a frustrating amount left hanging.
In true DON'T NOD fashion, the game is split into two episodes, or “tapes” as they call it here, and Tape 1, Bloom, does a great job of pulling you into the world. The vibe was giving Yellowjackets meets Lost in many ways. You play as a girl named Swann, a shy, awkward kid who starts off feeling like the odd one out before getting pulled into the orbit of a rag-tag group of friends… Nora, Autumn, and eventually Kat. What starts as small-time summer bonding turns into something stranger pretty quickly.
Yes, it’s true, their life is also strange…. The girls explore a playground, stumble across an empty homeless encampment , hang out in Nora’s garage making music, and eventually find an abandoned lakeside cabin in the woods that becomes their secret group hideout. The progression at this part of the game, though a bit slow, really worked for me because it made their friendship feel earned. It had that messy, exciting, slightly feral energy teenage friendships sometimes have.
Then the game starts layering in the supernatural stuff… As to be expected from DON'T NOD. There’s this mysterious abyss near the cabin hangout, and it seems to have a weird effect on our friend Kat in particular. Her anger toward Corey (her sister's shitty boyfriend) grows, her behaviour gets more intense, and before long she’s treating this strange place like it’s some kind of answer. That all builds to a concert scene at the end of Tape 1, where Kat performs a hate-fueled original song aimed at Corey, and everything feels like it’s spinning right out of control.
Then she collapses, Dylan reveals Kat has cancer, and the whole thing suddenly becomes a lot sadder than it first appeared. It’s a strong ending for the first tape, even if it leaves you with way more questions than answers. Luckily for me, Tape 2 was readily available for me to jump into!
Tape 2, Rage, picks up in the aftermath of the girls' concert, and leans hard into the emotional fallout. The girls are dealing with the fallout from the concert, Swann has tense moments with Dylan (Kat’s sister), Autumn spirals after learning Kat is dying, and Nora returns from being sent away to L.A... Some of the best scenes in the game happen here, especially when Swann visits Kat at her home and helps her finish cutting her hair. This sneaking and puzzle sequence was probably my favourite in the game. It’s a small moment, but it hits hard because it feels very intimate and real. Later, the girls decide to help Kat sabotage her family’s hunting business, which starts as petty revenge and turns into something much more emotional when Kat reveals she wants to save the deer being kept there. That’s one of the most effective parts of the whole game, because it ties her grief, anger, and love for these animals into one big, messy decision.
But despite all of that, Tape 2 also made the game’s biggest flaw painfully obvious: it does not give us enough answers. Even when rolling credits, the abyss still remains a mystery. The strange figures (and KAT?!) keep showing up at the end of the game, the camcorder interference is never really explained, the anonymous box stays weird, and the cabin instructions still feel like they came out of nowhere. Instead of feeling like a conclusion, Tape 2 mostly felt like the middle chunk of a bigger story. And for a game that builds so much intrigue, that was kind of a letdown.
Character-wise, I thought the core cast was mostly strong. Swann can be a bit much at times… but aren’t we all? Especially in those formative teen years where a tragedy and experience like theirs can seriously leave a mark. For me, Kat’s sister Dylan ended up being one of the more interesting supporting characters, and I actually wished the game had spent more time with her. Her motives, a bit more into her relationship with her sister… Just more. Corey, on the other hand, felt more effective in Tape 1 than in Tape 2, where he became a lot more obviously villainous… He definitely got a lot more eye rolls from me in Tape 2.
As a piece of art within itself, the soundtrack fit the mood really well, and even if I’m not going to pretend I’m some kind of music critic, it definitely added to the atmosphere. Even the custom songs the girls were singing had me hooked and singing along where I could. Visually, the game could be so gorgeous, but it was also a little uneven in its graphics. One scene was a cinematic masterpiece, and another scene I was wondering why the mouths were un-synced with the game audio. I ran into a couple of bugs, animation hiccups, and a few scenes definitely needed more polish, but it didn’t completely ruin the experience for me. It just unfortunately pulled me out of the moment more than once.
In the end, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage left me impressed by its characters and atmosphere, but disappointed by how the story and its characters end up. Many resolved feelings both for the characters and myself… but hey, I guess that’s life, huh? I definitely wanted more answers, more closure, and something that felt like a real ending instead of a box full of mysteries and a promise that maybe more is coming later. There’s definitely potential here, and I would still play a sequel if one happens, but as a standalone story, this one left me wanting a whole lot more tape.
