Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1 (Xbox Series) Review

Welcome to the suburbs, circa 1995. Welcome to small-town life, small-town drama, and small-town friendships. Some of which blossom for life and others… well, some trees just don’t grow. Don’t Nod have returned to suburbia and character-driven stories with their latest foray into cinematic adventures with Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. The Life is Strange developers are tapping into everything they’ve learned in their latest episodic adventure to bring a tale steeped in teen angst and possible paranormal happenings.

Lost Records (Tape 1) drops you into the shoes – and camcorder – of Swann, during her last summer in Velvet Cove. This is when she meets Kate, Nora, and Autumn, instantly forging a connection with the girls that helps bring Swann out of her shell. With the formation of their punk rock band, the titular “Bloom & Rage”, it looks like the summer is going to get lively. But something happens, something that prompts the girls to make a vow to never see each other again. Twenty-seven years later, a phone call brings them all back together to face what happened back then. The only question is why can’t they remember any of it?

Lost Records (Tape 1) does a great job of capturing that time in life when you still haven’t figured out who you are. If you’re a fan of Life is Strange, slice-of-life shows, or entertainment that tries to capture the wonder of youth – going on adventures with your best friends, getting picked on by bullies for been different, struggling to navigate the complexities of social engagement – then this is for you. And if you like a good mystery to tying everything together, Lost Records has that for you as well – if you have the patience to make it through to the cliffhanger.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Tape 1) is the very definition of a slow boil, taking its time in building up the relationships between our protagonists. The game is heavily structured like a movie, or a movie script, with events broken down into discrete Chapters and Scenes, each meant to have a budding effect on the cast’s evolving relationships. As such, the game firmly falls into the interactive movie genre, following cinematic language as the events take place in both the present and past through copious, playable flashbacks.

Present events are told in first-person as you inhabit Swann, returning to Velvet Cove for a reunion, with the flashback triggered by just about every noticeable object or vista around her. These third-person segments end up feeling like explorable movie scenes, with short interactive sequences and items that give the game a click-and-point adventure feel.

The movie motif is further reinforced by Swann’s consistent companion, her camcorder. With this, she records life more than interacts with it, with the aim of creating a memoire or documentary about Velvet Cove. Almost nothing if off limits for you to record. From animals, to scenery, to her friends, each subject has its own capture limit that can then be turned into a video, which you can then edit in a simplistic fashion to customise the memories.

Of course, these moments are more useful than to just setting up the story. Reliving them in the present will help to figure out the brain-fog that has obscured their memories about that summer. The question is if it’s collective PSD that’s wiped their memories, or is something else afoot?

As with Life is Strange, this game is all about choices, those you make, or those don’t. New story branches can be opened up through dialogue options, relationships can be altered, and it’s these tapes, these memories, that allow you to dictate how the adventure unfolds. The jury is still out on how much will change depending on your choices as the second part, “Tape 2”, will only be out as a free download in April and then you’d need to replay it – or sift through a walkthrough – to see just how much flexibilty Don’t Nod have given their branching story.

Since this is a narrative-based game, the character writing needs to convince you to care about any of these characters. While there are some cringeworthy moments of dialogue, and some performances that don’t quite hit, the bulk of the writing and performances are strong indeed. Don’t Nod have managed to capture the spirit of the 90’s quite well with ample use of period music. It doesn’t hurt that the trials Swann and company have to go through, well the grounded ones at any rate, are a timeless human rite of the perpetual outsider.

It’s also worth hihlighting how beautiful it often looks. The character rendering for the cast’s older selves is stunning, as are all of the games impressively detailed environments. Whether it’s the lot around the local video store, or the forest trails you get to explore, the environmental visuals are superb. A special shoutout to the visual filter used when viewing the game through the camcorder, but equally impressive are the other filters, fades, and static visual effects employed throughout. The only notable flaw was animation and lip syncing for the younger versions of the group, which don’t always look convincing enough.

If Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Tape 1) has one big problem, it’s the pacing. While I recognise the need for this first part of the story to do all the heavy lifting when it comes world- and character-building, parts of it could have been left on the cutting room floor to improve the very slow pacing – just like any good script and movie. Some scenes run on for too long and there is far too much cutting back and forth between the past and the present, sometimes even for only a minute, that simply breaks up the flow and could have been trimmed.

As it stands, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Tape 1), suggests Don’t Nod have crafted another compelling character-centric narrative with, some gorgeous visuals and interesting characters, though the pacing could be better. That said, this should certainly captivate fans of Life is Strange or the genre as a whole, and I look forward to seeing the consequences of my actions in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Tape 2).

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Tape 1) was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.