Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1 hands-on

• Previews by Jack Allin
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The first installment of Don’t Nod’s two-part narrative thriller shows plenty of character but hasn’t yet found its groove

Don’t Nod Entertainment has made a variety of games over the years, but its biggest success by far continues to be Life Is Strange, a narrative-driven thriller that delved the inner lives of teen girls and their relationships amidst an ominous larger story arc with otherworldly overtones. So it should come as no surprise that the French developer’s studio in Montreal has drawn from a similar well for Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Or “Bloom,” anyway, as the two-part adventure’s debut installment focuses predominantly on character building – successfully, and yet paradoxically somewhat to its detriment – while still managing to raise great anticipation for the “Rage” part to follow.

Since “I really like my stories cut in half, spread out two months apart” is something no sane person has ever uttered, I disliked the idea of splitting this game up just on principle. If it’s a necessary financial evil, fair enough, but otherwise it does nothing but break and fritter away any narrative momentum built up. Not that there is a whole lot of momentum built up in Lost Records so far, at least until a highly compelling last act that finally begins to pay off some of the agonizingly slow-burn development to that point, before ending just as things are getting good.

The game centers around the story of four sixteen-year-old girls spending the summer of 1995 together in the small town of Velvet Cove, Michigan, along with their adult counterparts reuniting back in their old stomping grounds for the first time after 27 years of self-imposed separation for reasons at first (and largely still) unknown. The narrative hook – and it’s a good one – is that “something bad” occurred back then that caused the four friends to split up and never speak of it again. Not a fractured relationship, as they all continue to have fond feelings for each other to this day, but an event of some kind that spooked them enough to turn their backs on each other forever (or so they initially vowed).

What event? That is still to be fully fleshed out, especially because as adults they seem to have inexplicable trouble remembering it themselves, except in the haziest of details. They’d have continued maintaining their silence and separation for good, but after all this time, a mysterious package has suddenly arrived out of the blue, addressed to their former grunge rock band, the titular Bloom & Rage, forcing them to confront the secrets they’ve been suppressing for so long.

The game continually flips back and forth between present and past, to an unnecessary degree, perhaps to conceal the fact that nothing much actually happens for long stretches in either time period besides talking. Which is fine – I’m up for a good gabfest if the dialogue is well written, the characters are interesting, and it all seems to be continually building towards something. In this case? Well, two out of three ain’t bad, but it’ll be two months before (hopefully) completing the trifecta.

Now, here’s where I must offer a disclaimer: I am, shall we say... NOT a teenaged girl. Never was, in fact. So perhaps I’m not the prime demographic for Lost Records. Having said that, it’s clear that the game has more on its mind than being a YA story exclusively for girls, and this first of two episodes (or “Tapes” as they’re referred to here) does surprisingly little to try to bridge that gap. At one point, one of the girls describes their group’s own teenaged summer odyssey as changing from Stand by Me to The Blair Witch Project, but until the riveting last hour or so, the vibe (if not the premise) of the first four hours hews far closer to an older-aged Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret or an all-girls version of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Don’t get me wrong: That would be perfectly okay if it weren’t so obvious that the game ultimately plans to go somewhere else but is in no hurry to get there anytime soon. My complaint is solely about the disproportionate emphasis on character building that largely sidelines any sense of plot progression towards the much more intriguing central mystery behind it all. As a poignant exploration of the ups and downs, the struggles and joys, the passion and angst of teen girls and their relationships, the script is extremely well done. Bolstered by superb voice work and excellent visual design that highlights four women of different shapes, sizes and colours, each one is attentively drawn with their own believable quirks and temperaments and personalities. Their interactions struck me as largely authentic, and I came to care for all of them, including their adult versions.

Swann is the playable character, a shy, awkward, plus-sized freckled redhead who’s a bit of nerd, loves her cat and enjoys filming things on her camcorder. In an interesting graphical twist, scenes in the past play out in third person, while those in the present are in first, so we never see more of the grown Swann than her ringed fingers and right hand tattoo poking out of her sleeves. But she sounds very much like a forty-something woman who’s become more comfortable in her skin, and yet still possessing some of the same familiar lingering doubts and insecurities.

An encounter with town bullies puts the teenaged Swann in the orbit of the other three. There’s Autumn, a mature, friendly black girl running the ice cream stand, whose grown-up version is the first (and for a long time only) one to arrive at the bar where they’re meeting. Nora is a lanky, acne-faced punker who smokes and acts tough but secretly harbours some strongly felt fears. And there’s the smaller, ponytailed tomboyish firecracker Kat, whose hard edges are rooted in family strife and make her both fiercely independent and loyal to her newfound friends.

They don’t actually spend much time together, either in-game or in “real” life, as all their experiences take place over the course of a single abbreviated summer. They never really do much even then, besides scour the local playground for lost keys and the occasional other item, practice music in the garage, hike the trails of the regional park, fix up an abandoned old cabin, and ultimately plan a public concert. For the player, that means very little interaction, other than guiding Swann around slowly (or slightly less slowly if you manually speed her up, when she’s not immovably stationary), clicking the odd highlighted hotspot that automatically pops up – sometimes for non-essential information and other times to “reminiscence” via distant, echoed voice-over – and engaging in chatty conversation.

And of course there are decisions to make. As is usual in these sorts of games, you’re told that your choices will have consequences, and a final summary highlights the different decisions you’ve made throughout. In practice, however, it seems so far that most of the options are to be flirty, merely friendly, or even to have Swann lean into her loner tendencies. I never had to wrestle much with difficult ethical considerations, and nothing leapt out as particularly significant, though it would take a replay with very different choices to know for sure.

There are a couple of combination puzzles and a single brainteaser to make things feel a bit more adventurey, but for the most part this is a highly linear, streamlined experience. The one exception is Swann’s camcorder, which you can use to record all manner of predetermined elements, from birds to graffiti to entire scenic landscapes, as well as your compatriots. Even that begins to feel samey after a while, though, and slows down the pace even more as you pull up the camera to scour for more outlines indicating something you can film. You can rewatch and even edit any of your recordings in your “memoir,” but the editing functions are rudimentary and entirely optional. I fiddled around for a few minutes before losing interest.

Perhaps the best part of Lost Records is, in keeping with its name, the music. I didn’t recognize any of the artists, such as Milk & Bone and Ruth Radelet, but the licensed tracks are excellent and comprise a variety of different styles. The only exception is the girls’ band itself – its vocals and songwriting in particular. This may have been intentional (they are supposed to be a group of thrust-together 16-year-olds, after all) or it may just be my aversion to songs that veer too far into punk and away from anything resembling actual music. (Just kidding, punk fans. Sort of.)

The visual presentation is no slouch either, excluding a certain cuddly but ragged-looking feline. Faces are wonderfully expressive and the action is beautifully animated. You’ll spend far too long confined in either teenaged Swann’s room (three times, each progressively tedious, though you can change clothes to a different outfit you prefer there) or the Blue Spruce bar where the adult friends meet up again, but the scenery is drop-dead gorgeous when you get to roam the woods outside of town. Everything looks suitably grainy through the lens of Swann’s period-appropriate camcorder, but the landscapes themselves are stunning, even as day eventually gives way to dusk and then to night, where the impenetrable darkness is illuminated only by flashlight.

The hour matters, because it’s in the middle of the night when the creepy anomaly behind this whole affair – remember that? – finally comes into focus. I won’t say anything to spoil it, but I’m not sure there’s all that much to say. Something intriguingly weird happens, which the women seem to finally remember clearly, and then it’s onto another new development that packs an even greater emotional punch but was never previously foreshadowed. And now… two months of thumb twiddling.

The cliffhanger ending certainly has me eager to see where things go from here, so by that measure Tape 1 is a success in generating interest for the rest. It’s confounding, though, that it’s such a slow slog to get there. A thoughtful, intelligently conceived, character-driven slog with some bangin’ tunes and lovely graphics, but a slog nonetheless. I’m invested in Swann and her friends now, but surely that could have been achieved with more to do as a player, or at least with less waiting-around-for-something-to-happen boredom along the way. There’s a powerful three-hour drama packed into this five-hour opening installment, so I can’t recommend rushing out to grab it just yet, only to find yourself waiting around yet again, this time for Tape 2 to happen. However, with a dramatic finale hinting at much more riveting things ahead, I have genuinely high hopes that all this over-cautious groundwork will pay off in spades when the conclusion of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage spins up in mid-April.