In the grand pantheon of narrative-driven games, Don’t Nod has practically built its own cathedral, a shrine dedicated to teenagers’ emotional turmoil, existential dread, and the absolute gut punch of nostalgia.
With Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Tape 1), they’ve outdone themselves yet again, delivering a game that feels tailor-made for anyone who’s ever devoured an episode of Yellowjackets. And I mean that in the best possible way.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Tape 1) isn’t just a game; it’s a slow-burning, character-driven mystery that weaves past and present together with the precision of a time-travelling barista making the most bittersweet cup of coffee imaginable.
It might not be for you if you expect non-stop twists and high-octane drama. But if you’re down for a profoundly atmospheric, richly written story about friendship, trauma, and how the past never lets you go, buckle up because Lost Records is something special.
The Summer That Changed Everything
You step into Swann Holloway’s well-worn Converse, a protagonist so deeply Millennial-coded that she might as well come with a Blockbuster membership card.
When we first meet Swann, she’s driving into her old hometown of Velvet Cove, Michigan, having a tense phone call with her mother, the kind where every passive-aggressive syllable is laced with decades of baggage.
She’s meeting up with her old friend Autumn, someone she hasn’t seen in over 20 years, and the atmosphere is thick with the kind of unspoken history that makes your skin itch.
From here, Lost Records deftly juggles two timelines: the present-day interactions between a group of estranged friends who once swore to bury a terrible secret and the summer of 1995, when those very same teens, Swann, Autumn, Nora, and Kat, found something they were never supposed to find.
It’s classic Don’t Nod: a masterclass in non-linear storytelling that never feels messy and becomes more compelling with every layer peeled back.
Cringe? No, This Is Just Painfully Relatable
There’s something almost cruel about how well Lost Records captures the 90s. Swann’s bedroom is a time capsule of forgotten relics, from knockoff Furbies to VHS tapes of questionable origin.
Every corner of Velvet Cove is drenched in an aesthetic so perfectly preserved that you half-expect to hear the dial-up tone screeching in the distance.
And then there’s Swann herself: a painfully awkward, endearingly geeky disaster of a human being. Before she meets her soon-to-be best friends, it’s clear her social circle consists entirely of her cat.
Her dialogue options range from dry sarcasm to “this definitely sounded cooler in my head,” and her attempts at conversation often devolve into nervous stammering.
She’s the kind of protagonist you can’t help but love, even as she makes you want to hide behind your hands in secondhand embarrassment.
Friendship, Secrets, and a Splash of Supernatural Dread
The dynamic between Swann and her friends is at the heart of Lost Records. Autumn is the grounded, level-headed one, Nora is a chaotic whirlwind, and Kat is the quiet, intense type with a passion for music and a tendency to keep things bottled up.
Together, they form a ragtag girl gang that feels effortlessly real. Their interactions bounce between heartwarming and heartbreaking with the ease of a well-rehearsed mixtape.
The game nails that Stand By Me / Yellowjackets energy – the raw, untamed intensity of teenage friendships, where every inside joke feels like a sacred ritual and every secret feels like the most important thing in the world.
But, of course, there’s a creeping sense of something more, an undercurrent of unease that builds with every flashback. The past isn’t just a memory here; it’s a living, breathing entity that refuses to stay buried.
The Art of Storytelling (and Camcorders)
One of Lost Records’ most interesting mechanics revolves around Swann’s camcorder, a tool for capturing the world through a grainy, nostalgia-soaked lens.
It’s a charming feature on the surface – recording birds, abandoned playgrounds, and other little fragments of Velvet Cove’s history, but it’s also something more.
Memory, perception, and truth are all at play here, and the game isn’t afraid to ask: How much of what we remember is real, and how much is just the story we tell ourselves?
Sure, it’s slow-paced. Sure, it’s more about the characters than the plot. But that’s the point. If you’re willing to give it the time it deserves, Lost Records will reward you with one of Don’t Nod’s most compelling stories yet. And with Tape 2 still on the horizon, all I can say is: I need it. Now.