‘Lost Records: Bloom & Rage’ [Tape 1] and the Yearning For Escape
As some of you surely have noticed, I’ve struggled to make time for video games these days, predominantly because of the abundance of creative endeavors sitting unfinished on my plate. Most recently, for instance, I played my first live concert in over 13 years, which entailed amassing an entire setlist of original music, as well as procuring fellow bandmates who had both the chops and availability to support my performance on stage. And as beautifully successful as this show turned out, I was not prepared for the emotional impact that returning to the guitar and microphone would have on me, after all these years. Dont Nod’s 2025 release, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, taps into this nostalgia in a way that games seldom have, in my experience.
For the uninitiated, Lost Records is a game in the lineage of the legendary Life is Strange developer, and feels very much like that adventure-style, point-and-click sort of game. Complete with northwestern American aesthetics, a focus on rebellion and music, Lost Records features four teenagers who band together through friendship and DIY punk, while alternating its primary narrative within a 27 year gap between their sixteen-year-old selves and their adult selves. Only, in the present, so much has changed within their lives that their friendships are borderline unrecognizable.
You are tasked with seeking closure from all those years together, in Lost Records. What’s interesting to me is the primary shift in POV throughout the timelines within the game. As an adult, you are locked into a first-person perspective; as a teenager, you operate in the third-person unless Swann, the protagonist, puts her eye up to her camcorder to record video footage. It’s a charming dichotomy that anchors the passage of time and changes in personality, as well as maturity, between the two epochs.
A primary mechanic amidst the predictable dialogue trees and environmental exploration within Lost Records is the collectible series of footage you can (optionally) capture throughout the game’s runtime. While I have only finished “[Tape 1]” as of this writing, the game has already flooded me with dozens of collectibles that I’ve spent no shorter than an hour seeking out, outside of the main story. There are moments to film your three friends, capture environmental details like graffiti or iterations of the looming antlered-water tower, and orchestrate silly photo ops like Swann’s stuffed MothGirl doll. Similarly to Life is Strange, where Max takes photos for optional achievements, so too does this game return to form and offer a sense of nostalgic connection to, what I think everyone would consider, Dont Nod’s best game to date.
But there’s something special about Lost Records, at least so far. For one, I did not expect to cry within the first episode’s 7+ hour runtime. This episode was so much more robust than any previous episode within the Life is Strange series, not to mention the broader adventure game genre we’re used to through developers like Telltale, that I had to take a break the evening I started playing it. When I woke up the next day to finish the episode, I still had several hours ahead of me. Sure, part of this runtime involves keeping a 100% walkthrough guide handy, but there were moments in which I was so compelled by the relationships and narrative that I completely forgot to scour my environment for things to film. That’s a sign of successful game design to me.
The characters are also unique and compelling in a myriad of ways. Since we encounter three of them in their middle age (early forties, if I did the maths correctly), we see nuance within their personality that extends beyond the adolescent recalcitrance that is more commonly explored in other Don’t Nod titles. Swann, for instance, is one of the only explicitly fat-coded protagonists in recent gaming memory, where her weight and body size are directly acknowledged – and not in a ridiculing way. Autumn, as well, one of her dear friends, is a black girl who dyes her hair, skateboards, and plays bass – how awesome is that? And Nora, another member of the core trio within this game, is the only pockmarked character I can think of in a video game, cheeks covered in bumpy acne – again, which the game either seriously acknowledges or at least refrains from making low-level swipes at. This cast of characters feels diverse in the way that so many other games that champion themselves for efforts at diversity fail at.
And then there’s Kat, presumably the youngest member of the group. Boy, Kat’s character is all over the place, and in the best way. Kat is a stalwart defender of what she perceives to be right, her first appearance being a defensive arrival between Swann and Corey, a misogynistic creep who is bullying Swann for her weight, amongst other incidental matters. Kat evolves, however, from this aggressive loyal type into an adventurous, impulsive loner, whose curiosity lends itself to cultish activities. Once the group of friends bands together, they discover an abandoned cabin in the woods, and Kat is one of the primary instigators for them to reclaim it and make it their own. She eventually guides her three other friends to an encircled patch of mushrooms in the same forest, and as they sit, surrounded, Kat describes her plan for revenge on Corey, who coincidentally is dating her older sister and working for their father.
As a player, you have some selective agency over how this mushroom-scene plays out. But it primarily involves writing lyrics to a song for their makeshift band, called Bloom & Rage, hence the subtitle to the game. In this debut song, Kat describes the lyrics as intending to be a “curse.” Essentially, she wants to see Corey go to hell as either justice or retribution for his actions.
In working through this song and writing it in real time, Kat whips out a switchblade. This knife is intended to help the girls consummate the song’s curse. Each slits their fingertip open and touches bloody fingers to “seal” the curse itself. And though there is some hesitance from the other members, this ritual seems to have tangible, metaphysical impacts. Soon after they seal the curse, an abyssal neon pit yawns open where the circle of peaceful mushrooms used to be. And as these girls, clearly reticent, peek into that pink glowing abyss, Kat initiates a sacrifice. Each of them make wishes into the pit before casting something into it, disappearing. As of episode one, it appears that the supernatural has some gravitas after all.
The thing I found moving, however, is two-fold: the exploration of friendship and the yearning to express oneself through music. As aforementioned, I hadn’t played a concert in front of an audience since around 2012 until the beginning of this year. When my final band back home in Florida folded due to creative differences, I resigned myself to a future without music – when up until that point, I priorly envisioned myself following the career pathway of becoming a music producer, recording and mixing other bands’ music. Because of this falling-out, I lost faith in myself as a musician, releasing one final solo album in 2014 before throwing in the towel, proverbially.
I sold almost all my gear: guitar pedals, amps, keyboards, and so forth. When I moved up north, escaping Florida, I donated seven instruments to former students of mine who had graduated. As far as I was concerned, my relationship to music was a ship that had sailed long ago. But then, almost out of nowhere this past December, my supervisor at work proposed that I be the opening act to a forthcoming concert with his own band. I brushed him off at first, citing that my musician days were behind me and that I didn’t even have a band of my own anymore. But he pressed me once more and said, “Consider doing just one song.” And that one comment dusted the cobwebs in my brain and got the gears turning once again, over a decade after I’d given up.
When I play Lost Records, I deeply relate to the spirit of the band, Bloom & Rage. The game’s depiction of how musical groups often arise from friendships rather than the other way around resonated with me deeply. And when I think back to this exact same time in my life (around 16 years old), I think I firmly believed that the music we were making would have a real, tangible impact on the community around us. To some extent, you could argue that it did. Albeit without the ritualistic blood curse.
Bloom & Rage only has one song, at least as of the end of “[Tape 1],” but their counter-cultural spirit and DIY-ethos ring true to me. These are real rockers, even if, to be completely honest, their music isn’t exactly very good. Nevertheless, they continue doggedly without deterrence, and I respect them as young musicians far more because of that. Sure, they use a drum machine when playing live – a little tacky, for those who have ever mixed their own music, live or otherwise. But at least they are putting themselves out there, doing it. How many musicians can say otherwise? Most of us typically stay at home, noodle around, and then hang the guitar back up on the rack. In Lost Records, you end the first episode by breaking into a bar, stealing an extension cord, and routing it back to a truck in the parking lot to play your first show. That’s punk, by any definition.
What’s beautiful about Lost Records is the way these teenage relationships fray, as Swann moves to Canada for example, but eventually merge back together. That’s my experience with friendships and the echoes of romantic partnerships. People often ask me how I am friends with my ex-girlfriends, and the answer is simple: why be resentful and standoffish when you could reforge your bond in a new direction. The same is true of estranged friendships; if they texted me today, I’d get back to them. That’s what’s happening between Swann, Autumn, and Nora in the bar scene during “[Track 1]” and I respect the game for writing them in this forgiving manner. Even if there is some awkwardness from the sheer amount of time and life events that have elapsed between their closeness, there is still a foundation to be rekindled as long as all parties involved want that mutual connection – and these women clearly do.
There is a moment in the first episode of Lost Records where the sheer closeness of friendship made me cry. They hold hands after casting their sacrifices – their wishes – into the abyssal pit in the woods. I don’t necessarily understand why that brought me to tears, but I do know what it’s like to feel how special and permanent a relationship with others can feel, and it brings me watery-eyed joy to see that depicted between women who, for all intents and purposes, are outcasts.
The other moment that had me yanking on my tissue box was the performance at the end. For narrative purposes, I can’t say much without taking away the dramatic impact of how the episode wraps. But filming the band as Swann and watching these three women sing, play, and dance with exuberance got to me. While my recent concert didn’t result in tears, it meant the world to me that I was able to assemble a group of all trans-woman friends, teach them my songs, and then get up in front of an audience to perform them. For anyone who hasn’t played music before, words fail me (for once) when I try to describe this feeling. For anyone who has, aka fellow musicians, then you get it. It’s magic.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is a game about the yearning for escape, about the youthful desire to throw the proverbial middle finger up at those who have wronged you, while simultaneously hoping naively for a better future full of connection and optimism. It’s a beautiful release, and easily the best game Don’t Nod has produced since the classic Life is Strange days of 2015. Sure, the game lacks sophisticated facial animations and lip syncing; sure, it has some bugs that made me reload a chapter to make a few button prompts appear. But blemishes aside, Lost Records connected with a part of me that music-inclined games seldom do – and that’s coming from someone who loves games with bands like Goodbye Volcano High, Afterlove EP, and Night in the Woods. There is truly something special here with Lost Records and I can’t wait to see what “[Tape 2]” has in store for me.
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