Lost Records: Tape 1 Bloom XSX Review

Lost Records: Tape 1 Bloom is a laser-focused nostalgia trip for those of us of a certain vintage, successfully recreating the long summers of the mid-90s that us poor bastards staring straight down the barrel of our 40s get all misty-eyed about.

Don’t Nods latest opens with protagonist, Swann Holloway is instantly relatable to most as she pulls up at a bar, and takes a call from her overbearing mother.

Swann has returned to the small Michigan town of Velvet Cove for an impromptu reunion with a group of friends she hasn’t spoken to in more than 20 years.

As she walks into the bar she is overcome with memories and whisked back to her teens, in the sleepy town. To a summer she would never forget and the bond she forged with three other misfits. That ended with all of them swearing to never speak to each other again.

You’re then whisked back to Swann’s bedroom, where the awkward 16-year-old is filming her cat Pumpkin (other names are available) as part of a video memoir of her final summer in Velvet Cove before her family moves away.

What instantly struck me about the game is how detailed the world is. The minutiae of each item you pick up and examine is absolutely incredible. Her books feel authentic, Swann’s book collection although legally distinct, are recognisable down to the font used on the cover. Her first mission is to find the right video box to return a video to the local rental shop.

It’s almost a time capsule, when your kids ask you what it was like being a teenager in the 90s you can just hand them a controller and say. This.

After finding the box for The Dark Crystal, Swann gets to the video store to find it closed, undeterred she begins to film the area for her project. However she’s interrupted by a local bully, who insists she films him (to an uncomfortable degree), until she’s saved by a group of girls.

This altercation and subsequent key hunt ends with Swann, Autumn, Nora, and Kat starting to hang out, form a band, and do the usual things teens do when coming of age with nothing better to do.

So why are they so tense and distant, when the action returns to the present day? What happened? What’s in the box? What did these seemingly normal teens do, and why was it so bad that they swore never to speak to each other again?

Thats the mystery at the heart of Lost Records and it builds the tension perfectly. Switching perspectives from first person in hte modern day to third person during the flashbacks is a simple yet incredibly effective device to delineate what period any chapter is taking place in, but also breaks up the immediacy of the here and now, with how you distance yourself from your past, and past mistakes.

It’s a slow burn that focuses on characters and their relationships over straight action. It’s deliberately paced and superbly written. If you’re the kind of player who demands action and wants your games to skip along at a breakneck pace, Lost Records is not the game for you. It is first and foremost a character piece, with a focus on how Swann reacts to and forms bonds with her new-found friends.

Each is fleshed out, with their own internal life, and logic. While the dialogue is leagues ahead of Life is Strange, people speak to each other like humans, instead of the awful “Hello Fellow Kids” and monologuing that put me off Don’t Nods sophomore game ( Everyone ironically forgets Remember Me). Swann is the awkward nerd, Autumn is the voice of reason, Kat is the quiet, contemplative one, and Nora is the boisterous one with big plans. You’ve met these people. You hung out with them at high school, and you probably trauma bonded in a similar way.

The other relationship Lost Records explores is the one between Swann and her video camera. With a couple of button presses, you can capture footage of all sorts of things a teenage filmmaker likes to shoot; people, garbage, animals having sex, her pet cat. Nothing seems to be off limits in Swann’s quest to shoot as much of Velvet Cove as she can. You can even cut your grainy creations together using the in-game equivalent of a video toaster. If you’ve ever cut together a movie made on a budget of zero, using a Handycam and a VCR you’ll be right at home.

Final Thoughts

Lost Records:  Tape 1 Bloom is an engaging and compelling first act that rewards the patience of its players with a relatable cast, tough choices, and a story with more than enough mysteries and pull to have you counting down the days until Tape 2 Rage arrives on April 15.