When Don't Nod announced Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, many people hoped for something big on the horizon. The studio behind the Life is Strange series, which it lost control of years ago, had created some of the best games in that franchise — now troubled and with erratic quality since it was handed over to Deck Nine. So, it was natural to expect something new, perhaps with the same impact.
However, from what I saw of the opening chapter, titled Tape 1 - Bloom, B&R doesn't seem to be going that far, despite some potential. It has its strong moments, but none come close to the studio's original work. And yes, unfortunately for them, the comparisons will be inevitable.
Not that they should care, since Bloom & Rage, at its core, is a reexamination of the traditional gameplay of games like Life is Strange — something like an attempt to reclaim the reins of the genre, but with limitations.
27 years ago
The story unfolds across two timelines. In 1995, the girls, around 16 years old, meet, have some adventures together, and stumble upon a mystery — which leads them to promise never to meet again. This promise is broken in 2022, when, now in their 40s, three of the four reunite after receiving a cryptic package in the best style of I Know What You Did Last Summer. What did they do? Did they do anything? No one knows yet.
Anyone familiar with the genre knows what to expect: an insecure protagonist, the typical coming-of-age story, exploration of sexuality, environment exploration, moments of reflection, and a soundtrack that sets the tone. It’s all there, with one difference: while the LiS franchise had a supernatural backdrop with little suspense, focusing on character development, B&R seems to dive deeper into the mystery, though it hasn’t done so for most of the episode.
There’s a main mystery, but one of the themes centers on urban legends, with blood pacts, broken mirrors, Bloody Mary being invoked, and some jump scares straight out of The Blair Witch Project. And I don’t say this as a compliment. One of them works during a tense scene, but the first one just made me curse the designers because it came out of nowhere.
In the first Life is Strange, the protagonists’ sexuality was determined by the player, with the option to romance men, women, or no one at all. That doesn’t seem to be the case for Swann and her friends by the end of Tape 1. As young women, the girls show a certain aversion — justified, since the boys seem to exist solely to annoy them — and as older women, two of them are involved with other women, one of them even married.
I decided that, in my playthrough, Swann wouldn’t make a move on any of her friends, but still, some of the dialogues almost pushed her toward them, which makes you question how impactful the choices really are. At least in the end, when looking at the stats, she’s just friends with everyone, but there’s a crown next to Kat’s name, as if she’s the best friend — and I swear I didn’t try to make that happen.
So, it seems safe to assume that Bloom & Rage won’t be so open like Life is Strange were, because romance options are — and likely will remain — only between women. It would be a surprise if any man, who isn’t a villain, shows up in the next chapter, which is set to release in next April.
Clichés
The story leans a bit too heavily on clichés, in my opinion, to keep the "us against the world" narrative going. Men are almost always one-dimensional villains or shady figures. Some are extreme jerks like Corey, others are weird, like the bartender, or aggressive, drunk NPCs using homophobic slurs.
The only likable male (I think he’s male) is the protagonist’s cat, whose name you can choose. Mine was named Shadow, resulting in a black cat, but if you name it Pumpkin, it looks like Garfield, and if you call it Snowy, you get a white cat. Not that it makes much difference. Even other women, like Dylan and Swann’s mother, are portrayed in unflattering lights, though that's not the general pattern.
Many elements are also recycled. The butterflies and deer, classic figures from Life is Strange, are present in Bloom & Rage — there are plenty of deer, but the ones that seem more important are actually moths. The characters follow a similar pattern, and once again, there are potential romance options between the protagonist, the solitary amateur filmmaker Swann, and her new friends in the quiet Velvet Coven, in Michigan.
This is where the problems begin. The interactions develop a bit too quickly, and the central mysteries, too slowly. In one day, Swann is a clumsy, sad girl who’s upset about moving to Canada, bullied for her obesity by her own mother. Then, one day, while filming the city for her memories, she meets three girls who idolize Riot Grrrl punk bands, a genre she knows nothing about, and she’s already making some rather bold flirts with any of them. Or all three, why not?
The episode is almost entirely about this: the four girls interacting in the past, and reminiscing about the past in the present. Only at the very end, after building their friendship a little more (which happens in a matter of days and doesn’t convince me), does the game start focusing on what actually matters. Everything is so rushed — it goes from "is the weird girl coming to rehearsal?" to "I love you" way too fast, even for teenagers bursting with hormones.
The script doesn’t stumble with weird slang like the studio did in the past, but some of the lines given to Swann don’t feel natural for her character, and a few of them made me grit my teeth.
This unnatural progression of the relationship, coupled with the protagonist’s voice acting lacking naturalness, didn’t help me connect much with the characters. Swann sometimes sounds exactly like what she is: a woman over thirty trying to convincingly play a sixteen-year-old insecure girl. It works for some, but it didn’t feel like the case with actress Olivia Lepore.
Ironically, the other three main characters, and even "villains" like Corey and Dylan, perform much better. Kat is the strangest of the trio, with a lot of repressed anger and a secret revealed at the end of the episode. Autumn is the cerebral and responsible one, while Nora plays the dreamer and is also the most willing to have fun. She was my favorite of the four.
Good visuals come at a price
In terms of visuals, Bloom & Rage has its stronger points, but at a cost. The landscapes are beautiful, and environmental effects are spectacular, especially in the forest. The character models are excellent, striking a balance between cartoonish and realistic, leaning more toward realism. If you have an older GPU, you’ll struggle to run the game on higher settings — Dont Nod’s recommended maximum setup is an RTX 4090.
I’m not sure how performance would fare on a slightly lower model with the same 24 GB of VRAM, like a 3090, but it's a lot just to run B&R at max settings in glorious 60 FPS.
Of course, for the sake of this review and the screenshots, I maxed everything out on my poor 2070, and it nearly died, barely scraping by with under 15 fps when complex scenes loaded. Textures also often took a while to load.
The game is demanding, and even on medium settings, don’t expect smooth performance if you're still using a GTX card (the recommendation is a RTX 3060). I also experienced a crash mid-session, losing about 10 minutes of progress.
The cutscene animations are great, and the in-game ones are more successful than not, but there are moments here and there that feel less polished, with a few that should be forgotten, especially involving the cat. You’ll smile when you notice that if you point the camera at the friends, they stop and look back, and that feels natural. Interactive objects are truly interactive: you can pick them up and move them in three dimensions, which adds to the way the puzzles are presented.
In one, for example, you need to open the trunk of a motorcycle, grab an item, and figure out the combination for a lock. In another, you need to grab fuses from one place and put them in an electrical panel to restore power. The most complex one involves the camera, which experiences "supernatural" interference depending on how close you are to key points in the solution. They're not as complex as something from The Legend of Zelda, which is a positive for this genre.
Dialogue and records
The dialogue system attempts something different. While in some cases, it’s just a matter of choosing between presented options, others will appear if you wait a bit longer, as the conversation continues in the background. If you rush and click as soon as options pop up, you’ll miss out on branching paths. They’re also time-based, and occasionally you can choose to stay silent.
What I found most interesting were the initially hidden options, revealed when you look at other points of interest. If the protagonist is talking to someone and receives a question, two hidden options may appear while only one is revealed. But if you look around — at other people or objects — you unlock new choices. At the bar, for instance, you only decide what to drink by checking the ads. Or, among friends, you can choose to speak directly to one of them only after looking at her.
Bloom & Rage features a fairly complex system of records made by Swann with her camera. Each scene has various points of interest where you can pull out the camera and record for a few seconds. Overall, it works like a diary and also as achievements: finding X photos of landscapes, animals, and so on. You can later replace recordings and organize the files in an interface for that, forming Swann’s "documentary" about the city.
I admit that, despite making the recordings, I wasn’t very interested in revisiting them later, and only two moments stood out, with just one being central to the plot — during the music video recording, the footage was actually watched. It feels like a missed opportunity to explore the protagonist’s passion more.
Where’s the music?
The most disappointing aspect for me was the soundtrack of Bloom & Rage. Its mid-90s setting is rich with musical potential, but most of the licensed tracks only appear as text references, ensuring their use without paying royalties.
For instance, Nora mentions being a fan and attending a Nirvana concert. In one scene, there's graffiti about Kurt Cobain, but there’s no music or logos anywhere. On her t-shirt, the logo resembles Nirvana’s, but the band is called Elisium. You can find mixtapes in the garage mentioning important bands from the period, like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Living Colour, Pantera, and Sepultura, but the tracks that play are few, with the game relying more on its original soundtrack, which is nothing more than acceptable, with some goodwill.
I was pleasantly surprised when Cocteau Twins started playing for the first time, but in a plot so focused on music and 90s nostalgia, it was crucial to have a more extensive and impactful licensed soundtrack.
According to Don't Nod, Lost Tapes is supposed to be the start of a franchise, with Bloom & Rage serving as the introduction. I often thought of this first part, Bloom, as a big cake of clichés, with good and bad moments mixed with The X-Files (which has a reference in Swann's room) and a decent 90s setting. I wanted it to be more, but I couldn’t see past that.
I understand that, being focused on a punk feminism storyline, I, a South American man who lived through that era at the same age, hundreds of miles away from the United States and in a different culture, am not the target audience. However, I’d say the recreation of part of 90s culture was well executed, with cassette tapes, VHS, bands, and games — Super Metroid is mentioned, for example.
There’s potential for growth and for delivering a second part with fewer clichés and more focus on its own story. The flaws, though, make me estimate that this room for growth, limited to just one more episode — as far as I know, there will be two parts — won’t be enough for Don’t Nod to hit the mark like they did in 2015, which would be truly remarkable and something Life is Strange fans, who’ve been missing high-quality productions since the second game in the series, would really want.
Pros
- Graphics
- 90s ambientation
Cons
- Lack of licensed soundtrack
- Simplistic stereotypes
- Slow narrative
Games mentioned
0Lost Records: Bloom & Rage
WIN, PS5, XBS
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage é um jogo de aventura gráfica produzido pela Don't Nod Montréal. Narra a história de quatro amigas no estado americano do Michigan, que 27 anos após um pacto para manter um segredo, são confrontadas com o recebimento de um pacote misterioso.
