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Another Story-driven game from Dontnod

Don’t Nod developer and publisher is known for games like Life Is Strange, Vampyr—and more recently—Jusant. It is no secret that Dont Nod’s main shtick is storytelling, which they have been very successfull with. Their newest game being, yet again, another heavily story-based game Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. I have (nearly) every time enjoyed Don’t Nod‘s games and I cannot wait to dive into this game.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is two-part game and this review is of the first part called “Bloom”. The second part “Rage” is available on April 15th, 2025.

Plot

Kat, Autumn, Nora and their new friend Swann—who is an outcast of the school and very socially awkward—becomes friends and spend their summer of 1995 together. They are all young, sixteen-years-olds, full of life and hope, but everything does not go well; as they decide to have a band and film their music video in the woods—something out of ordinary happens. The story is told in two ways: the past summer of 1995 and present as they decide to meet up after long 27-years, and talk about what took place back then.

As this was part 1 of 2 of the game I only got the half of the whole story, but in overall the story was OK. Nothing groundbreaking, but it was interesting. Sadly the plot got interesting only very end and then it was over. There are lots of kinda “boring”, well, more like mundane parts in the story that didn’t interest me that much. I was just waiting for something exciting to happen, but sadly it was only in the end part.

About the characters… ugh, I hate to write this on my reviews, but the characters were annoying—at least their younger versions. I think they were over-acted and very awkward to watch as they interacted with each other. Making me think; was I like them back when I was sixteen!? Either way, I’m an old man nowadays and maybe I’m just grumpy to see all these young people living their lives.

Gameplay, controls, audio and visuals

The gameplay in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is rather simple, because the game is mostly about the story. Player controls the main character, Swann, and interacts with the other characters, enviroments, do dialogue choices and use the camcorder. The camcorder is to be used to film locations, nature and all kinds of things to open up new memoirs, which can be viewed in the menu.

Controlling Swann is very easy. There isn’t much to it, other than walking, running, looking around, collecting items and filming. As the genre is narrative adventure, the gameplay and controls are left to rather minimal.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is fully voice acted. It was expected from a game that comes from Life Is Strange makers. As I said before; the characters are kinda annoying and the voice acting is one reason why. The dialogue was either just badly-written, badly acted or just both.

Visually the game looks OK. Nothing overly realistic, but little bit stylised; a game that could easily been released on last-gen hardware. There were some graphical issues here then there, but mind you, this was an early review copy of the game that I received, so the bugs are likely to be fixed before release.

Summer like ’95 never ends

What you probably want to know first: did I enjoy the game? Yes, it was a OK. But is it a must-play the most extraordinary game? No, it is not. Let’s say it was a lukewarm, but a solid experience. It took until the very end until something interesting happened with the story, leaving me hanging until part two comes out. I think I can tell my ultimate opinion after I have finished the whole game. I played the part 1 through in about 5 hours.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is available on PS5 (reviewed on PS5 Pro), Xbox Series X|S and Windows.

(Review copy kindly provided by the publisher)

SCORE:

4/5

“…as they decide to have a band and film their music video in the woods—something out of ordinary happens”

RELEASE DATE: February 18, 2025
GENRE: NarraTive Adventure
DEVELOPER: Don’t Nod
PUBLISHER: Don’t Nod
PLATFORMS: PS5 (reviewed using PS5 Pro)
Xbox Series X|S
Windows

 

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