The first half of Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is out now, and it’s a must play. Don’t Nod’s new narrative adventure game, which tells of a band of high school girls who get wrapped up in a supernatural mystery, is an excellent evolution of the studio’s Life is Strange formula (even eclipsing last year’s Life is Strange: Double Exposure). There’s a lot to love about it, from its 90s setting, to its choice-driven dialogue that makes conversations feel more natural. It’s a much smaller feature that has me singing Lost Records’ praises, though: a modest camcorder.
In Part 1, titled Bloom, players follow Swann in both first-person present day segments and 90s flashbacks, where the bulk of the story takes place. Bloom largely plays out as a coming of age story about Swann befriending a squad of cool punk rockers and embracing rebellion (April’s second chapter, Rage, seems like it’ll get more the supernatural mystery that comes from that). Swann is a shy, self-conscious girl looking to find her identity, but she has one defining trait. She’s a budding videographer who always brings a camcorder everywhere she goes, turning her into a documentarian for her pals’ band.
That isn’t just a quirky character trait, but a standout gameplay system too. While exploring in third-person during flashbacks, I can pull up Swann’s camera with the press of a button and film. That’s sometimes used as a way to progress the story, as I’m asked to film certain things, like one of my bandmates’ practices. It’s also used as a clever collectible system too, as I can capture stray birds, graffiti, scenic views, and more. It’s more active than simply finding a shiny object and pressing a button to grab it; I actually need to observe the world through my camcorder and use my zoom to find little critters and whatnot scattered around the woods.
Once I’ve filmed everything in a collection, my shots get edited together into a clip reel, complete with an archaic VHS title screen and some narration from Swann over the footage. Those clips look like they’re coming from a tape, with digital imperfections and old TV screen lines to sell the look. I can even reorder my clips or replace them with better ones if I so choose, turning a simple idea into a creative video editing minigame.
It’s a cute idea, but one that feels incredibly authentic to me, a kid who also spent my youth glued to a camcorder. This isn’t just a glorified Photo Mode where I snap my shots through a first-person camera. It actually feels like using a clunky camera with a speedy zoom and no image stabilization. Lost Records especially makes great use of the PS5’s DualSense controller, as the gamepad’s gyroscope translates even tiny controller movements to hand shakes. I found that I was able to create shots that actually felt like they were created from tech of the era rather than making standard video game clips with a 90s filter over them.
This isn’t just a design flex for the heck of it; authenticity is key to Lost Records. Even with a mysterious presence rumbling beneath its grounded surface, it tells a human story about Swann finding her place in the world without conforming to it. Early in Bloom, we get a sense of her insecurity when she’s bullied over her weight. There’s a sense that interactions like that have weighed on her over her life, making her feel imperfect. It’s only once she meets her new friends, a bunch of messy garage rockers who can barely play their instruments, that she begins to accept herself and grow.
The digital camerawork of yesteryear is a fitting symbol for that. Old Hi-8 and VHS cameras were clunky pieces of tech. Even the smallest hand shakes showed on screen, and zooming in too close usually left the image nauseously swaying back and forth. Every bit of human error is both preserved and amplified in clumsy videos. And that makes them special. Have you ever looked back at an old family home movie and found a breathtakingly beautiful shot that someone just naturally stumbled into? Or does even seeing old footage of the era make you indescribably emotional? You might be responding to the humanity in the image, which makes you feel the actual person behind the camera.
Home movies don’t just capture visual memories; they hold on to physical ones too. You can tell how rambunctious a kid is depending on how they move the camera, or how emotional a father filming his newborn child is. The modern cameras we use today have largely wiped that personality from the image in the name of stabilization. It’s tech conformity, trying to solve for human error rather than embracing it.
Lost Records allows your mistakes — and Swann’s, by extension — be part of the image. It bakes them into clever collectibles that will live on in your save file, ready for you to rediscover them one day and remember the person who was holding the controller at that time. Maybe you’ll catch a shot where you forgot to stop filming and wound up capturing a few aimless seconds of nothing in particular. Maybe you’ll see the moment you tried to get creative and tilt your controller to get an awkward Dutch angle.
Whatever you find in that time capsule, it’ll be you.
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage’s first chapter is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Part 2, Rage, will launch on April 15.
