For being such an innovative narrative adventure game, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage still adheres to a release format that no longer works for the genre.
Lost Records is one of the best games released in 2025 so far. It tells a timeless coming-of-age tale that isn’t afraid to revel in 90s nostalgia. It uses the choice-driven adventure game format trailblazed by Telltale and Don’t Nod’s early work, but infuses it with clever ideas like splitting perspectives between the past and future and letting players film the world with a gyroscopic-controlled camcorder. I highly recommend you go and play it now that it’s all out, but I feel awkward that I couldn’t wholeheartedly recommend it until now.
Dont’ Nod decided to release Lost Records in two parts. Tape 1 launched on February 18, while Tape 2 came out on April 15. While Don’t Nod hoped this approach would give players time to stop and reflect on the game, it had the opposite effect. In an era where so many games are coming out and simultaneously competing for attention, the episodic release isn’t nearly as alluring as it was in 2014, especially if it’s only in part.
Not quite TV
Lost Records follows a group of friends over the summer of 1995. They’re a group of misfits who come together and create an inseparable bond, especially when they discover a hidden outcove and a glowing supernatural hole in the wilderness near their hometown. Tape 1 is mainly about the friend group meeting up and forming the titular band, Bloom & Rage. It culminates with the band’s first performance and a revelation that recontextualizes some of what has been going on.
Tape 2 follows the group as they deal with the fallout of the event of the first game. Alongside all of this, Lost Records also follows three friends reuniting in the modern day to reflect on their past and open a mysterious box left for them. It’s a compelling story when all is said and done, but not one I think had to be chopped into two parts. The slower pace of the narrative makes the individual halves feel unfulfilling on their own. Narratively, many of the main themes and mysteries don’t coalesce until you play the whole thing.
Don’t Nod has given its reasoning for releasing the game in two parts. Creative Director Michel Koch told Game Rant that he likes “media that values my time and doesn’t try to lock me into endless hours of content.” To Eurogamer, Koch elaborated that he enjoys weekly series on TV and that, after the ending of Tape 1, it made sense for Don’t Nod to give players space to “stop there and reflect a bit” so they can come back to Tape 2 “even more invested in the story because you have had some time to reflect on what happen.”
Short games are just as important as 100+ hour live service experiences, and weekly TV has its charms. While I agree with Koch on both of those points, Tape 1 and Tape 2 of Lost Records aren’t structured like television episodes and the whole game only takes about 8 or 9 hours to complete. Even if there are aspects of its story to reflect on, having a two-month wait between two four-hour chunks of a cohesive story didn’t benefit Lost Records at large. If the goal was to emulate TV, then Lost Records‘ narrative structure could’ve been split up into a more TV episode-like structure.
While I enjoyed Tape 1 of Lost Records, I might not have had the time to play Tape 2 had I not planned to write about it, because it’s coming out in a shockingly crowded month for games. I also couldn’t give it a wholehearted recommendation until now because it was an incomplete experience. Because so many games compete for players’ time and attention nowadays, it’s a risk to ask players to invest in the first half of your adventure game and then make them wait two months to finish the story.
Looking at the limited data we have, the Tape 2 launch on Steam has accrued higher player counts than Tape 1’s launch did. Would the numbers have been stronger from release had the whole game come out simultaneously? I like Lost Records and hope lots of people play it, but part of me is retrospectively looking back and wondering if the episodic release model was a good fit for this new Don’t Nod narrative adventure.
Thankfully, we no longer have to worry about that as all of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is now available across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. It’s part of the PS Plus game catalog on PS5.
