Lost Records: Bloom and Rage review: punk rock never dies

When you grow up in a small town, punk rock isn’t just music: It’s a lifeline. Fuzzed out guitars blaring out of garages become the soundtrack of rebellion. It’s the music that the cops tell you to turn down, that your parents can’t stand, that your politicians try to demonize. It is loud. It is antagonistic. And in Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, it is freedom.

Set against the backdrop of 90s angst, the latest game from the creators of Life is Strange pays its respects to a riot grrrl movement that saved a generation. The narrative adventure tells a coming of age story about four teenage girls struggling find themselves in the confines of a suffocating town. It’s a jail cell where greasy locals play the role of guards, and the wailing guitars of Bratmobile’s Love Thing are enough to inspire a prison break.

You can’t lock us in here forever. The bars won’t hold us. We’ll chew through them. And then eat you alive.

Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a mature reinvention of the Life is Strange formula with an impressive dynamic range of emotions. It’s a slow burn, one that struggles to find the right balance between grounded realism and supernatural intrigue, but its heart thumps like a bass drum in the dead of night.

The dream of the 90s

Lost Records tells its mysterious story across two generations. In the present day, Swann returns to her hometown to reunite with a group of childhood friends that she hasn’t seen in decades. We begin to uncover why that is in a series of flashbacks to their days as rebellious kids in the 90s. In that story, Swann moves to town and connects with Nora, Kat, and Autumn. The quartet spend a formative summer bonding with one another over punk rock and transforming an abandoned shack into a safe hideaway from the dull town they can’t wait to break free from. It’s a sincere coming of age story about self discovery, queer identity, and learning what’s worth fighting back against. All of that happens in the shadow of a simmering supernatural mystery radiating from a glowing abyss in the woods.

To tell that story, Don’t Nod employs the signature narrative hooks that defined Life is Strange. It’s a narrative filled with tough choices that lead to branching paths that shape where everything goes in both the past and present. There are several new tweaks to that formula, though, which go a long way. Choices, for instance, feel more natural here. They aren’t big, signposted moments that make it clear that players are facing a defining moment of the playthrough. I only realized how much my decisions had changed the story once I was finished and saw how many permutations of the story were possible. Lost Records feels more natural for it. Our lives and relationships are shaped just as much by the unassuming moments as they are the big choices.

That idea is baked into the dialogue system, which isn’t just about choosing what to say next from a list of options. Don’t Nod encourages players to actually listen to the people they are talking to rather than focus solely on their responses. I’m often given a set of two or three dialogue options during conversations. If I’m impatient, I can choose one to butt into a conversation before my friends are done talking. But in some cases, a different dialogue option will pop up the longer I let the other person talk. That’s counterbalanced by the fact that I only get a short amount of time to say some respondes, otherwise my silence might be misinterpreted. That creates a great tension, as I need to balance being an active listener and saying what I really mean without hesitation. It better encapsulates the tricky nuances of communication, especially for a teenager trying to find her voice while not trying to embarrass herself in front of the cool girls.

That natural touch is present in Lost Records’ best idea: its camcorder. Swann isn’t a musician like her friends, but rather a budding videographer who is always carrying a camera with her. While exploring between dialogue sequences, I can break out my camera and film everything from birds to scenic landscapes. It’s a clever stand-in for traditional collectibles that reinforce Swann’s desire to document the world around her.

As someone who used to film on mini DV camcorders all the time as a kid, it’s a remarkably authentic recreation. My footage gets a grainy filter pulled straight from the era and I can use my DualSense’s gyroscope on PS5 to add natural handheld shake to it. The camera even continues filming for a half a second or so after I hit record, leading to shots that end in a quick pan down to my feet before the cut, just as so many of my real life shots used to.

Small touches like that create a more tangible vision of the 90s rather than one that panders to hollow nostalgia. It wasn’t all just Furbys and Moon Shoes. It was a time defined by angst, leading to a counter-culture revolution that birthed fierce bands like Sleater-Kinney. I can feel the unrest of the era as songs by riot grrrl legends like Babes in Toyland soundtrack Swann’s development. That punk spirit is balanced out by moments of peace and tenderness, as I spend summer lounging in the woods with my friends. The evocative visuals so effectively capture the warmth that I can practically hear the mosquitos buzzing in my ears and feel the sun on my skin. Rebellion is motivated by the belief that the world can be better; Lost Records creates plenty of quiet moments that make all the noise feel worthwhile.

Growth through rebellion

Those gameplay systems create a backbone for Lost Records’ fantastic story, though it’s one that requires a lot of patience and trust. The narrative is split into two “tapes,” dubbed Bloom and Rage respectively. That episodic split is a bit misleading, as it creates the sense that the story is going to be filled with cliffhangers and twists like Life is Strange before it. That’s not the case, and it makes the first half hard to totally grapple with initially. In actuality, Lost Records is a slow-burn coming of age story that’s just as comfortable watching its cast lounge in the woods as it is teasing out a supernatural mystery.

The two parts should be taken less as TV episodes and more as one complete arc divided by a key emotional turn. The nuance is in the naming. Bloom is a fitting title for Tape 1 as it’s largely focused on the girls growing alongside one another. Swann begins the chapter as a shy kid who struggles with body image issues, but she slowly starts to find herself through days spent documenting her friends’ messy garage jams. Player choice helps make that feel more authentic. In my playthrough, I wanted to start a romance with Nora, but I was intimidated. Nora is the definition of 90s cool, a spitting image of Kathleen Hanna. I felt too shy to pursue obvious flirts initially. It took time for me to test the waters through the story, eventually gaining the confidence to make a move after lots of careful prodding. The moment where it all came together didn’t feel mechanical, achieved through an optimized dialogue path; it felt like Swann landed exactly where she belonged on her terms.

Just as important as the girls’ relationships to one another is their relationship to rebellion. In Bloom, it’s an act of play. A garage becomes a secret base where they can shout their lungs out in peace. Their hideout in the woods almost feels like an imaginary place. Punk rock is a dress up game. The more they embrace the riot grrrl ethos, the more they accept that it’s not something they have to keep a secret. It all culminates in Bloom’s climax, a pop-up punk show meant to cause a visible disruption in their small town.

Then comes Rage.

Reality sets in as Tape 2 begins, taking the story in an unexpected, sobering direction. It’s easy to rage against the machine by shredding, but a revelation about a character’s health puts the girls in a fight that they can’t win as easily. Their frustration begins to boil over as they scream at a monster with no ears. The innocence and joy of the first half gives way to vandalism and arson as the quartet tries to push back against the forces of life and death in any way they can. It’s a powerful expression of raw anger, which makes it all the more disruptive when the story detours into a supernatural, neon-soaked climax that needlessly teases a sequel. Those otherworldly elements are more effective when they’re used as backburner metaphors for the girls’ angst, which deepens like a never ending abyss.

It’s only once we emerge from Tape 2’s big revelation that Lost Records really pays off its slow build. That’s when the girls, now fully formed adults who have gone their separate ways, can reflect on what that period in their life really meant to them. It wasn’t just the moments of bliss that were formative, but the anger and sorrow too. Tragedy does not invalidate all the love and joy we experience; it sharpens those feelings and makes the people who help us get through it all the more precious.

I think back to my own days as a punk rocker in a small town. Late in my high school years, I was a bassist for a band called Aguasaurus. What began as a bunch of unskilled musicians covering Creep to a crowd of our friends soon became an outlet for pushing our town out of its comfort zone. We showed up to an acoustic coffee house show with a fully electric setup and thrashed. We played a set at our town’s summer student music festival where we played the same song seven times. During one set, we simply got on stage, played a recording of a DMX song, and then left. We thought it was a rebellion against our boring classmates and teachers, but it was about pushing ourselves more than anything. It helped us understand our relationship with authority. We became bolder, more creative, less scared of confrontation. It was liberating, as if we were caged animals smashing through the bars. The few sets we played shaped me into who I am today, something I couldn’t fully understand at the time.

Decades later, I attended a funeral for our guitarist. It was the most painful experience of my life and I still carry the scars from seeing his body lying in an open casket to this day. After the viewing, my childhood friends and I all got together to reminisce. We spent the rest of the evening telling stories about all the stuff we managed to get away with in high school. Aguasaurus inevitably came up and the surviving bandmates and I told tall tales of our messy practices and even messier live shows. For a brief moment, I was no longer focused on the fact that my friend had been tragically taken from us too soon. I was grateful that we got to share the stage together so many times and use our music as weapons. His off-tempo guitar riffs still echo through my body. There’s electricity in my blood. I carry the spirit of punk rock with me every day, just as I feel that Nora still must even after trading in her guitar for a subdued adult life.

You can’t stamp out a rebellion once the sparks have been lit. It is a fire that will always burn within me, only glowing brighter to honor each fallen comrade. Punk rock never dies.

Lost Records: Bloom and Rage was tested on PS5 Pro.