Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (tape Two) Review – Love, Grief And Self-recrimination As The Girls Reunite

PC, PS5, XBox; Don’t Nod
The concluding half of this two-parter may be lacking in interactive challenges, but is profound, sensitively structured and emotionally resonant

One thing you realise as you get older is that memories are plastic and that the stories you tell about your life change with every recollection, depending on who you are at the time. This is one of the themes – and indeed the mechanics – of Lost Records, a narrative adventure about four teenage girls who develop an intense friendship in rural Michigan during the summer of 1995. In the first instalment, they form a band, discover an old shack in the woods to use as a clubhouse, and encounter a supernatural force emanating from a deep hole they discover nearby. But as autumn draws in and the girls plan a climactic rock gig, tragic secrets are uncovered.

Cleverly, the story is told mostly in flashback, as the characters meet again, decades later, in their long-abandoned home town – they’re older, wiser and with new perspectives on what happened to them as teenagers. Lead character Swann, a keen photographer whose video camera provides a key game interface in the first episode, is living a solitary life, while Autumn is still filled with anxiety and Nora is now an influencer. Missing is Kat whose terminal cancer diagnosis obliterates their world at the close of part one.