Bloom & Rage understands good and bad nostalgia

Don’t Nod, the studio behind the original Life is strange and are (star) numbered continuationhas a genuine quality to his writing that still moves me, almost 10 years after Max Caulfield first walked the halls of Blackwell Academy. So even then Lost Records: Bloom & Ragethe studio’s next game, coming out next year, is reliant on some of the hokiest, most sappy dialogue I’ve heard in a hot minute, that earnestness keeps me hooked. I recently played about two hours Lost dataand while the build I got to play with was a bit rickety, especially since it swings back and forth between 90s flashbacks and modern day setting, I’m already more intrigued than when I spoke to the developers of Don’t Nod about the project earlier this year.

Lost data focuses on a group of four friends who met as teenagers in the ’90s and bonded over their love of rock music and protagonist Swann’s camera. But what is clear is that by the time they reunite more than two decades later, something happened to them when they were filming music videos in their hometown. Lost data switches back and forth between Swann’s past and present, playing on the player’s uncertainty about why this group of girls hasn’t spoken to each other in years to create a constant sense of unease. Everyday conversations I had with Swann’s girlfriend Autumn at a dinner table in the present felt strained, even as we reminisced about the great times we’d had together as teenagers.

The demo I played deliberately omitted parts that could have eased the tension somewhat. The carefully crafted mystique of the moments Don’t Nod presented me with left me intrigued and curious about the supernatural twist the switch to black and white had to offer.

The parts of Swann’s story I was able to play through, however, were intriguing in their own ways, tapping into parts of my own ‘90s nostalgia that I think I’ve forgotten as I’ve gotten older and more engaged with the present. The demo opens with her rooting around her childhood bedroom in search of a movie she rented from the local movie store but misplaced in a closet somewhere. As I eyed the knickknacks strewn about her distinctly ‘90s room, decorated with period-appropriate homages to properties like Trolls and Stephen King novels, it was like I could feel the plastic of the VHS cases in my hands after decades of not thinking about such things.

Between throwing things away as a youth and moving across the country as an adult, I’ve lost a lot of physical items and reminders of the things that were once crucial to my life. Not every piece of ’90s media stirs up those buried memories for me, but walking through Swann’s room was the first moment I Lost data played on my nostalgia. But I didn’t enjoy it. It wasn’t a happy dopamine rush or a reference to something I think back on fondly. It was more of a somber feeling, an acknowledgement that time has passed and things have changed.

So many of the tactile experiences I had as a child have been replaced by scrolling and convenience. I imagine the juxtaposition between how Swann interacts with the technology of her adolescence and the more modern world of today’s segments is meant to create a contrast between two different points in her life, but it also reminds me of how transient and disposable almost everything we interact with is. I think of the box of VHS tapes that sat in my family’s storage unit for decades when we replaced them with DVDs and Blu-rays, only to be replaced by streaming services that would take a movie off the list without warning. I don’t even feel wistful, I just feel dread.

Lost data is about capturing these moments using technology that Swann could not have imagined would be outdated and likely forgotten years later. In addition to walking, talking, and examining items, I spent most of my time in Swann’s shoes, recording her room and her friend’s band practice on her camcorder. Her fondest childhood memories are of her handheld camera, making 4:3 music videos for the friends she so desperately wanted to impress. Lost data‘ dialogue perfectly captures an awkward teenager’s attempts to fit in, to the point where I couldn’t help but sympathize with her, even as I wept at the unabashed, unironic earnestness with which she speaks to her future girlfriends.

While her anxiety may linger into adulthood, the raw, unpolished way she and her friends filmed a music video in the woods outside their hometown is but a distant memory. I don’t yet know if the shaky, awkward shots I captured with Swann’s camera still exist in the game’s present, but watching the end result of our time together and seeing how many clips were clearly born out of me still getting used to which buttons did what in the game’s photo mode felt fitting. Swann was still learning how to be a director at that age, just as I was still learning how to use the game’s controls. So yeah, the end result isn’t a professional, perfectly framed music video, but it’s the best I could do at the time.

I expected Lost data to play on the 90s nostalgia, as Don’t Nod had told me it was an opportunity for the team to reflect on their own teenage years as adults. But I don’t think I was prepared for how it would play on my own fears about how the world is, well, losing records of its past. The tangible ways we once held images, photographs, and letters are dying. Technology has improved our lives, but it has also made us flippant about how easily something historically or personally significant can be thrown away at the touch of a button. Where once you had to rip and burn a photo to destroy it, now all you have to do is delete it from your photo app or hard drive. I’m only in my 30s, so I’m not as far removed from my adolescence as Swann and her friends in Lost databut so many videos and photos from those years have already been erased as social media accounts are deleted and old photo albums are lost in the shuffle between homes. Maybe that’s just what happens to nostalgia as the world becomes increasingly dystopian. It’s no longer a rosy lens through which to look at the good old days, but a reminder that history can feel impossible to preserve.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S in 2025.