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The fuzz of the cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitor, alongside static grains and flickering scanlines, is a touchstone for 90s-era nostalgia. It’s shorthand for those halcyon days when technology was predominantly analog and millennial kids spent their summers shoving bulky tapes into VHS players, recording favorite bits of their after-school television shows, and making their own home videos with camcorders. It’s this vignette that developer Don’t Nod Montréal leans heavily into in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. The game follows a blossoming friendship — and apparent falling-out — of four teenagers over an unforgettable summer. And it all starts with a good dose of that nostalgia: the ubiquitously blue anti-drug message that precedes the title screen, complete with the telltale flicker of a CRT monitor.
Such adolescent longing is all par for the course for Don’t Nod. Alongside Telltale, the studio popularized the choose-your-own-adventure style of narrative games with Life is Strange, while foregrounding the outsized pain and tribulations of teenhood.
