I didn’t feel much freedom or creative spark in doing so, but it’s another trope gathered.
Prehistoric vlogging aside, and bar a couple of padlock puzzles, your main interaction lies in dialogue.
Or so we’re told via interface elements.
Not much happens, plot-wise, for most of this first half’s running time.
Is it too much to say I hate this?
Lost Records is at times cloyingly sentimental, and its characters are concerned with authenticity most of all.
And yet the UI scolds the player constantly.
I much preferred these sections, although they’re comparatively brief.
This later timeline reaches back and makes the on-the-nose depiction of the 1990s richer, too.
This feels like a rare moment of synchronicity between the story and the storytelling techniques used to tell it.
She has a mask with her, too.
This sense of immersion survived about 40 seconds.
“The budget couldn’t cover a bespoke handwashing animation”, probably.
What does it say about her that she doesn’t worry about transmission via contact with surfaces?
“It doesn’t say anything, this is just how video games work,” almost certainly.
But I think those are poor excuses.
One of the best pieces of writing advice is “every word should tell.”
Perhaps a corollary for video game narratives might be, “Every interaction should tell.”
Lost Records' design feels like a collection of expected tropes just as much as its story does.
I have a few rebuttals to that idea.
I was also a kid in the ’90s and feel a growing nostalgia for Hey Arnold!
and my Nintendo 64.
Look, I can talk all day about the parts of Lost Records that didn’t work for me.
I wish it was half as long as it is.
