Life is Strange's director reveals the reason why Lost Records: Bloom & Rage was delayed to 2025. Read on to learn more about the game, including its split into two parts and magical elements!
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage’s Creative Director Shared New Information
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage Reason for Delay
Former Life is Strange and now Lost Records: Bloom & Rage’s creative director, Michel Koch, revealed the reason for the game’s delay into 2025.
In a Eurogamer interview conducted during Gamescom in August 2024, Koch mentioned that Lost Records: Bloom & Rage was delayed due to having a similar release window to Life is Strange: Double Exposure. Koch believed that players would want to play both games and that it would be better if their release dates did not coincide.
"There are not many narrative games with like, double A or high-quality," Koch shared. "Life is Strange: Double Exposure is one, Lost Records is another. We thought, as players, I would love that the games are not coming at exactly the same time, as I want to play both. And for us as developers, it also gives us a bit more breathing room to polish things better."
Instead of competing against Life is Strange: Double Exposure, the developers of Bloom & Rage believed players could enjoy both by releasing the game at a different time. The former was released on October 29, 2024, while the latter is set to be released on February 18, 2025.
Bloom & Rage: Split into Two Halves
In the same interview, Koch also mentioned that Bloom & Rage was split into two halves for pacing purposes, which was decided on as early as 2022.
Koch made a good analogy about this decision, comparing it to the release strategy of Netflix and HBO. "I noticed that I'm not invested as much in Netflix shows, I binge them and then forget them very quickly sometimes," Koch shared. "And then I was watching some TV shows on Apple TV and HBO, where they are sticking to weekly releases, and I found that I was investing way more. And we were thinking, we made some good episodic games, why not still go for at least a part of that?"
"It also makes a lot of sense for the story. You know, the game is called Bloom & Rage, so Tape 1 will be Bloom, and Tape 2 will be Rage. The game's past takes place over the summer of 1995, so Tape 1 is July, and Tape 2 is August. And there is an event - there is something that happens at the end of Tape 1 that makes sense to stop the game there and to reflect a bit, to just let the player take their time. To maybe play something else, wait a bit, think about what happened, and then go back to Tape 2, hopefully even more invested in the story, because you have had some time to reflect on what happened, and maybe talked with your friends or to other people online."
With more time on their hands after playing Bloom & Rage’s Tape 1 (Bloom), Koch and his team hoped they would have more time to reflect and be more invested in playing Tape 2 (Rage). From a narrative standpoint, Tape 1 and Tape 2 take place in 1995 and 2022, respectively, featuring a significant time jump. The second part of the game will be released as a free update on April 15, 2025.
There is Magic, but Don’t Expect "Full Sci-Fi Supernatural" elements
Just like with its previous games, Bloom & Rage devs DON'T NOD are incorporating magical realism into the game. However, Koch revealed that players should not "expect some full sci-fi supernatural, high stakes power, or anything that’s too major."
"Magical realism is definitely important in our previous games, and is important also again here," Koch explained. "As you saw in the trailers, the characters see something in the woods that we are hinting at. But we're still telling a story about a group of friends that is anchored in reality. We want magic to be a catalyst, to be something that makes things have higher stakes, and it will be more and more present as the game advances to the end. But it's more like the magic realism will bring more tension to the group, and to what's happening around some antagonists we cannot talk about yet. If you watch a show like Twin Peaks, this is the kind of magical realism we are going for, rather than full magic."
That said, magic and other supernatural elements are in this game but do not expect them to be one of the major aspects of Bloom & Rage. Instead, these elements are there to assist in telling the story of a group of teenage friends.
Source:
Eurogamer: Interview with Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, Michel Koch
