Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – February 18

After a few years away from the Life Is Strange-style melodramatic adventure game, Don’t Nod is going back to its roots with Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. The two-part series follows a group of teenage girls in the ‘90s who discover something they swore never to speak of again. When they reunite 27 years later, a lot has changed but some things haven’t. They laugh about the past and consider the future, but all their conversations lead back to whatever it was that happened when they were young.

I played a chunk of the game last year and was really compelled by how Don’t Nod was tackling the good and bad of nostalgia, and how it felt like the most earnest version yet of the team’s depiction of the teenage experience, largely because it harkens to the developers’ own childhoods. Thankfully we won’t have to wait too long to unwrap Lost Records’ mysteries, as the game was initially meant to launch last year, but was delayed to avoid the release of Life Is Strange: Double Exposure. The first episode is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S next month on February 18, with the second to follow on March 18. – Kenneth Shepard