A fantastical RPG which is as morbid as it is enchanting. Think Alice: Madness Returns meets Hunger Games...and add some sentient dice.
Look at any cinematic release poster for a Tim Burton classic.
From Corpse Bride to Beetlejuice, the colour palettes are dominated by cool-toned blues and purples. It's an established semiotic code of horror-fantasy, subliminally signposting a twisted fairytale which is tailor-made for the adults in the room rather than the children who accompany them.
When I bought September release Lost in Random (Zoink Games, EA Originals), I'll admit that I was primarily drawn in by the gorgeous promo images. The murky swirls of blue and purple spelled out the promise of something darker. Something familiar.
And it delivered on that promise.
Nostalgia is a goldmine thanks to the pandemic. Lockdowns and crippled businesses have us looking inward (depressing) or looking back on simpler times (less depressing). Random is the perfect escape from our own dreary universe, planting you instead in the middle of a dystopian world where dormant magic bubbles sleepily below the surface and every life is governed by the roll of a dice.
"Random rules!" the NPCs frequently bellow. Whether a command, a warning, or a succinct trill of patriotic praise, it pretty much sums the story up.
Fate is indeed ruled by randomness; that is, it is ruled by the Queen's six-sided dice, each face representing a different sector of the realm. The die is cast upon the citizens' twelfth birthdays, dictating who (or what) they shall amount to for the rest of their lives. Restricted to only six controlled outcomes, however, the randomness provided by the dice is a paradox. It offers people the illusion of chance, of an uncertain fate not yet decreed- and yet, their dictatorial monarch holds them in a vicelike grip.
Tales of wicked overlords and helpless pawns are nothing new. Neither are stories of separated families, redemption, and villains with a soft, bleeding heart beneath the chainmail and armour.
What it lacks in originality of plot, however, it makes up for with its unique and memorable cast of characters and meticulously detailed, sumptuous world-building.
The artistic direction is impeccable, glittering with childlike wonder and more than a dash of ghastliness (Nanny Fortuna's distorted wailing will haunt my dreams for a LONG time, I tell you). Victor Becker's (AD/concept artist) drawings play with harsh angles rather than the soft roundness of a children's cartoon, which lends both the characters and their landscapes a jarring edge. It emulates the style of stop-motion animated classics without cheapening them, an honest and heartfelt tribute to the genre of twisted fairytales and the days before CGI.
Traversing Random with Even and Dicey feels a lot like reuniting with an old friend. And honestly? These days we could all use one.
Not only is Lost in Random a strange and lyrical visual playground, but it also sports some of the most addictive combat mechanics of any RPG I've played as of late.
Fans of hack n' slash dungeon crawlers and FPS fanatics will find something fun here as you slice and dice (geddit? I'm hysterical) y0ur way from Onecroft to Sixtopia. As Even shoots crystals from her enemies using her trusty slingshot, they drop dice energy. Dicey can collect these to build up random hand of cards selected from your deck of 15. These cards provide boons from health elixirs to melee and ranged weaponry.
Each card is assigned a value from 0-3. Once your hand is full and you've collected enough dropped energy, Even can roll Dicey to purchase a boon in accordance with the value he lands on.
Trust me, it's a lot more fun to play it than read about. I definitely had no idea what I was doing until halfway through Two Town when I realised that (gasp) I could whack stuff with a giant sledgehammer if I played my cards right.
Unlike with Vampyr however, the ranged weapons are absolutely stacked in this game. The Rulemaster's Bow and a few health elixirs are all I needed to take down most bosses- just stand clear of your target.
Your latest obsession, Lost In Random, is available now on Steam and Origin.