Lost in Random review

I haven't written many reviews lately, but I just had to write one for Lost in Random because I was enthralled by it from beginning to end, managing to finish it in just over a week.  It is now a very strong contender for my Game of the Year, though it is by no means perfect which will get to in due time. 

Since the very first trailer dropped for Lost in Random and we got a first glimpse of the visual style, I knew I wanted to play it.  The comparisons to the visual style of The Nightmare Before Christmas were there for all to see from the start, though what the gameplay actually entailed wasn't as apparent at first glance. I am a fan of anything that takes place in a dark and witty fantasy world though, and I could see bits of Terry Pratchett's Discworld and American McGee's Alice in there too. What I discovered when I played through it were highly original game mechanics beyond just the look of the game.  Let me take you through what made this game so fun and special for me that I couldn't stop playing it until I had finished it.

The world of Random is divided up into six boroughs and when each resident reaches 12 years of age, the evil Nanny, under the employ of the Dark Queen, arrives to roll the black dice.  The resulting number dictates in which of the boroughs you will spend the rest of your life.  Even and Odd are two sisters that have grown up in Onetown and their family has been quite happy together despite being poor.  This happy family life is about to be torn apart though because Odd has reached her 12th birthday.  The black dice is rolled and things initially look good with a one being rolled meaning Odd can stay with her family.  

However, the Nanny manipulates the dice and changes it to a six at the last minute which means Odd is taken away to Sixtopia, the home of the Queen herself. From here Even vows to rescue her sister and sets out on an epic journey across all six boroughs to get her back. Shortly into the journey she find herself in the sacred Valley of the Dice, which is littered by mostly dormant dice.  A little one does come to her rescue in a fight against the Queen's automatons and from that point on joins Even in her quest, giving her vital assistance in battle through the use of cards.

Even having a bit of a chat with Dicey

The flow of battle goes a little something like this.  At first, Even can only use her slingshot which won't do any damage to enemies but can be used to destroy blue crystals growing from them which releases dice energy.  By running close by the dice energy with Dicey or your back or by sending him out with the RB button it will get sucked up into him and fill up your card meter,  You can then choose to roll Dicey when you have enough energy for a few cards or wait until you've filled up your energy completely to choose from 6 cards out of your deck of 15 maximum.  The number the Dicey rolls then dictates how many points you've got to spend on these cards with him only being able to roll a 1 or a 2 very early on in the game.  The cards vary from being free to use to costing 3 points for the very powerful ones. 

There are a few different types of cards including basic but useful damage cards that give you a temporary sword or of a bow to do direct damage to the automatons, ones that give you a one hit shield, and extremely useful ones that grant you an extra point for free or just lower the point cost of all cards in your hand by 1.  There are quite a few other kinds of cards including some that sounded cool in theory but then were pretty crap in practice, such as a cannon that you can drop on the field to fire at your enemies.  However, this cannon doesn't track the enemies, it just keeps firing directly ahead and then disappears after 30 seconds.  It will also hurt you if you get shot by it.  So I quickly removed that one from my deck and never used it again.  It did find the bombs incredibly useful as it is quite easy to lure a group of automatons close to them and then do massive damage.

Throughout the game there are also quite a few board game arenas where there is a massive chess piece that you need to get to a goal.  Every time you roll Dicey in combat the chess piece will move along the board the same number of spaces that he rolls.  Quite often the path of the chess piece will be block until you kill a certain enemy.  These board games take quite a while to finish but it is hard to fail them for the most part.  Should Even get killed you will have to start over but I found there was very little risk of that if I always kept a few healing potion cards in my deck.  There was one board game which was quite stressful because you are constantly being chased by a moving wall which will hurt you if it catches up to you, but I did still beat it on my first attempt. 

The only real difficulty spike I did encounter during my time with the game was in the very first boss fight against Royam, the evil mirror image of Twotown's mayor. This was partly my own fault though, because I was stubbornly trying to muddle through with the same deck I had been using since the start of the game.  When I finally did stop for a moment and put some better cards in my deck I beat him on my very next try.  Once again those bomb cards became incredibly valuable against Royam, especially the the final phase of the fight where you're having to deal with both him and a bunch of regular automatons at the same time. 

You can definitely see the likeness between Royam here and Oogie Boogie, can't you?

We've already touched on the visual influences for Lost in Random but it is still a cool look that works well for this game and the world that Zoink wanted to build. Everything has the feel of a stop motion animated feature about it.  On a technical level I didn't encounter a single problem at all while I was playing through on the Xbox Series X - not slowdown, glitching or any notable bugs of any kind which is impressive as I was playing it so close to launch and so many other games come out with all sorts of bugs and problems these days.  On the audio side of things, the voice acting is very strong across the board with believable performances from all involved and some quite memorable characters being created. The music is decent but once again it does wear its Elfman inspirations on its sleeve.  There are a few songs throughout the game that are well written and help to flesh out the world quite a bit as well.

Lost in Random took me around 15 or so hours in total to beat and I did take my time and make sure I completed every side quest that I encountered.  I didn't go out of my way to find every single hidden card or story book chapter but I did come across the majority of them throughout my travels.  I was quite satisfied with the total time spent with the game especially as this isn't a full priced release, costing about £25 in the UK with a small discount if you are an EA Play / Xbox Game Pass Ultimate member. 

My only real gripe with the game would be that combat can sometimes drag on for a long time because the cards that are chosen for your hand are random from the pool of 15 that you set, so you could for example keep getting health potions come up when you're at full health or get high cost cards that you don't have enough points to use. Some may find themselves getting rather frustrated with this system but I still enjoyed myself even during the fights that went on for 20 or so minutes. It's all part of the random nature of the world that Zoink has created.  I also think that it's a bit of shame that there is no physical version of the game at the moment.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if Limited Run Games or a similar company does something eventually, but these can be expensive and hard to get.

The combination of the art style, the story and the game mechanics all combine to deliver something that feels very fresh, despite the obvious stylistic inspirations that the game draws upon. It's for this reason that I am lining up Lost in Random as my potential Game of the Year. We still have a few months to go though and something else may come along to take that slot.  I do have my eye on Kena: Bridge of Spirits but I recently heard someone describe the combat as "souls like" which was enough to strike fear into my heart. We shall have to see when the game comes out next week.  I hope you enjoyed this review, I shall do my best to write these more often going forward!

Overall: 8 out of 10