Review: Lost in Random Offers Plenty of Gothic Delights, As Well As Stale Gameplay

The game’s inventive and jokey writing goes a long way toward mitigating the frustrating linearity that takes over the campaign.

Lost in Random
Photo: Electronic Arts

Swedish indie developer Zoink Games’s Lost in Random benefits from the richness of its setting, even when it’s at the service of reductive gothic effects. Its gameplay also smartly keys the story’s chance-based conceit to the element of luck that plays into the hybrid of dice-, card-, and action-based combat. But Lost in Random’s consistently strong plotting doesn’t quite make up for the increasingly lackluster gameplay of what proves to be an overlong adventure, especially during its redundant and rigidly linear tail end.

After being destroyed by civil war, the kingdom of Random was left to the mercy of the gaunt, white-masked Queen and the roll of a mysterious black dice. On their 12th birthday, every child of Random rolls the dice, which determines whether they will be destined to a life of struggle in Onecroft, one of war in Threedom, or one of luxury in Sixtopia. And among those children is Odd, who’s cruelly separated from her sister Even when she rolls a six.

The game is at its strongest during its first full area, during which Even stumbles upon a living, breathing, and quite forbidden dice that she names Dicey and together they set out to figure out the strange rules of Twotown, where every citizen has a split personality, including the mayor, whose rhyming Royam alter ego is a menace. There’s a sense of wonder to Even and Dicey’s wander, from the twisty streets of the Upside Downtown to the board-game battle arenas where Even squares off against the Queen’s chess-themed robots.

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Each subsequent district is no less visually captivating, like the massive vertical factory of Fivetropolis, where Dicey’s magical weapon cards were born. But as the purpose of Even’s mission becomes clearer to her, so, too, does her path forward and labyrinthine towns give way to more orderly, straightforward regions where she handles increasingly repetitive tasks.

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Lost in Random’s inventive and jokey writing mitigates the frustrating linearity that comes to define Even’s exploration. You even have a personal narrator who’s prone to such delightful interjections as: “She could play every single musical instrument, which was impressive, but none of them well, which was markedly less impressive.” But that imaginative use of language is absent from the game’s combat, which tells its story entirely through a limited deck of cards.

By the time you reach the gambling mecca of Fourburg, you’ll have gained all of Dicey’s pips and most of the game’s 34 cards. There’s no need to adapt your 15-card deck after that point, which means that battles are repeating the same narrative, something that becomes even more apparent in the last two districts, neither of which feature the game’s best feature: the battle gauntlets that play out on massive boards and with unique rules.

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That’s a frustrating turn of events, because early on, while you’re still acquiring and testing out new cards, combat is rather enjoyable. Even, armed only with a slingshot, must snap crystals off her foes so that Dicey can hoover them up, converting them into cards. Once you’ve drawn at least one card, Even can roll Dicey, and then use the number of pips on Dicey’s upright face to summon those cards in the Dicemension. At first, you’ll be overly relying on straight weapon cards, but as you increase your deck—and the number of overall pips on Dicey—you’ll be placing hazards and inflicting direct damage and using cheats to ensure better future rolls. But as you find a deck that works, such as pairing the sluggish but powerful Hammer with a time-slowing vortex, battles become less random and more rote.

“Every roll of the dice matters, but not every roll counts,” claims Seemore, the die-restoring pipnician who Even befriends. But this isn’t true of Lost in Random’s gameplay, as the worst penalty for a bad roll is around 10 seconds of the player’s time. Indeed, if you don’t earn enough pips to summon a card, all you have to do is wait to draw a fresh card and re-roll Dicey until you’ve achieved the desired effect. Lost in Random’s narrative about a world where self-determination is suppressed is compelling, but the randomness that characterizes the game’s combat risks pushing those of us who actually have free will to play something else instead.

The game was reviewed using a code provided by fortyseven communications.

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Score: 
 Developer: Zoink Games  Publisher: Electronic Arts  Platform: PlayStation 5  Release Date: September 10, 2021  ESRB: E10+  ESRB Descriptions: Fantasy Violence, Language, Use of Alcohol  Buy: Game

Aaron Riccio

Aaron has been playing games since the late ’80s and writing about them since the early ’00s. He also obsessively writes about crossword clues at The Crossword Scholar.

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