Random Rules
While not without its problems, Lost in Random is very underrated. Every part of the world of Random has a unique, self-contained story while still existing as part of a single kingdom corrupted by a ruthless queen. The protagonist Even’s journey to rescue her sister from the despot’s clutches is full of emotional ups and downs, like any good adventure.
The dialogue and voice acting constantly made me smile and for the first time in years, I actually wanted to engage with the side quests. There are two reasons for that. One is restraint. There’s only 4-6 quests in each town, so I was never overwhelmed with tasks. Two is town size. With only one exception, I had no issues getting from one part of a town to the other. This is great since most of the quests are of the fetch type. How are they fun then? Quirky characters.
The combat is unlike anything I’ve played, combining real-time attacks with deck-building. As fun as a round of Solitaire is, I’ve always balked at console games where playing cards is the main draw. I don’t get the appeal of playing a game that would work just fine in real life or on an everyday computer. Thankfully, Lost in Random’s gameplay has more to offer. When a battle begins, you have to shoot crystals on enemies to “charge” a random card in your deck. Upon reaching full charge, that card will be added to your hand. Although your deck can feature up to fifteen cards, you can only draw up to five at a time. To activate cards, you must roll Even’s companion Dicey, an anthropomorphic die. The number you roll is how many action points you have for utilizing your hand. Every card has a number assigned to it, which is how many points you need to activate said card. Time is frozen while you’re deciding what cards to use and time resumes as soon as you attack an enemy or press X. The resulting flow is an undulation of strategic card choices and reactive maneuvers.
Because of how much I enjoyed the world, combat design, and overall adventure, it breaks my heart to mention Lost in Random’s sore spots. The first one I have concerns the story, which I don’t want to spoil. In short, the ending seemed rushed, and was a slight letdown on an otherwise solid premise.
The currency system could have used some more work. Coins are only used to buy cards for your deck. However, if you diligently look around the environments for breakable pots, marked doors, and complete side quests with even slight regularity, you will be able to unlock every card by the game’s halfway point, if not sooner. The only reason you would spend money afterwards is if you wanted multiple copies of specific cards. But you’ll be forced to do that anyway because of how unlocking cards works. You don’t have access to most cards at the beginning, but after you spend a specific amount of coins, you must choose a random collection of cards to add to the shop. The spending requirement is high enough that you need to buy a lot of duplicate cards before all of them are permanently available.
I praised the combat for its uniqueness eleven sentences ago. What’s not unique about it is the enemies you fight. There’s roughly six enemy types total and you will encounter all of them in the first two towns. This leaves the bosses to shake things up, but with only a handful of them, it only helps so much. There are tweaked versions of most enemies that are a bit tougher, but this wasn’t enough incentive for me to change my strategy. I don’t need to explain why having a variety of enemies with their own attack patterns would make battles more interesting, especially for a game that is open to experimentation. This is probably going to be a dealbreaker for some players and I’d be a hypocrite for saying, “It’s no big deal. Please stick with it!” I’ve abandoned games I didn’t enjoy playing. So to those who bought the game and didn’t love the combat, thank you for supporting the passionate developers behind it.
Lost in Random also unfortunately feels low-budget in places. On top of the low enemy variety, NPC models are frequently recycled between towns, looping character animations are used in place of lip-syncing, and I had to do a couple game resets when a battle or side quest wasn’t registered as completed. These issues didn’t damper my enjoyment too much, but they were still sad to see.
In conclusion, Lost in Random is a good 3D action-adventure game that probably would have been great if EA gave Zoink Games a bigger budget and more time for polish. Despite that, I encourage anyone reading this to check it out because of how unique the end product is. Before I played it, I was unaware EA has a program to support indie developers without creative interference. I hope they continue to do that and give future titles the attention they deserve.
While not without its problems, Lost in Random is very underrated. Every part of the world of Random has a unique, self-contained story while still existing as part of a single kingdom corrupted by a ruthless queen. The protagonist Even’s journey to rescue her sister from the despot’s clutches is full of emotional ups and downs, like any good adventure.
The dialogue and voice acting constantly made me smile and for the first time in years, I actually wanted to engage with the side quests. There are two reasons for that. One is restraint. There’s only 4-6 quests in each town, so I was never overwhelmed with tasks. Two is town size. With only one exception, I had no issues getting from one part of a town to the other. This is great since most of the quests are of the fetch type. How are they fun then? Quirky characters.
The combat is unlike anything I’ve played, combining real-time attacks with deck-building. As fun as a round of Solitaire is, I’ve always balked at console games where playing cards is the main draw. I don’t get the appeal of playing a game that would work just fine in real life or on an everyday computer. Thankfully, Lost in Random’s gameplay has more to offer. When a battle begins, you have to shoot crystals on enemies to “charge” a random card in your deck. Upon reaching full charge, that card will be added to your hand. Although your deck can feature up to fifteen cards, you can only draw up to five at a time. To activate cards, you must roll Even’s companion Dicey, an anthropomorphic die. The number you roll is how many action points you have for utilizing your hand. Every card has a number assigned to it, which is how many points you need to activate said card. Time is frozen while you’re deciding what cards to use and time resumes as soon as you attack an enemy or press X. The resulting flow is an undulation of strategic card choices and reactive maneuvers.
Because of how much I enjoyed the world, combat design, and overall adventure, it breaks my heart to mention Lost in Random’s sore spots. The first one I have concerns the story, which I don’t want to spoil. In short, the ending seemed rushed, and was a slight letdown on an otherwise solid premise.
The currency system could have used some more work. Coins are only used to buy cards for your deck. However, if you diligently look around the environments for breakable pots, marked doors, and complete side quests with even slight regularity, you will be able to unlock every card by the game’s halfway point, if not sooner. The only reason you would spend money afterwards is if you wanted multiple copies of specific cards. But you’ll be forced to do that anyway because of how unlocking cards works. You don’t have access to most cards at the beginning, but after you spend a specific amount of coins, you must choose a random collection of cards to add to the shop. The spending requirement is high enough that you need to buy a lot of duplicate cards before all of them are permanently available.
I praised the combat for its uniqueness eleven sentences ago. What’s not unique about it is the enemies you fight. There’s roughly six enemy types total and you will encounter all of them in the first two towns. This leaves the bosses to shake things up, but with only a handful of them, it only helps so much. There are tweaked versions of most enemies that are a bit tougher, but this wasn’t enough incentive for me to change my strategy. I don’t need to explain why having a variety of enemies with their own attack patterns would make battles more interesting, especially for a game that is open to experimentation. This is probably going to be a dealbreaker for some players and I’d be a hypocrite for saying, “It’s no big deal. Please stick with it!” I’ve abandoned games I didn’t enjoy playing. So to those who bought the game and didn’t love the combat, thank you for supporting the passionate developers behind it.
Lost in Random also unfortunately feels low-budget in places. On top of the low enemy variety, NPC models are frequently recycled between towns, looping character animations are used in place of lip-syncing, and I had to do a couple game resets when a battle or side quest wasn’t registered as completed. These issues didn’t damper my enjoyment too much, but they were still sad to see.
In conclusion, Lost in Random is a good 3D action-adventure game that probably would have been great if EA gave Zoink Games a bigger budget and more time for polish. Despite that, I encourage anyone reading this to check it out because of how unique the end product is. Before I played it, I was unaware EA has a program to support indie developers without creative interference. I hope they continue to do that and give future titles the attention they deserve.