There’s slight randomness to which cards appear, but the whole system just reeks of Final Fantasy‘s Active-Time Battle system, with the dice and cards creating the thinnest veneer of “luck-based” gameplay. Really, all that rolling “Dicey” accomplishes is to pause combat, calling up an Attack/Spell/Item menu that’s structured as a set of playing cards. If you assume, as I did, that the game’s core mechanic would be built around luck, you’d be mistaken. You see, Even can roll her magical die mid-combat to activate various effects. Lost in Random‘s first major problem, one which it never entirely overcomes, is that it squanders the whole random die-roll concept. Each realm’s numerical theme feeds into its structure for example, Threedom is the site of a three-way civil war between the competing heirs to the Threedom throne. The kingdom is divided into six realms, from the lowly Onecroft (home of Even and Odd) to Two-Town and Threedom and so on. Even, with the help of her magical die “Dicey”, must embark on an epic quest to reunite with Odd and, hopefully, save the kingdom. Lost in Random is a fantasy adventure following Even, a 12-year-old girl whose sister, Odd, is taken away by an evil queen. It looks like a Tim Burton creation, and has the soundtrack to match, but Lost in Random pales in comparison to other Burton-alikes (notably Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts). Lost in Random is cute, and has moments of inspiration, but too much of it lands awkwardly, like a lopsided die. It’s unfortunate, then, that much of what makes North great has been lost in the translation to an interactive medium. The man is funny, he’s made an art out of breaking the fourth wall, and it makes perfect sense he was hired to write the Tim Burton-inspired Lost in Random. North’s success with Dinosaur Comics landed him gigs at Marvel and Archie Comics, not to mention a couple Eisner awards and, at one point, the #1 best-selling book on Amazon.

North is the Toronto-based creator of the delightful, consistently funny, and remarkably long-running Dinosaur Comics, a webcomic exploring everything from PG-13 Canada Day celebrations to bog people to declaring parts of your life “non-canon” to avoid responsibility. Toronto geek that I am, I’ve managed to meet (and obtain autograph of) Ryan North several times. It has some fun ideas, but nothing special.

Available now for PS5 (reviewed), PS4, Xbox X/S, Xbox One, Switch, and Windows.Ī whimsical, occasionally amusing, but disappointingly derivative action-adventure. Our review of Lost in Random, developed by Zoink.

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