Zoink’s Lost in Random combines everything I love about video games: amazing storytelling, beautiful graphics, and a brand-new, imaginative world that you get to explore and experience at your own pace.
I loved roaming the teapots of Onecraft, meeting the multiple personalities of Two-Town, resolving the civil war in Threedom, receiving a pep talk from Death outside of Fourburg, arguing with the alchemist in Fivetropolis, and confronting the Queen in Sixtopia...all with my trusty Dicey by my side.
By the time I finished the game, I was hungry for more. I wanted to learn everything I could about the world and the characters within it.
I went on a lore hunt, chasing down all of the information I could find.
The results were...disappointing. It seemed like all of the information about Random and its denizens is already included in the game. My quest for more was denied.
But there is so much I want to know!
I want to know the history of Random, before the Dice Wars.
I want to know the bureaucratic infrastructures of the cities: where food production comes from, where waste management goes, where the children are re-housed and educated, and why tourism exists between some towns and not others.
I want to know why Even is small enough to sleep in a match box, while the Mayor of Two-Town is large enough to tower over rooftops.
I want to know how the Valley of the Dice was formed, and how it stayed hidden for so long.
But mostly, I want to know the characters' backstories.
...I’m ravenous for them.
These, above all else, are what I was searching for, longing for, hoping for.
I kept imagining stumbling across a promotional video, a Twitter thread, an Instagram post, an interview with Lost in Random’s creators, that provided me with all of the new, juicy backstory I’ve been craving.
I couldn’t find any.
So I made my own.
But I didn’t want to just write a little ditty and plop it online; I wanted to create something useful. Something adaptable. Something that expanded upon the information we have for certain characters, while remaining spoiler-free.
I wanted to venture into the Royal Nostalgium and reveal the bottom half of each characters’ portrait, in a way that would make more people interested in playing Lost in Random.
The result was a series of scripts for “Meet the Character” backstory scenes, focusing on what led to each character becoming who they are by the time Even meets them.
The goal was to create a script that echoed each characters’ tone, personality, and “cadence,” well enough to be virtually indistinguishable from material that the Lost in Random writers would themselves create.
I pulled upon all the information I had: conversations with each character, knowledge about their past, little nibbles of insight into what they wanted, desired, and treasured.
The purpose of each script was to build interest in the characters’ pasts and present--to help the player feel attached to the character and want to find out more about them, by playing the game.
Each attempt to recreate a script format on this blog looked horrendous, so I’m relying on screenshots, instead. If the images don’t load, are difficult to read, or you just prefer to read the scripts as a PDF, you can click this link to open the file in a new window!
This scene is titled Meet the Character: The Count, and is about...you guessed it, this paranoid, plushie-loving member of the nobility.
Let’s learn a little more about The Count and his beloved Count Shmoo III, shall we?
This next script is titled Meet the Character: The Duke.
Let them eat cake...and only cake!
Obviously, several aspects of these scenes are not feasible to produce, fully-formed, fully-voiced, developed and animated. It could cost too much money to go down that route, and too much time to do so.
However, the evolution of these stories--for example, the Count’s relationship with Count Shmoo III: that of a childhood comfort becoming the sole trustworthy companion of a paranoid and powerful man--are compelling, and can be used to drum up interest in Lost in Random.
If Zoink wanted to adapt scripts like this one, they could do so in an animated comic-book style, with 2D images and text. If they drew 3-6 images per scene, and rotated out speech text on the bottom of the screen in lieu of sound, that would be much more budget-friendly.
In addition, they could use already-existing bits and pieces of the game to create a jarring “Enter: Present Day” effect, where the 2D world of their backstory slams back into the moments when the player is first introduced to them, and their story together begins.
Another alternative way to adapt these backstories into affordable promotional material is by creating a four-image-plus-game-clip social media post, adaptable to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
For example: using still images and dialogue to convey an emotional journey that culminates in whatever unfortunate situation we find the character in when we meet them. Each image conveys a snapshot of childhood, and together, they introduce a mini portrait of the character that both introduces said character and immediately establishes conflict between who they were, and who they are now.
End this sequence of images with a clip from the game like this one (5:54-6:27):
Or this one (45:45-46:19):
…and you have introduced a mystery: how did this character go from what we see in these images to what we see in this video game clip?
You’ll need to play Lost in Random to find out!