DON'T NOD

LOST RECORDS: Welcome to Velvet Cove

TRANSMEDIA

ENGAGEMENT

CO-CREATION

ARG

How a 90s internet revival turned fans into co-creators during an eight-week story gap

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Lost Records: Bloom & Rage dropped in two parts, eight weeks apart.

In a year when 19,000 games hit Steam, Don’t Nod couldn’t afford silence between launches. No AAA budget. No hype machine. Just a need to keep players hooked—and talking.

This wasn’t just about holding attention. It was about holding feeling. The story had to stay alive—and the fandom even more so.

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We Built a Town, Not a Teaser

Velvet Cove is the mysterious fictional town in the game. But we made it real, our fans becoming roleplaying citizens. A Discord server became the town square, complete with a welcome centre, radio station, and weekly events, and interactive NPCs.

We started by recreating the mid-90s internet with MoviePalaceOnline.com, a virtual extension of an in-game landmark that came to life inside an interactive PC set-up made in Unreal Engine. Glitchy GIFs, corrupted JPEGs, ZIP folders, modem tones—it looked like a relic, but it was a gateway to an extended narrative world.

Hidden inside were breadcrumbs that led players down the rabbit hole of a companion mystery to the game.

Every week we launched new missions. Fans decoded corrupt files, uncovered secrets, submitted intel via online forms, and emailed in-game characters. Fans even had to hack into an old computer and wait on replies from CyberBob, the sarcastic in-universe IT agent.

Inside Discord, players began co-creating the lore with us through theories, fan fiction and teamwork. Fans DMed in-game characters, drew them, sent them get-well cards.

The line between game and player blurred completely.

We didn’t chase scale, instead we earned allegiance.

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Half a million reached, organically

From zero to 3,000 Discord members in weeks. 24,000 players in the ARG. Nearly 400,000 messages exchanged. Fans were building the world alongside us.

The story overflowed into Reddit theories, TikTok explainers, Instagram fan art, and X roleplay threads.

90% of players said they’d buy Don’t Nod’s next game. By the time Part 2 dropped, they weren’t being sold—they were already in.

Over half a million reached, organically.

Not a cent spent on media.