Random Rules!
Lost in Random is a 2021 action adventure/strategy video game developed by Zoink, written by Ryan North, and published by Electronic Arts under their EA Originals label.
Set in a dark fantasy world combining fairy tale and board game motifs, the game follows a young girl named Even on a quest to rescue her older sister Odd from the wicked queen of Random. Along the way, Even befriends a sapient dice named Dicey, whose strange powers may be the key to Even's survival.
The trailers for the game can be seen here
and here.
Tropes:
- Action Prologue: The game begins with a flashback with the Queen and her sister as children fighting in a mysterious arena.
- And I Must Scream: The Queen's sister, frozen in their moment of death, pleads to be freed and allowed to die because they're fully conscious and in pain while in that stasis. There's also the victims of the sinister Bag of Holding, whose spirits are still trapped within it long after their bodies have been devoured by it.
- And the Adventure Continues: The game ends with Even, Odd, Dicey, and the other escaping Sixer children fleeing the Queen's crumbling tower on parasols, floating down to an unknown destination in Random.
- Artifact of Doom: A Bag of Holding shows up that's possessed by a malicious hunger to be filled with more and more things. It eventually developed a desire for flesh over random objects, forcing the two unfortunate boys who discovered it to essentially become serial killers to feed it, before dying themselves and being reanimated to continue tricking victims under the guise of being coyotes between settlements.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Enemies are damaged with Even's slingshot by hitting a crystal that moves around on their bodies. The broken crystal yields dice energy to collect.
- Beat the Curse Out of Him: When Even reunites with Odd in Sixtopia, her sister has been brainwashed by the Queen, forcing her into a duel.
- Bedsheet Ghost: One of these acts as a guide to Even on her quest. It is eventually revealed that the ghost is the spirit of the Queen's sister, whose body was frozen in time at the moment of her death.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: All children who hit twelve are forced to roll the Queen's black dice and possibly stolen from their families. Even spends her twelfth birthday in the climax of her journey.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: By the time Even finally finds Odd, she has been twisted and corrupted by the mask given to her by the Queen, and more than happy to attack her little sister.
- Breakable Weapons: The swords and hammers Even summons can only deliver a certain amount of damage to her enemies before they shatter. They can be repaired and strengthened by playing a card of the same type of weapon before that happens, however.
- Break the Cutie: Even didn't have much in her life besides her family, which is broken when Odd is taken away from her. In her quest to get her back, Even is put through the emotional wringer, particularly at being beaten and betrayed in her journey, hitting her lowest just before Sixtopia.
- Call to Adventure: Also known as the Dice Wielder's Journey. Even sets off on her journey to Sixtopia to find her sister, Odd, also meeting Dicey, a dice, along the way and becoming one of the first Dice Wielders in years after the No Dice War.
- Crapsack World: Random is this in spades. The land is split into six districts divided and tightly controlled by a wicked Queen who will happily have an entire town destroyed if it suits her needs. Worse still, upon reaching their twelfth birthday, every child must roll the Queen's dice and, depending on the number they roll, must leave their family forever to go live in a different town.
- Crossdressing Voices: Several female presenting NCPs speak in a man's voice, and vice versa.
- Dark Fantasy: The world of Random clearly takes some visual cues from the works of Tim Burton, particularly his stop motion work.
- Didn't Think This Through: During Even's Heroic BSoD, she meets the Bag Brothers, who offer to smuggle her home to Onecroft in their bag. But accepting this, Even soon realised that they were Evil All Along and that the bag was a monster that ate all that was put into it. It's lucky that Even defeated the Bag Brothers, otherwise this mistake would've costed her life.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: The Grim Reaper appears to ferry the souls of the Bag Brothers after Even defeats them, transporting Even to Fivetropolis afterwards. Although he presents an ominous figure, when Even confides in him her desire to give up after all she's been through he scolds her in a surprisingly normal sounding voice. He implores her to see that she's more equipped to succeed than she realizes, gives Dicey his final pip upgrade, and urges her to hurry and defeat the Queen because he's tired of ferrying children.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: When Even meets the Shadowman again, imprisoned near the end of the game, she has the dialogue option of expressing pity for being the kind of person that needs to be feared. The Shadowman does not take this well.
- The Dragon: Nanny Fortuna, who handles corralling the abducted children and spreading the Queen's propaganda.
- Dystopian Edict: Most everything in Random is decided by the roll of the Queen's die under the pretense that such a system is truly fair because it's random. Some of the things decided are which war machine in Threedom gets to attack each day, which personality is dominant in Two Town and which domain kids taken from their families get sent to. Like most dystopia, this system is built on a lie, which in this case is revealed to be the fact that the Queen compacted with sinister forces for the power control the outcome of her rolls.
- Eldritch Abomination:
- There is also the Shadowman, a boogeyman-like figure who preys on children who wander out into the dark streets of Threedom.
- The Queen is apparently serving a triumvirate of them, giving them children as tribute in exchange for her powers.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite being the main antagonist and cruel Ruler of Random, The Queen, also known as Aleksandra, is only gaining all the power, including the nightmares of all the children she collected to become sixers, just to save her sister, who was killed a long time ago during a battle.
- Exact Words: Rumors about Sixtopia describe it as the Queen's "dream palace" and "where all your dreams come true". What awaits Sixer children here is a perpetual Forced Sleep to harvest their nightmares.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Aside from timeskips at the beginning, Even and Dicey's adventure covers approximately two days.
- Eye Scream: When you first meet the three-eyed monster Seemore, two of his eyes have been taken by Royam, and he asks you to get them back in exchange for upgrading Dicey. When you find him imprisoned in Sixtopia, all three eyes have been taken by Nanny Fortuna.
- False Utopia: Sixtopia is supposed to be a gleaming paradise that everyone in Random aspires to. When Even finally arrives, she discovers that its grand cities are cardboard cut-outs and that the real Sixtopia is a stone and crystalline wasteland.
- Fight Like a Card Player: The combat system involves gathering the requisite "dice energy" to draw various cards from ones deck of enchanted cards, roll their Dice companion, and then pick cards to play based on the number rolled. In the past, people did this for practically everything, including building houses. In Fivetropolis, Even has to seek out a series of crafters that each perform a vital step in creating new cards, to get a unique one that'll help her defeat the Queen.
- Foreshadowing: Pivotal Characters Even will meet on her adventure, like the Card Makers and the Shadowman, are referenced by the Narrator if the player interacts with objects around Even's house.
- Get Out!: Even says this directly to the Queen of Random herself.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: The Queen of Random is nothing short of a tyrant, separating families and tightly controlling the lives of her citizens.
- Hammerspace: Dicey is able to hold a wide array of weapons, traps, and more inside his body.
- Healing Potion: One of the cards the player can select. They come in strawberry and blueberry flavors.
- Heroic BSoD: Even hits one in Fourburg, having grown physically drained by her journey and emotionally drained by nightmares about Odd. Thankfully however, The Grim Reaper gives her a pep talk and gets through to her later on during the ferry ride to Fivetropolis.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Shadowman coerces Even into putting an end to the civil war in Threedom, as the fear of war has become greater than fear of him. The problem is that he was the one the Queen hired to perform the assassination that started the war, meaning he is exposed and imprisoned before the end of the game.
- Homage: The developers took cues from stop motion films like those of Laika and Tim Burton in creating the look of Random.
- Royam in particular seems to be a skinnier version of Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
- The music seems to be heavily inspired by regular Burton collaborator Danny Elfman, and the end credits even feature the cast performing an Elfman-esque musical number.
- Hostile Show Takeover: While Even explores Fivetropolis, the Queen has the narrator imprisioned and attempts to take control of Even's story.
- Humongous Mecha: The Queen has given one to each of the three noble siblings of Threedom to battle for control.
- Hypno Trinket: The mask the Queen gives Odd seems to be this. When she wears it, it seems to induce feelings of resentment towards her sister, to the point where Odd will willingly attack Even.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: When Even finally reunited with Odd, she is too corrupted to think straight and Even is forced to fight her sister to bring her back to her senses.
- Industrialized Evil: Fivetropolis is a giant factory settlement that mass produces the Queen's forces.
- Interactive Narrator: A loading screen reveals that everybody has their own narrator. While Even spends most of her journey unaware of hers, the Queen is able to have him captured and imprisoned. Once Even finds him in Sixtopia, she realizes who he is and is able to communicate with him for the remainder of the game.
- The Queen also has her own narrator, who she had imprisoned.
- I Was Quite the Looker: A portrait reveals the royal triplets were cute as children before turning into cartoonishly ugly adults.
- Kid Hero: Even is a couple of days shy of twelve when she embarks on her adventure.
- Large and in Charge:
- The Mayor of Two-Town towers over his constituency, as does his less-benevolent personality Royam.
- The Queen also towers above most of the cast.
- Lemony Narrator: The narrator can come off a bit scatterbrained at times, occasionally getting distracted as the story moves ahead without him.
- Motifs: Games. Dice are most prominent, but there's also playing cards and board game pieces. Even enemies look like oversized wind-up toys.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Dicey is shorter than Even but is able to summon bombs, swords, hammers, and so much more.
- Poor Communication Kills: As Even angrily shouts at the ruling siblings of Threedom, the entire war happened because their father was assassinated and, rather than share information and look for the real killer, they immediately suspected each other for it.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Queen's robot army is fed by the fears and nightmares of children chosen to be Sixers.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Even gives a brief but brutal one when the truth about Threedom's civil war is brought to light.Even: This war was because YOU THREE never TALKED to each other?!! You people are the WORST!!!
- Recurring Boss: A monster called the Queen's Shadow chases Even all throughout Fivetropolis.
- Reused Character Design: There are many characters who differ only in voices and clothes, e.g the monsters standing on their heads and the heavyset four-eyed trolls.
- Rewarding Vandalism: Even can collect coins by shooting pots with her slingshot.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Odd says this
right towards The Queen after her sister freed her from her control and right before she and her sister Even escape. - "Shut Up" Kiss: A platonic, sisterly example when Even gives Odd a peck on the cheek to hush her fretting about where in Random they'll land riding the breeze on an umbrella from Sixtopia.
- Split Personality: Everyone in Two-Town has one in some form or another. Under the Queen's rule, they're mandated to switch based on the roll of her die every day. The Mayor's actually manifested physically at some point in the past, before becoming enraged enough to split entirely due to Even's actions.
- Time Skip: Happens twice during the game. The first time was years after Queen Aleksandra's sister Natalya suffered a fatal accident, which was when she took over all of Random. And then the second time was a year after Odd's 12th birthday, as well as being the day she was taken from home, being the day that Even sets out on her adventure to find her sister.
- Time Stands Still: Rolling Dicey freezes enemies, giving the player time to choose what cards to play, until Even attacks them. The Queen's Shadow is immune to this, however, forcing players to be a little more quick on the draw as they try to keep ahead of it.
- Upper-Class Twit: The royal triplets of Threedom, while varying in personalities, are all bratty Manchildren who don't care about the state of the region they're supposed to be ruling.
- War Is Hell: The nobles of Threedom have been battling each other with Humongous Mecha for years in a violent civil war. A huge portion of the town has been destroyed, with people cut off from one another and dying.
- Working-Class Hero: Even and her family reside in Onecroft, the lowliest town in the kingdom, where the main industry is salvage.
- World of Funny Animals: Apart from humans and sapient dice, the world has plenty of talking fish, foxes, and general monsters running about.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Queen, Nanny Fortuna, Royam, the Shadowman, and SO MANY OTHERS have it out for poor Even.
- Wretched Hive: Fourburg has descended into this, having been destroyed by the Queen and rebuilt as a shady gambling town.
- Wunza Plot: She's a sassy little girl. He's a sentiant dice with a hammerspace inside. They fight the evil Queen that took her sister.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Even gets a verbal dressing down from the Grim Reaper that she's a lot more equipped to succeed than she thinks, and implores her to quit whining about her setbacks and focus on how much she's achieved.
