The Lost Bay - First Look Review

A look at the 90s that never were

*Disclosure: I have done some playtesting for this game. I am otherwise not affiliated with Iko or The Lost Bay Studios.

I used to consider myself a 90s kid. I was there for most of the 90s, but my formative years actually took place in the early 2000s, or “aughts.” My childhood was shaped by 9/11 and the fear that it generated. I was there for the rise of the internet and the birth of social media. I watched as those things simultaneously brought the world closer together while pushing individuals further apart.

Which is to say that I am not a 90s kid, so I would be lying if I said that The Lost Bay - the new and upcoming RPG from The Lost Bay Studio - spoke to me on a deeply personal level.

But I was there, and my formative years were built on top of that decade. The 90s, caught between the Cold War and the War on Terror, were a time of cynicism and uncertainty. It was a time when the internet was just starting to gain traction, and the possibilities it brought seemed endless. In short, it was a time of change.

The Lost Decade

It seems like we’ve been drowning in 80s nostalgia for a long time now. Stranger Things, Super 8, Ready Player One…hell, even Basic D&D has made a come back in the last decade. But 90stalgia seems to be slower to catch on. There have been a few examples of 90s staples making a comeback in the last decade, Fuller House and Girl Meets World spring to mind, but nothing compared to the flood of 80s nostalgia sequels that continue to roll out every year. In just the last two years alone we’ve had sequels to Indiana Jones, Top Gun, Jurassic Park, Transformers, Predator, and The Evil Dead.

The RPG scene is likewise stuck in the 80s. The “kids on bikes” genre, based on films like E.T. and The Goonies, has spawned an entire RPG of the same name. Then there’s Tales From the Loop, another “kids on bikes” RPG, and the aforementioned slew of retro-clones aping the play style of 80s D&D (not that there’s anything wrong with that. As I’ve said before, I love Dungeon Crawl Classics).

So The Lost Bay, which advertises itself as “a tabletop RPG set in the 90s that never were,” seems to fill that empty space.

The Lost Bay is a horror game set in a coastal suburban town where every urban legend is true, conspiracy theories are more than theoretical, living saints loiter in the parking lot outside of Radioshack, and life-destroying monsters ring the doorbell and offer to fix your TV antennae…for a price.

It would be the perfect system for running a Welcome to Nightvale-inspired campaign. But that is another matter*.

*As I was writing this, I discovered that a Welcome to Nightvale RPG is actually in the works and slated for a 2024 release. So, that’s cool. Point still stands.

The Lost Bay is a deeply personal project for lead designer

Iko

. In his announcement post, he explains that the Bay is based on memories of his own troubled childhood, filled with violence and suburban decay . After being forced to leave for personal reasons, his childhood home took on a mythical bent in his mind, and what we see in the pages of The Lost Bay is what Iko sees in his mind when he thinks of his old home.

I am not a 90s kid. I grew up in the American Midwest, far away from that great ocean where the Lost Bay of Iko’s childhood nestles. I grew up in a home without violence, within a city full of violence, sheltered by family and religion and a propensity for minding my own business. But the 90s sure as hell mean a lot more to me than the 80s of my parents’ generation.

A Look at Things to Come

Iko has chosen an unusual method of rolling out his new RPG, one that resembles the “early access” model popular in the video game industry. He has released the unfinished rulebook, titled The Lost Bay - First Look, and is charging for the early access. He updates the book every week, and as he hits certain milestones the price goes up. At the time of writing, the First Look costs $14 on itch.io and is on version 1.6. Essentially, the earlier you buy a copy, the cheaper it will be, and the proceeds go back into developing the book further.

I could talk about what a mess the book is in terms of layout and clarity of writing, but criticizing a book in its early drafts is pointless when the mistakes may be ironed out in the next update. Besides, there’s already some wonderfully evocative stuff in here. Immortal living saints with shrines built out of rusty semi-trailers. A massive desert encroaching on a waterfront where an island prison is visible on the horizon.

The Lost Bay is like any other place. There’s a skate park, wild horses, arcade games and ghosts, punk bands, two malls, miracles, and wildfires. It’s your home.

-The Lost Bay

You play as young adults between the ages of 18 and 23, granted powers by a force called “the Weird,” a force that is infecting your coastal home. Like any young adult in the suburbs, you have no clear direction. Are you investigating the Weird and trying to contain its influence? Are you just trying to live a normal life in a world that is spiraling out of control? Or are you trying to prove that you are the baddest Mofo on the coast? These are all viable motivations.

Death comes fast and easy in the Bay, though you do have the option to come back as a zombie or a ghost if things go south for you. You only have a max of five hit points, or heart, a paltry sum that can be taken out by one Scary Mofo. Worse, unlike games like Blades in the Dark, where your chances of success on any die roll are 50/50(1-3 fail; 4-6 success) Lost Bay only gives a 33% chance of success (1-4 fail; 5-6 success). Even then, half your success will be made with complications (5).

You will be failing more often than not in The Lost Bay. The best way to mitigate this is by using your powers, which always succeed but also carry the risk that you will become scarred by the Weird. Scars can be beneficial, giving you new powers, or they can be harmful, knocking you unconscious or hurting your allies at a critical moment in battle. The best course of action is to avoid combat altogether, and always have some friends to help you fight the Weird.

The Lost Bay in Action

For an excellent example of the game in action, look no further than Unit DH-17, an adventure written for The Lost Bay which you can buy bundled with the First Look for $15 at the time of this writing.

It’s a haunted house slasher flick. The adventure gives half a dozen reasons why players might find themselves in the eponymous house, from chasing rumors to searching for missing coworkers to crashing your bike through the window because it alleviates the boredom. There’s lots of horrible stuff inside…but no way out. Unless somebody comes to rescue you, your only choice is to explore the spooky house and try to survive the killer hiding in the shadows. It’s an adventure more concerned with the journey than the destination, full of 90s ephemera and built from suburban poverty.

Community Powered Design

Iko describes the development of his game as “community powered.” Opening up his game early like this allows him to playtest and get feedback from everyone in the community. It is in that spirit that I am writing this review. Because, as part of this community-powered approach, Iko has agreed to release five community copies of The Lost Bay - First Look for every review or “actual play” of the game.

Community copies are a common practice in the indie RPG scene where creators provide a limited number of free copies of their rules for the benefit of people who may not be able to afford a full-priced copy. It also, I assume, helps to boost the signal and get a game into more hands than it would otherwise. I think that this is a wonderful system, and I find Iko’s commitment to the TTRPG community and the financially unstable admirable.

The Lost Bay, as it stands now, is a fascinating game with a messy presentation and a lot of potential. It provides a unique setting that breaks from the established genres that have been ubiquitous for years. I recommend you give it a look.

You can find the game here. You can also get updates by subscribing to

The Dispatch

, Lost Bay Studios’ official newsletter. Lastly, you can join the community (and potentially playtest the game) by joining The Lost Bay Discord.