“Even’s nightmare was just beginning…”: Lost in Random and the Gothic Tradition

The Gothic is a hybrid mode with the ability to merge with other media forms, and, predictably, it has been adapted into video games. Gothic themes, motifs, tropes, characters, and settings are often appropriated, transformed, and assimilated to in-game narratives and mechanics. Indeed, looking back at the history of video games, game designers have been frequently drawing on the Gothic by representing labyrinthine spaces, ghostly enemies, and uncanny objects (Kirkland, “Gothic” 109). In Lost in Random (Zoink AB, 2021), the Gothic is prominent in its narrative, atmosphere, and aesthetics. The game features decaying, haunted, liminal settings and bodies that offer possibilities to transgress and subvert boundaries and unveil a hidden past that refuses to fade away. This article examines the intersections between Lost in Random and the Gothic tradition. Focusing on the themes of transgression, subversion, liminality, past, and duality, it observes, on the one hand, how these themes are present in a cultural work that falls into the strand of ‘happy Gothic,’ as introduced by Spooner, and, on the other, how the Gothic works in Lost in Random