The Lost Records: Welcome to Velvet Cove

In a year where more than 19,000 games launched on Steam, Don’t Nod faced a critical challenge: how to keep players emotionally invested during the eight-week gap between the two-tapes release of their game, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, without AAA budgets?
Rather than filling the gap with promotional content, HAUS of PARK designed a live, playable experience set inside the game’s own universe. Welcome to Velvet Cove wasn’t a campaign about the game: it was an extension of its lore, characters, and mysteries unfolding in real time.
The experience lived inside a purpose-built Discord designed as a diegetic space within the world of Lost Records. Velvet Cove featured a welcome center, a radio station, weekly missions, NPCs, and in-world characters who interacted with players live. Fans didn’t just follow a story; they played inside it, messaging characters, writing fan fiction, theorizing clues, and collectively shaping the narrative as it evolved.
At the core of the experience was MoviePalaceOnline.com, a fully playable, 90s-style website built in Unreal Engine. Designed as a mysterious artifact from the game’s universe, it served as an explorable narrative hub that was glitchy, nostalgic, and filled with secrets. Each week, players unlocked cryptic ZIP files and hidden puzzles that advanced the story while rewarding exploration and collaboration.
The experience blurred the line between game, event, and community ritual. Clues sparked Reddit deep dives, TikTok breakdowns, Instagram fan art, and in-character X threads. Fans exchanged letters with characters, made each other mixtapes, and treated Velvet Cove as a shared place rather than a platform.
What began as a narrative bridge became a living fandom engine. The Discord grew organically to over 3,000 members in weeks. More than 24,000 players from 37 countries participated in the ARG, exchanging 400,000 messages and reaching over 500,000 people across social platforms. 90% of surveyed players said the experience made them more likely to purchase the next Don’t Nod title.
Welcome to Velvet Cove shows how experiential game design can turn a release gap into a meaningful event by treating fans as players and co-creating the world with them in real time.