Interview: Lost in Cult Aims to Preserve Games Better Than The Rest With EDITIONS – Interview

With the impending release of the Nintendo Switch 2, a lot has been written about the new way in which Nintendo is selling games for those who have dedicated physical collections. Indeed, the Nintendo Switch Game Key Card marks the beginning of a new era for Nintendo. Increasingly speeding up the transition to digital ‘ownership’ of video games rather than physical. All the while, companies focusing on physical (limited) releases have come under fire for perceived sloppy releases and even some noteworthy physical releases like last year’s Outer Wilds got quite a bit of scrutiny. We here at Nintendo World Report are big proponents of physical media and in particular the preservation of games and their history.

So we were surprised to learn that Lost in Cult has now stepped into the ring with their own line of physical game releases, through their label called ‘Lost in Cult EDITIONS’. However, from the word go, Lost in Cult’s Ryan Brown seems to emphasize that they have set out to do it not just differently, but better. This begs the question, what does it take to release a physical game in 2025 when there is so much competition out there for not just visibility, but considering consumers have limited disposable income available during economic turmoil? So I had to sit down with Ryan and ask him about the process at Lost in Cult and what has gone into their new ‘EDITIONS’ lineup and what makes this a combined effort of highlighting indie games as well as preparing these games to be playable for the foreseeable future.

But first, what are EDITIONS? EDITIONS are physical prints of games released for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 as well as future Nintendo Switch 2 games. These games are printed on a physical cartridge and have been thoroughly tested by the team of https://www.doesitplay.org/. This group has been very vocal in the past about testing games to see how well they run when the systems are disconnected from the internet and see if all the content is on the cartridge. Additionally, EDITIONS are also released in a non-limited format, meaning that you are able to buy them at local stores or retailers and hopefully they can reach a larger audience at a more friendly price. As of writing there are EDITIONS for the Switch games ‘Thank Goodness You’re Here’ (which we gave an excellent review)’ and ‘The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow’. For those who own a PlayStation 5, IMMORTALITY by Half-Mermaid is also available as part of EDITIONS.

Aside from the game the presentation seems to be focused on the art of the game, as well as complementary material. Unlike other physical releases it certainly seems that these EDITIONS are much more back to form, sporting a design that resembles a hardcover book with a slipcase. Inside the box you’ll find a numbered card with a signature from the game’s director, an appropriately themed sticker, an 40-page booklet that contains essays on the game written by a variety of critics as well as artwork from the game. Finally a fold-out poster and four art cards with art that the game’s director has selected, with a short description on the backside. While no one can force a developer to stop updating a game at a later date, these games are fully available on the carrier and can be completed from beginning to end without any required download.

While EDITIONS sounds like a welcome change, I was still left with quite a few questions after the news, so I followed up with the creator behind EDITIONS, Lost in Cult’s Ryan Brown. Ryan worked previously at Numbskull and Super Rare Games and has been a well known advocate for indie games and the wider games industry through his various work off- and online.

NWR: First of all, congratulations on the announcement of EDITIONS. It’s not every day that a new physical label pops up with high ambitions. You’ve been working on EDITIONS for over a year at Lost in Cult. Can you explain a bit about the process that goes into creating a label that focuses on physical media?

Ryan Brown (RB): A lot goes into it, as you can imagine after a year of work. We started by accounting for what we wanted our ethos to be. We knew certain things were incredibly important to us – preservation, full games on cart/disc, beautifully designed packages, availability and accessibility.
We actually began our partnership with our retail distribution partner PM Studios very early on because we decided even then that we didn’t want to lock games away. We wanted to create a value proposition so good as a standalone piece, that we’d also be able to create mass retail options. Making this a best of all worlds approach, and having our own spin, was immediately important, because I don’t think the world needs another physical publisher right now that isn’t doing something very, very different. We signed our first series of games about a year ago too, and it’s just such an honour that so many partners immediately saw the vision and entrusted us at that early stage – even before we had anything visually to show them.

NWR: Lost in Cult has made a name for itself over the last few years in particular with the publishing of printed media such as books and premium magazines. I see a lot of overlap with EDITIONS and something like IMMORTALITY: Design Works. Is Lost in Cult approaching their physical game releases more akin to those of books? And how do you balance this out with the ‘expectations’ many players have when it comes to collectible games?

RB: Yeah, I think our books are a good comparison for the vibe and premium, prestige feel we’re going for with EDITIONS. We’ve also seen a few people compare us to what Criterion Collection is doing with films, and I really like that comparison. As someone that’s been working in the physical collecting space for many years now, and a hardcore collector myself for many years before even that, we really did want to meet all of those expectations head-on and create something that, I think, is a dream scenario for collectors. We spent a long time addressing every positive and negative in the space, and really trying to incorporate all of those best parts and address the gaps.

NWR: The first games in the line-up (The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow and Thank Goodness You’re Here, as well as IMMORTALITY for the PlayStation 5) are varied and pretty well reviewed. Can you tell me what the ‘scouting’ process for these games was like? Did you happen to score a ‘white whale’ while finding titles for the first year of releases?

RB: It’s an honour to come out the gate so strong – and I’ll say right from the start, that we actually haven’t frontloaded our best titles, we’re just releasing in relative order of how we signed them, as being developer-friendly is really important to me and I don’t want them to wait too long for their launches!

We have a very specific curation process; we have a finite number of releases every year, and I think that restriction is positive and healthy for our line-up. Every game we sign is artful, be it in their visuals, artwork, story, or otherwise pushing the medium of video games as a serious art form forward in some ways. There are so many incredible games out there deserving of a physical release, but not every game we love necessarily fits the vibe of what we’re making. It’s a long back-and-forth, but all of the many, many partners we’ve been in discussions with over the past year have been just wonderful.

NWR: Are there any goals or ambitions with EDITIONS to publish original games through the LiC label, instead of giving already existing games an EDITIONS treatment?

RB:Not through EDITIONS specifically, but we are treating this as the announcement of our games publishing label in general. We’re focusing on EDITIONS and our physical label right now, but we are looking at getting into original publishing in the near future. We haven’t thought much about it yet, but I’d imagine it’d be very weird and a bad look if we didn’t end up giving our own games the physical EDITIONS treatment.

NWR: One part of the marketing with EDITION is that ‘We’re doing it better.’ Can you talk a bit about what problems you see from other limited / physical publishers and what this quality gap is that Lost in Cult is hoping to close with their EDITIONS?

RB:So, there’s a lot of stuff really; except from the obvious, in our prestige, premium packaging and design work, rather than just making a game in a box; I think this sort of approach is going to become increasingly important for physicals going forward to stand out and co-exist alongside digital formats.

We’re working with DoesItPlay?, the first company to officially do so, who are testing each of our games before they go to print to ensure all games have content on cart/disc, no internet connection needed, etc. We’re not releasing too many games, they ship relatively quickly and we’re working ahead to slim that down even further in the future.

We release standard editions at retail to actually commit to our preservation message, where games are not locked away and will be available easily. Our shipping costs are low and matched regardless of destination. It’s a very consistent collection, with no surprises, and we’re very transparent about exclusivities and anything that may impact purchasing decisions.

I guess it’s easy to say we’re not money-focused, because everyone says that, but all I can say is I genuinely am not, I am somehow a little weirdo gamer boy that has winged being in this position and view it as my life’s meaning to do physical games and preservation properly. I’ll always be an open book, I always want this to genuinely be the best for every gamer and collector.

NWR: One of the more unique things for the first line-up of games is that each game includes a small essay booklet about the game. I think that critical re-evaluation of older games can be incredibly important, but some of these games, like ‘Thank Goodness You’re Here’ are fairly new. How does the editorial process on these essay booklets work and which authors are tapped to write for EDITIONS?

RB:Great question; yeah, for me personally, that booklet is one of the main bits about what we’re doing. In talking to people like Andrew Borman at the Strong (National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY) some time ago, I got his perspective on how physical games aren’t always preservation pushing, and that really stuck with me.

With this, the goal is in addition to preserving the actual game on the disc/cart, we’re preserving the story of how a game is made, its impact, its history. They’re not gigantic books like our Design Works, coming in at 40 pages each, but they contain in-development artwork and, as you say, a critical or analytical essay alongside the developer interview one, and are just a really great way to celebrate these games.

We have our Editorial Director, Chris Schilling, editing these booklets and finding the right writers for each title. It’s not really pivotal to us whether a game is new or old, just how artful and impactful it is. While the writers won’t always be the same person for both essays, for the launch titles, they are; we have Jen Simpkins (Immortality), Miri Teixeira (Hob’s Barrow), and Lewis Packwood (TGYH) on some really mindblowing essays.

NWR: Okay, but let’s be real. We all really like those big hulking plastic add-ons like statues, controllers and other merch that make some limited physical game editions irresistible right? What was the reasoning for keeping these EDITIONS, at a glance, relatively ‘simple’ in scope and size?

RB:That’s totally fair! We had several reasons for this really; one, is consistency. We wanted a consistent collection that fits on a shelf, and having all manners of stuff in a big collector’s edition box would make that virtually impossible, and not really befitting of the arty, prestige vibe we’re going for. We also don’t want to make anything that just ends up as tat in landfill, and wanted low, affordable shipping costs internationally, which as you can imagine is just not possible with gigantic, heavy editions. I think what we’re doing is just a bit different on this front – naturally, we don’t hold developers or partners back from making lots of amazing merchandise items available through other partners, and in some instances, we’re releasing additional pieces ourselves.

NWR: I’d be remiss to mention that £59.99 excluding shipping is still quite a bit of money in this day and age. Let alone for games that often sell for less than half that on digital storefronts. Can you tell me a bit more about what went into determining the price for EDITIONS and would a sold EDITION compensate a developer better than buying a game through the eShop?

RB:For those that are all-in on digital storefronts, there’s probably not much we or any physical company could do to win them over, although for huge fans of specific games, I’m sure they’ll still be keen on our EDITIONS on a collectible basis. And, yes, naturally developers are likely to make more money from physical releases, but our margins aren’t actually insane on this. It is not cheap to create very high quality items like this. All of our artwork is original, from very talented artists, and that carries a cost, as does the writing, the production of all these items with very high quality materials. I actually think they’re a decent price for what we’ve made, especially as some seem to be expecting something much more expensive from us, but of course that opinion will vary from person to person, and that’s fine! There’s a very specific audience for EDITIONS, and that’s why we have the standard release retail option covered for those that strictly just want a physical copy of the game.

NWR:With the fear of tariffs and even post-brexit, is Lost in Cult looking at possibly opening a distribution center in Europe and/or the US to make their releases more affordable?

RB:All EDITIONS extras are printed in the UK, and the UK has a trade deal with the US and Europe now. The game itself is printed via our US-based distribution partner. We’ve thought about all these things and built in a solution. Regardless of where you’re based, the shipping cost is matched, and very affordable. We have a full distribution network in place for this already and I think people will be pleased by our shipping prices in the face of some of the alternatives out there.

NWR:We seem to be heading towards a future where physical game releases will change radically over the next five years. In particular now that Nintendo has announced that Game Key Cards will be an (financially attractive) option for third-party publishers. This has the outcome that more and more physical games will either be relegated to those from the major publishers or fan-focused labels such as LiC with EDITIONS. What’s your perception on this and what do you think the impact of this (permanent) shift to games as a digital license means for the industry at large?

RB:Yeah, it’s just an absolutely massive shame. Thankfully, companies like us and others are here, we have our EDITIONS and mass retail releases. We’ll never be touching Game-Key Cards and only do full Switch 2 physical releases in the future. But it is a great shame that physicals are increasingly getting more and more sidelined. Hopefully we can be a big part of the battle against that.

NWR:The press release mentions that Switch 2 titles are coming as full releases in the future as well. I need to ask, would these be native Switch 2 releases, or Nintendo Switch 2 Editions of already published Nintendo Switch titles?

RB:Oh yes, full Switch 2 releases of course, all content on cart. We’ll never, ever, ever do a Game-Key Card, it just isn’t happening. And we’re only looking at doing full native Switch 2 releases. It’s unlikely to be a full monthly cadence thing for Switch 2 titles from us for a while, but we are in discussions on a few titles and hope to release one in the near future.

NWR: Last but not least, what’s your favorite little detail about EDITIONS that may get overlooked by those who open up an EDITION upon receiving theirs?

RB:There’s soooo, so many! Honestly, we’ve put so much thought into the tiniest details of this.
I think the biggest thing is how much of an impressive team effort it is – we have such incredible writers and artists we’re blessed to be working with, we really are making the whole package here. The little individually numbered signature cards, the never-before-seen artwork and concepts in the booklet, some really interesting details coming out of the developer interviews, all the artwork, the debossed details on the cover.

I’m really just so proud of the whole package and everyone that’s worked on them. I’ve been so busy I haven’t really had a moment to step back and pinch myself over spearheading the literal coolest physical games label ever because, how cool is that?
It is overwhelming for me to think about. I’m sure I’ll do a big cry after we’ve launched.

EDITIONS by Lost in Cult can now be pre-ordered through their website. The first two games for both Nintendo Switch and PlayStation have been revealed and you can grab a small discount through a bundle that will also include the third, soon-to-be announced, game in the series.

Some answers from this interview have been edited for clarity.