Life is Strange is an adventure game developed by the developers Dontnod Entertainment and published by Square Enix. This game is playable on gaming platforms such as the Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, Google Stadia, and Nintendo Switch. The game is targeted towards adults as seen through the language, themes, and content portrayed in the game, as well as the M rating. Given the gameplay mechanics and themes, this game is targeted towards individuals who enjoy exploring mysteries with supernatural and fantastical story elements mixed in.
Life is Strange is a narrative game which centers around Max, a student at the Blackwell Academy who soon realizes that she has the ability to interact with time in a unique manner. The narrative focused structure of the story has the player interacting with the game world by physically controlling Max’s movement, while also helping her make decisions in events and interactions with the other compelling characters in this game world. Given the somewhat limited control the player has over Max, the game resembles some of the Telltale narrative games and Detroit Become Human.
Through the game mechanics allowing for the player to walk around, interact with, and explore the game world, certain game dynamics arise. Specifically, the gameplay requires the player to explore the environment, meaning that the story only progresses when the player’s exploration has uncovered vital story elements. For example, a pivotal story element throughout is the disappearance of Rachel Amber, something which Max can only learn more about as she reads sees photographs and speaks with others. This is only possible though, if the player is actively exploring the environment and walking around, something which helps develop an inquisitive, mystery-focused mindset for the player. This also ties into the type of fun which can be had by playing Life is Strange, which is primarily through exploration, discovery, and mystery.
The game’s aesthetics also play a key role in conveying its feeling. For example, the oil pastel and graphic novel-esque art style help cement the sensation that this game takes place in a fictional, stylized world. This game’s adherence to a specific art style worked for me far more than with BABDI, as I felt that BABDI’s art style was far too disjointed and took me out of the game. The aesthetics and non-photo real nature of the game also mean that graphics rendering is far less computationally intensive and that the game can also run on lower-resource platforms such as iOS and Android devices.
The ability to walk around and interact with objects forms a solid gameplay loop, where a player walks to one location and learns something new by interacting with an object, to then know that they must walk to another location to then interact with another object. This loop repeats itself over and over again. Several of the game’s loops are also focused around the reversal of time, but also tie in to the episodic arc structure of the game. The aforementioned loops are implemented over and over again, as the player embarks on exploring the town. Life is Strange almost feels like a TV series at times, given the several small episodic arcs which then come together as the story progresses.
I really enjoyed Life is Strange, and I felt that the game’s ability to bring together mystery and exploration story elements with such an effective narrative is what sold me on it. However, I would have preferred a bit more variety in terms of the actions a player can take when interacting with the environment. I also felt at some points the dialogue was slightly weak and the lip-syncing animations were quite off. I feel like this area would be a great application for generative AI models like GPT, where the model could understand natural human text inputs and still provide convincing responses which make sense character-wise.
