Life is Strange is an adventure and mystery game developed by Dontnod Entertainment, available to play on PlayStation, Windows, Android, iOS, and other online platforms. The game consists of 5 total episodes, and I was able to play the first episode (named Chrysalis) for free on Steam. Due to the horror aspect of the game, in addition to mature topics such as murder and harassment, the target audience of the game is likely aimed at teenagers and young adults.
The main character of Life is Strange is Max Caulfield, and players explore her life as she goes through high school and discovers her ability to unwind time. The setting is a seemingly perfect town in Arcadia Bay, which reveals itself to become more sinister as the game continues. Life is Strange uses the atmosphere of Arcadia Bay as well as the mechanic of rewinding time to drive the storyline forwards; This emphasizes the main themes of cause and effect as players can see the immediate effect and moral weight of their decision-making.
To begin the episode, Max Caulfield awakens in the middle of a storm, and players must navigate Max out of danger. This immediate action sets off the tone for a game centered around player choice. This is also an important narrative decision– like many books, the game chooses to begin on a scene of high action and intensity as a way of foreshadowing, before Max wakes up in school and the player is able to glean more context about Max’s life. Afterwards, I was left wondering how the storm would tie in to the rest of the game.
Life is Strange employs both loops and arcs. Specifically, the format of the episodes supports a broader narrative arc – similar to a TV show, each episode is able to end on cliffhangers and build on each other to escalate the narrative and lead to an ultimate climax. Each episode also clearly has a narrative arc as Max navigates through difficult situations and relationships and learns along the way. The time travel mechanic, which allows players to undo their actions and re-experience events, is a clever way to loop. Players can understand the full context of the narrative. This also gives players even more choice and free reign to explore not only their surroundings, but also different timelines and how different choices play out. One downfall of this mechanic is that it allows players to get stuck in what they believe is the “right” choice of the game to try to play the game optimally; however, the game combats this well because decisions are often morally gray with no right or wrong.
The first instance where the player’s choices hold challenging moral consequences is after Max pulls the fire alarm to prevent Nathan from shooting a girl. Players are then faced with the decision to reveal what happened to the school administration, or keep their mouths shut. I chose to tell on Nathan, which resulted in him further antagonizing me as the storyline continued, culminating in a threat from his father to “keep my mouth shut.” However, both options here are morally ambiguous, and the consequences to my actions are not obvious until later down the line. In this way, Life is Strange is able to create ambiguity and challenge in the way players make decisions, because no decision is the “right” one.
