Life is Strange is a indie-style title developed by DONTNOD Entertainment, the creators of last year’s futuristic romp Remember Me, which focuses on two characters: Max Caulfield and Chloe. Max returns to her hometown after a five-year absence, teaming up with Chloe to uncover a mysterious disappearance. Though the game seems inspired by The Walking Dead series, the episodic adventure game also features a unique addition which makes gameplay feel incredibly fresh.
The main feature in Life is Strange is the ability to rewind time whenever you want; this allows you to go back and change choices and decisions if you so wish. However, there’s a limit on how far you can go back at a time. This means if you want to replay a choice you regret, you can but this might change the long-term effect. In the demo, we found out that Max’s camera had been broken due to a fight in school. With this in mind, Chloe tells you to go check the garage to see if you can find anything to fix your camera; luckily there are some precision screwdrivers on top of the washing machine but you can’t reach them.
So, you turn on the washing machine, causing them to fall down under the table, meaning you still can’t reach them. However, next to the table is a giant brown envelope. This means if you reverse time and push the envelope underneath the table before knocking the screwdrivers down, you can then easily grab the other side of it and pull them towards you when the screwdrivers land on it. This is a very interesting take on how to use the rewind feature and something that really sets the gameplay apart from similar games in its genre.
Another scene shows Chloe’s stepfather when he finds her smoking weed; this gives you a choice of taking the blame and getting into trouble with him or leaving Chloe to take the blame, which will cause her to ignore you. It seems as though, depending on what you did in the garage, it might also change the dialog options during this scene. Indeed, Life Is Strange is all about making short-term choices that have lasting effects – not just for one specific moment. This is just a small example of a few choices within a game that will have multiple endings, which should get players thinking and add immense replayability.
Life is Strange looks gorgeous. The environments are incredibly detailed, with all the game’s graphics hand-drawn with great skill. The locations are packed with detail, with a bedroom scene littered with an array of different things you can pick up and examine; you could take hours just looking around the room exploring the different items that you can interact with. The demo showcased only a bedroom and garage scene, but you can explore the rest of the house from the front room and kitchen to a school environment. Though the demo only showed a small amount of areas, there will be a lot more areas to explore in the full game.
DONTNOD Entertainment’s Life is Strange is scheduled to appear on PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC at an as-of-yet undetermined time. With a fresh new rewind mechanic adding something new to the familiar The Walking Dead-style, puzzle solving gameplay and a murder/mystery plot filled with intrigue, Life is Strange has certainly got us interested to find out more.