Critical Play: Life is Strange

Life is Strange is a game where players act as Max, an ordinary high school student who suddenly gains the power to rewind time. The gameplay heavily focuses on the story where players have to act based on the flow of the story and see the effects of your actions. Unlike most story-telling games, where you have to use the save/load trick to experiment with different options, you get to use Max’s special power to travel back in time to make alternative decisions. The decisions here are not only limited to choosing among options. The players can also interact with the surroundings and affect the flow of the events or even prevent something from happening.

The narrative is weaved into the game mainly through cutscenes where you can watch the events being played out. Somewhere through the cutscenes, there might be points where the player gets to choose the response of Max to the scenario and subsequently affects how the story goes. These cutscenes and choices are woven seamlessly, so players still feel engaged in the cutscenes.

Between cutscenes, there will be times where you gain full control of Max and be able to move around the scene. You get to interact with people, examine objects, and also look around the surroundings. This allows players to gain a deeper understanding of the world and the situation, which are some additional content on top of the main storyline.