Max Caulfield is a typical teenager, but she has a secret: She finds that she’s able to manipulate time. Max decides to reshape events to avoid an impending disaster—but will the consequences of the butterfly effect prove more catastrophic than she could’ve imagined?
So begins Life Is Strange, a cinematic episodic console adventure game now available on the App Store. Its dark story line touches on mature, controversial themes—bullying, drug abuse, suicide. But it doesn’t exploit these subjects for shock value; it dives into them with a sensitivity and assuredness that few games match.
"We hope new players will talk with their family and friends about the themes, as we strongly believe videogames can deal with those in a very powerful way,” says Raoul Barbet, co–game director at Dontnod Entertainment.
This complex yarn comes to life via a series of third-person exploration and puzzle-solving sequences, intertwined with dialogue choices and in-game cinemas. You lead Max from classrooms to living rooms, streets to woods, as she struggles to make sense of a vision in which a massive tornado takes the city apart. Somehow she knows she has to stop it—maybe that’s why she can suddenly rewind time—but she doesn’t know exactly how.
A new interface and fully optimized touch controls round out a sometimes disturbing, always captivating experience that’s every bit as enthralling to watch as it is to play.