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Life is Strange, from Remember Me developer Dontnod, is an episodic adventure game about a high-school senior named Max who is studying photography in Oregon. The strange part about Max’s life is that she’s recently learned that she can rewind time, and she’ll use her new-found abilities to fix her life’s problems…which is turns out are many.
Following the lead of recent adventure games like The Walking Dead, Life is Strange lets players walk around a 3D world and interact with certain objects, talk with people, and solve puzzles. Max has recently moved back to her hometown in Oregon and reunited with her childhood friend, a girl named Chloe. However, since Max originally moved away over five years ago, Chloe has changed quite a lot, becoming more rebellious and making new friends. One of Chloe’s best friends has recently gone missing, so Chloe and Max team up to try to find out where the missing senior might have gone.
Max will have plenty of opportunities to use her time-manipulation powers. During one of the game’s puzzles we watch Max try to figure out how to get her hands on some tools to repair her camera. The tools were located on the top of a washer/drying machine – up too high for Max to reach. However, she figured out that if she turned on the machine, the dryer’s tumbling would knock off the tools. Unfortunately, the tools fell down behind a nearby tool bench, and Max still wasn’t able to reach them. The solution to the puzzle was rewinding time and sliding a piece of cardboard under the bench to catch the tools when they fell.
These rewinding powers will also come in handy while having conversations with other characters. During one conversation sequence with Chloe’s stepdad, the two get into a fight and her stepfather ends up slapping her across the face. After rewinding time, Max is able to stand up for her friend and prevent the altercation from escalating too high.
The memory-altering segments from Rememer Me were some of the best parts of that game, and Life Is Strange seems to tap into some of those same ideas, so this might be a good thing. Unfortunately, Dontnod isn’t ready to announce a release for the first episode of this series, but it sounds like they hope to keep the release schedule pretty tight, so that players don’t have to wait more than a few weeks for each release.
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