So in March this year it happened. A game called Life is Strange suddenly popped up on my Steam account. I checked out what it’s all about, looked at the mechanics and thought: Shit. Shit. Shit.

Why the response? The game is really well-crafted. And it features a mechanic that is really intriguing: Time travel. And here comes the issue. Time travel was exactly the thing that I had planned for heavily in my own adventure game, The Eternals, currently under development. It is such an exciting mechanic with so many possibilities.

So, sad as I was, I still started to play. And relieved I was for a bit. The first two episodes of the game, honestly, you need to have good will to continue playing. It’s a beautifully crafted 3D world with very easy to use mechanics. Every now and then you get choices, rewind back, try something else and think about the consequences which you do not immediately see unfold and have to live with.

Story-wise, you are a teen girl at school thinking about teeny stuff dealing with teeny coming-of-age problems and going through quite some cheesy dialogs. So dwell along, go here, there, mostly super-linear, use all the talking options, watch beautiful cut-scenes and here a lot of teen thinking.

And then it suddenly happens, the end of Episode 2 and it turned the game around for me. It picks up the pace quite well and becomes much more interesting and dramatic. I don’t want to spoiler anything here so let’s leave it at that. What becomes clear though is that the game is full of love by the developers with incredible attention to details and a superb style.

Would I recommend this game? Definitely yes, for it is a piece of art in itself. Could it have been better? I think, on the teen-premise it set out on, it did a marvelous job. Would there have been a sci-fi story I would have probably loved it way more though but then on the other hand, I love everything more if it has a sci-fi story.