Life is Strange: Double Exposure serves as both a welcome return and an exhilarating step forward as fan-favorite protagonist Max Caulfield returns to the spotlight with modern friends, a fresh mystery, and reality-altering abilities. I took the game for a spin at Gamescom, and the demo revealed, to my surprise, that Double exposure may be the most mechanically intriguing entry in the series.
The game takes place a decade after the events of the original. Life is strangeNow an adult, Max has left Arcadia Bay and is working as an artist-in-residence at Caledon University in northern Vermont. She has made a modern group of friends in Moses, a science enthusiast, and Safi, the daughter of the university’s president. Since the cataclysmic events at Arcadia Bay, both of whose endings will be woven into this narrative, Max has sworn to never exploit her time-reversing power again. However, her newfound peace is shattered when Safi is mysteriously murdered, prompting Max to attempt to save her by rewinding the clock for the first time in years. For unknown reasons, Max’s long period of inactivity has caused her powers to evolve, and she has managed to break through the fabric of time and space to access an alternate timeline where Safi is still alive but in mortal danger. Thus, Double exposure becomes a dual-player murder mystery, with players using Max’s newfound power, Shift, to jump between timelines and uncover the identity of the killer in one reality while preventing Safi’s murder in the other.
The Gamescom demo takes place shortly after Safi’s murder. I won’t spoil the plot details, but Max has to retrieve Safi’s camera from her classroom while avoiding detection by a spying detective. While the room is locked in her current timeline, the same may not be true in the alternate reality. Keeping track of which timeline you’re in is straightforward thanks to an icon in the top left corner that labels the reality as “Alive” or “Dead,” referring to Safi’s fate in this world. Using Max’s Pulse ability, another modern trick that lets her detect and reveal ghostly elements from another timeline without performing a full swap, I find a glowing faint spot between realities where a timeline switch becomes possible. Making the leap, Max tears through the current reality as if she were opening a pair of curtains to instantly go to the other side. The speed of this transition makes it visually cold.
Getting Safi’s camera becomes a complicated exercise in exploring a two-story room, finding clues, and hitting dead ends that can only be bypassed by switching to a different timeline. Things like the room’s layout, the characters’ current actions and moods, and the locations of crucial items are different in each timeline, and the crux of the puzzle-solving is figuring out how collecting information in one world answers a question in the other.
What begins as a basic search for the safe and sound progresses to using an astronomical map to find the key constellation Moses referred to, and then activating a projector to overlay the star map onto a classroom mural so that the orientation of the constellations reveals the hidden location of the safe and sound item. Solving this single puzzle requires several timeline shifts to solve smaller puzzles that logically build upon the solution.
After solving this puzzle, the detective barges into the classroom, triggering a sneaking sequence in which I must escape the room undetected. Sneaking past him alone won’t be enough; I need a clamorous object to create a distraction, and it can only be found in the Life reality. Since the patrolling detective blocks certain routes in the cluttered, boxy room, getting past him requires some strategic Shift usages, since he’s not present in the Life timeline.
One sec Double exposure seems to test your noodles more than previous installments, still heavily emphasizing managing character relationships and steering the story through dialogue choices. However, jumping between timelines adds a bit of spice to the formula. While a character might be hesitant to reveal a key personal secret in one timeline, their counterpart might be more forthcoming, offering information that could give Max an advantage. Resorting to using knowledge that Max technically shouldn’t have might not go over well, adding a thoughtful wrinkle to the conversations.
This Double exposure The Gamescom demo convinced me to Shift as a cold mechanic, and I can’t wait to see how the game uses it further to tell its story. Add to that the return of Max, and I can’t wait to see how this multiverse murder mystery unfolds.
