Life is Strange’s gameplay is extremely simple, so simple
that it becomes instinctual, I often found myself knocking things over and
rewinding time without realising it like I actually could rewind time and had
been practicing it for a while. Adrian Chmielarz a developer at The Astronauts states that in order for a
game to foster emotional empathy the game should do these things:
‘a) Having at least two heroes in the story, thus making it
clear that it is not about a single protagonist the player might want to
immediately identify with;
b) Using a caretaker theme
c) Offering non-3D second person perspective;
d) Minimizing the cognitive load through simple mechanics
and UI, and thus freeing up the mental space required for empathy to exist.’
Life is Strange does all of these things, Max and Chloe are
the two heroes, A theme going through the game is using your powers to help
people notably Kate. The games perspective is between second and third
perspective, in a sense we are max, we make her decisions but we also see max.
And as I have stated the gameplay is very simple consisting of rewinding time,
making choices and exploring max’s world.
Interestingly Life is strange has reverse ludo-narrative
dissonance or what I call narrative-ludo dissonance the story weakens the
gameplay rather than the gameplay weakening the story. The final ending of the
game is to erase all of the choices and gameplay we made, we were told our
choices matter through the gameplay, but the story tell us they are not.
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