Life is Strange: Episode 1 - Chrysalis (iOS) Review

Chrysalis begins the first tale in the visual novel, episodic adventure series. Max Caulfield is just an ordinary girl making her way through school, with big dreams of being a photographer ahead of her. On a day like any other, she witnesses the school's most protected student - Nathan Prescott - shoot a girl in the women's bathroom. It is at this moment that Max accidentally rewinds time, and manages to prevent the same incident from occurring, thus saving the girl's life. This is the pivotal moment that brings about a strange new game mechanic upon, which the rest of the Life is Strange journey relies heavily on.

Unlike those stories found in the Telltale gaming sphere, Life is Strange is more akin to an open-world style, with interconnected spaces that each feel like a large space full of environmental interactions and other characters to speak to. Max's movement is inputted with that of a finger, so tapping across the touch screen will signify a place for her to walk to. While this works well most of the time, sometimes the adventure requires precision tapping in order to investigate certain interactions. Unfortunately, it is during these moments the touch controls become quickly annoying, as Max will sometimes try to walk around the person that was originally selected to talk to, or Max will find herself stuck in a chest of drawers that she was meant to have opened, instead of walking on. The misdirection easily disrupts the flow of the story, and breaks the "realism" that Life is Strange is otherwise trying to convey.

The time-rewind mechanic is what makes this journey so unique. When various decision-making moments come along, Max can safely select options and witness the immediate consequences of the decisions. Then she can rewind the time in order to select one of the other decisions to help give her a well-informed choice moving forward. She could alternatively gauge information from a character during a conversation, and then rewind the time in order to use that information to select new dialogue options. This rewind mechanic is a fascinating tool to play around with, and it can yield some surprising results, and is easy to figure out. Of course, it cannot be abused as much, due to the short time-distance that it can venture into the past. While conversations and recent decisions can be unmade, there is still a limit to how far back Max can travel, which is to be expected.

The main cast performs admirably well; Max is the shy but creatively ambitious girl, while Chloe is the eccentric and "rebel-without-a-cause" friend whose voice actor pulls off her character extremely well. Chloe is definitely the more enjoyable of the two main roles. Mr. Jefferson, Nathan, and Victoria Chase are also well voiced, and even the various students themselves help make this world feel very much alive, instead of static like other games do. Each of these elements come together to create a shared world that exists when Max isn't around, as opposed to those games where everyone is waiting for the main character's input before reacting.

Unfortunately, the game can sometimes crash on iPad or even mobile phones. Life is Strange is a pretty powerful game, and it requires the most up-to-date software on devices in order to get the most out of the app. However, even still, the frame-rate does slow down at times, and the cut-scenes suffer from stuttering issues, while the app sometimes even crashes completely. There is a long sequence of cut-scenes that plays out, for instance, that caused the game to crash during review, and upon rebooting, the same sequence of scenes had to replayed due to not reaching the checkpoint.