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Despite its time travel mechanics, high stakes, and pulpy murder plot, Don’t Nod Entertainment’s 2015 adventure game Life is Strange stood out from most video games with its unapologetic emphasis on queer romance and friendships.

Yet for all the game’s specificity, players around the world found something of themselves in its protagonist, Max Caulfield, a perceptive yet insecure teen photographer who discovers she has the ability to rewind time itself.

Narrative designer Kaitlin Tremblay offers an intimate close reading of Life is Strange through the lenses of personal history, YA fantasy, identity formation, grief, and most of all, choice. If Max is “the sum of all the possible choices that she could make,” as Tremblay writes, then every decision we players make says something about who we are—and who we want to be.

Kaitlin Tremblay is a writer and narrative designer. Currently a narrative director at Soft Rains, their previous game credits include A Mortician's Tale, Watch Dogs Legion, and Grindstone. They are the author of two other books on video games: Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games (CRC Press, 2023) and Ain't No Place for a Hero: Borderlands (ECW Press, 2017). Their full work can be found on their website.

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