Following the critical and commercial failure of their 2013 action-adventure game

Remember Me, French game developer Dontnod Entertainment was forced to

restructure and reinvent themselves. Dontnod CEO Oskar Guilbert explained "Before,
what we wanted to do was make big games with large teams and long production
cycles... So we had to change that, do something smaller with smaller teams. We didn’t
want to do just a small game; we also wanted to bring something new to the market."[2]

Life Is Strange was conceived around the rewind mechanic, a concept which had
already been briefly explored in Remember Me. The protagonist of the first game, Max
Caulfield, was created with the ability to rewind time to supplement this mechanism.
Development began in April 2013 with a team of 15 people, with further people added
as the collaboration with Square Enix began.[3] Before signing with Square Enix,
Dontnod imagined Life Is Strange as a full-length video game similar to Remember Me
that Dontnod would self-publish; however, Square Enix realised it would be more
successful as an episodic title, both for creative reasons, financial restrictions[4] and
marketing purposes.[5] This allowed them to tell the story at a slower pace.[6]

Development began under the working title What If, before being retitled to avoid
confusion with the film of the same name.[7] It was Dontnod's second title with a female
protagonist, and most prospective publishers were unwilling to publish a game unless it
had a male protagonist. Guilbert also challenged the idea at the start. Dontnod Creative
Director Jean-Maxime Moris explained that Square Enix was the only publisher with no
intention to change this. "Square [Enix] is basically the only publisher who didn't want
to change anything about the game... we had other publishers telling us to make it a
male lead character, and Square didn't even question that once."[8][9]

For the first game, the Pacific Northwest was chosen for the setting to convey a
nostalgic and autumnal feel, with the team eventually settling on Oregon as the location
of the fictional town of Arcadia Bay.[10] It was decided early on that most of the budget
be spent on the writing and voice actors.[11] The story was originally written in French
by Jean-Luc Cano, and converted into a game script by the game's co-directors and
design team. This was then handed over to Christian Divine and Cano to be fine tuned
in English.[12][13] Recording sessions were done in Los Angeles, California, with the
French developer brought in via Skype.[14][15] The textures seen in the game were entirely
hand painted, adapted to achieve what art director Michel Koch called "impressionistic
rendering".[16] Sources of inspiration include the visual novel Danganronpa, in terms of
balancing gameplay and story, and the novel The Catcher in the Rye, whose protagonist
Holden Caulfield shares a surname with Max, the first game's lead character.[17] For the
sake of realism, the supernatural elements were designed as a metaphor for the
characters' inner conflict,[18] and experts were consulted to tackle difficult subjects such
as teen suicide.[19]

Following the release and rapid success of the first Life is Strange, publisher Square
Enix chose American developer Deck Nine to develop a prequel game focusing on the
life of Chloe Price,[20] while the Dontnod team began developing a direct sequel.
Development on the project began in 2016 with assistance from Square Enix' London
Studios.[21] Ashly Burch, who voiced Chloe in Life Is Strange, was replaced by Rhianna
DeVries due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.[22] However, Burch and Hannah Telle, who
voiced Max Caulfield, both reprised their roles for the bonus episode Farewell.[23] The
project went under various working titles during development.[24] The writers researched
memoirs and psychology to understand Chloe's grieving process,[25] and the script for
the game was over 1,500 pages, written by lead writer Zak Garriss and a writers' room.
Prior to its official announcement, images had leaked online indicating that a prequel to
Life Is Strange was in development.[26] Square Enix revealed Life Is Strange: Before the
Storm on 11 June during Microsoft's E3 2017 presentation.[27]

Dontnod had decided early on that prospective follow-ups to Life Is Strange would
feature new characters and locations to the original, with the developers feeling that
Max and Chloe's story had run its course over the first two games.[28][29] Game Co-
Director Raoul Barbet explained that "It’s a question we asked ourselves at the
beginning. Is it Max and Chloe, Arcadia Bay? No, it’s about everyday characters,
relatable characters with stories you can involve yourself in, because it reflects your
own experiences. With some supernatural stuff on the top." Michel Koch added that
"everyone loved Max, Chloe, Rachel... But [their story]...it's done. We have nothing
more to tell. We don't want to. Other people will do it, and it's okay... But for us, we
have nothing more to do. Take [them] and do whatever you want."[30]

Development on Life Is Strange 2 began in early 2016 as the first game shipped its
physical edition.[31][32] Michel Koch and Raoul Barbet returned to direct the sequel,[33]
with Christian Divine and Jean-Luc Cano reprising their roles as co-writers.[34][35][36] The
concept was influenced by the photography of Mike Brodie, who would freighthop
across the United States and take pictures of drifters.[37] The game is structured like a
road movie, inspired by the film Into the Wild and novella Of Mice and Men. Dontnod
conducted field research on the West Coast of the United States, meeting people and
taking pictures there.[35][38] The two primary themes of the game are education and
brotherhood.[39] Using the Unreal Engine 4, they upgraded the animation system,
physics, and shaders. According to Dontnod, one of the biggest challenges of
development was the artificial intelligence of the character Daniel.[35]

Deck Nine began work on True Colors after completing Before the Storm in 2017.[40] A
common theme of the Life is Strange series has been based on characters with a type of
super-human ability, though not like superheroes, that the developers can then provide
"meditations on real experiences that regular people go through", according to Felice
Kuan, senior writer at Deck Nine.[41] For True Colors, they had determined early on they
wanted their protagonist to be based on a power around empathy, not only to be able to
sense what others were experiencing but to be vulnerable herself and would be able to
grow past this as the story progressed, "giving her a path to greater self-acceptance and
greater trust in her own abilities" according to Kuan.[41] This led to creating the story
around Alex losing her brother early in the game as a driver for her to explore her
empathy powers and reveal more about her past as she uses them.[41] Erika Mori portrays
Alex through full performance capture, which Mori said was "instrumental in
successfully creating this game about empathy because it allowed us to get really high-
fidelity facial expressions that were organically connected to whatever was going on
with my voice and body in a particular scene."[42]

Gameplay
The Life Is Strange games are graphic adventures played from a third-person view. The
player can examine and interact with objects, which enables puzzle solving in the form
of fetch quests and making changes to the environment. The player can explore
locations and communicate with non-playable characters. Dialogue exchanges feature
branching options in conversation. In some instances, choices in dialogue will alter and
affect the story through short- or long-term consequences. For each one of the choices,
something good in the short term could turn out worse later.

Each individual game in the series features a central mechanic unique to that game. In
Life is Strange, the player (as Max) has access to a "rewind" ability, which allows them
to rewind time and alter the course of events. The rewind mechanic is accessible in
conversation, allowing players to navigate branching dialogue options and change the
outcome of a conversation to be beneficial to the player. Items picked up are kept in the
inventory after a rewind, and changes in the environment remain in place. In Before the
Storm, Chloe has a "backtalk" mechanic that allows her to persuade and intimidate other
characters through conversation, with either positive or negative effects. In Life is
Strange 2, the player (as Sean) must guide Daniel, who has the power of telekinesis,
through various moral and ethical choices that will influence how he will use his powers
to help or hinder the player as the game progresses. In True Colors, the player (as Alex)
has psychic empathy powers that allow her to read and manipulate emotions, which she
perceives as colorful auras, to physically see how others feel around her at the cost of
being "infected" by their emotions. Some of the non-player characters will have more
intense auras indicating trauma or hardship they may be going through. When Alex
interacts with them, this creates a "nova" that appears to transform the world around
Alex and the character to reflect elements of this trauma, giving the opportunity for the
player to figure out what caused their emotions and to opt to guide Alex in helping to
comfort the character.