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Life is Strange Double Exposure Played: A Supernatural Murder Mystery Adventure

Max Caulfield is back in “Life is Strange: Double Exposure” and once again has to cope with the loss of a good friend! But the murderer is about to strike again, which is why we went with her to search for clues.

A few months ago, Square Enix dropped the bomb and announced “Life is strange: double exposure” the next part of the popular adventure series, which brings back the heroine of the first game, Max Caulfield! During gamescom 2024, we had the opportunity to take a closer look at the game and play an hour-long section of the title ourselves. Find out everything we experienced with Max in our little preview.

The search for clues

The section we are playing begins some time after the murder of Max's best friend Safi. A detective is investigating the case and will therefore talk to Moses, a friend of our protagonist, again. Meanwhile, Max will search for Safi's camera, which could contain clues to the murderer. The problem: the room is locked – at least in the current timeline.

Unlike in the first game, Max can no longer turn back time in “Life is Strange: Double Exposure”. Instead, after the death of her friend, a new power has awakened within her that allows her to switch back and forth between two parallel timelines. Timeline 1 (“Death”) has significantly desaturated colors and thus a cooler look than the warm timeline 2 (“Alive”), in which an alternative version of Safi is still alive.

Max is talking to her friend Moses.

Since the door in timeline 1 is locked, Max simply switches to timeline 2. This works conveniently at the touch of a button, but is only possible in certain places. You can't jump between the two realities at any point. In fact, with Max in timeline 2 we can gain access to the room where Moses is currently working on a telescope. Could he possibly know something about where Safi's camera might be?

Where is the camera?

When looking for Safi's camera, however, we are a little pressed for time, because the detective can't question Moses forever and we also have to get the lawman the key to the room. But back to the search for Safi's little treasure. When talking to Moses 2 in “Life is Strange: Double Exposure” we learn that he has been working on something with Safi and he even shows us where we can find the key.

Max has now reached her interim goal, but the camera is still nowhere to be found. After some research, we find out that Safi seems to have hidden the camera in a safe. However, Max has no idea where it could be. Fortunately, Moses 2 can help here too. After a short conversation, he mentioned a constellation in which the star “Saiph” appears. The crucial clue!

Here Max talks to Moses from the alternate timeline.

But now we have to find the star. Luckily, there is a projector on the first floor of the room that projects a constellation onto the wall. Luckily, there is also a poster downstairs that describes this constellation and has been kindly labeled by Saiph. After we aligned the projector, using a mural of Moses and Safi as a reference point, we found Safi's “safe”!

A new force

Safi's camera is actually in there, and with this we can go back to timeline 1, which we had to jump into every now and then to solve one or two additional puzzles. However, Max's return allows the detective to gain access to the room and to search for potentially crucial clues to ultimately solve Safi's murder.

Max now has to improvise and in doing so actually activates a completely new power in “Life is Strange: Double Exposure”. She manages to exchange the telescope that Moses 2 had already finished with the still-packed parts from Timeline 1! This causes enough confusion to leave the room unnoticed and go back to Moses 1. After a short conversation with the detective and Moses 1, the demo of the game finally ends.

In “Life is Strange: Double Exposure,” Max mastered new time powers.

“Double Exposure” still feels like “Life is Strange” through and through: There is a lot of dialogue that has made a good impression on us so far, a big focus on exploring the environment and of course the big mystery surrounding Safi's murderer. Combined with Max's powers and the fact that she is once again playing the player, this promises to be an exciting supernatural murder mystery adventure.

“Life is Strange: Double Exposure” promises to be a special spin-off of the popular game series, as the face of the same, Max Caulfield, is returning. In terms of gameplay, the latest part has retained the core of its predecessor and, like the predecessor, relies primarily on atmospheric dialogues between the likeable characters around Max, as well as suspense about what effects the decisions might have in the end.

But this is where we come to the biggest “problem” we had with the demo that we were allowed to play at gamescom 2024: Everything seems very coherent and exudes the familiar “Life is Strange” vibes, but what makes these games special is difficult to convey in such a short time. The dialogues, the character dynamics, the story developments and decisions inevitably fall by the wayside.

That's why we're giving it “only” a “good” rating for now, but the first hour we spent with Max and her new powers definitely made us curious to see more. For this reason, we're optimistic that the team at Deck Nine Games will once again be able to deliver an extremely atmospheric adventure game that combines the series' well-known strengths with fresh ideas.


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