Humble Choice (February 2024): Life is Strange: True Colours

Life is Strange: True Colours is part of February’s Humble Choice.

“Alex Chen hides her ‘curse’: the psychic power of Empathy, the ability to absorb the emotions of others. When her brother dies in a so-called accident, Alex must embrace her power to find the truth. “

I will try not to write any game spoilers in this blog post!

The game costs 59.99 €. It takes about 10 to 13 hours to finish this game which is shorter than the original Life is Strange and Life is Strange 2. I was surprised to see this game in February’s Choice bundle, as Twin Mirror was part of January’s bundle. I inititally thought that both games were developed by Don’t Nod, but that is not the case. Don’t Nod made Life is Strange, Life is Strange 2, Twin Mirror among others. Deck Nine made Life is Strange: Remastered, Life is Strange: Before the Storm and Life is Strange: True Colours among other games.

What is great about LiS: True Colours is that they have an accessibility menu in the settings. You can change the font, increase the timer to make a decision, there are optional warnings for brightness and volume and more.

I really love the graphics as the world looks beautiful and peaceful. This is also one of the very few games that I play with the music turned on, albeit quietly. It just makes the experience so much better (I still absolutely love Breton – Got Well Soon from Life is Strange).

Your character’s “special power” is empathy, although this is not always a power but rather a burden on our character, Alex. Alex has a history of being in foster care and even though I don’t deal with issues like that directly, I still come in touch with this topic professionally and it makes me so sad… seeing how children “just” need a family to feel safe and loved. It’s a difficult topic and for me, it gives a lot of depth to the character.

It is easy to give away spoilers, so I will try to put my impressions into words without touching on any story details. I also tried to take screenshots that won’t give away much. I finished the first chapter and it was already so full of emotions – positive and negative ones! This is exactly what I missed with Life is Strange 2: I just didn’t care about the characters and the story. But here, just as with Life is Strange, I very much do!

I keep telling myself to quit the game after the next time it saves (it has an auto-save feature), but then I continue… I also told myself that I would finish writing this blog post but I found myself playing the game instead. I guess with this kind of game, at least for me, it all depends on whether I like the story or not. But when I do, I really like the game and I feel with the characters and their stories.

As is usual for this kind of game, you get to make decisions at several points. I do not know how it affects anything and maybe sometimes it’s more flavour than anything else. But I like that at the end of a chapter, they show you the percentages of what other players chose at that point. I assume that there will be different endings again because the original game had them and Twin Mirror had different endings as well! Additionally, as with the original Life is Strange, some decisions did not affect the ending but it did affect the characters around you. I remember that one scene – in the original game – where you tried to talk somebody out of committing suicide. Again, I will not refer to anything happening in LiS: True Colours, because I want to keep everything spoiler-free.

Now, as much as I love the game, I only got it as part of Humble Choice now. I was very close to buying it during the game’s last sale when it was sold for 17.99 €. As much as I love this game, I think 59.99 is a bit pricy. Not for the game per se, just for what I am willing to pay for a game that I will be playing for about 13 hours and that will then get uninstalled from my hard drive again. Still, if the game’s story continues to be as good as it was in the first chapter, I think it’s worth that price. The only critical point at the moment is that I don’t know if there is a “happy ending” which I very much prefer to get. But… that’s life.