RecommendedSteam player
I wish I could rewind and play this game for the first time again.Show moreShow less
16.6 hours at review6,862 people found this helpful
Life is Strange - Episode 1
Max’s ability to rewind time makes everyday choices central to this narrative single-player adventure. At $0.00 from 
Steam, Life is Strange - Episode 1 is at the lowest point tracked here, making its choice-driven story and multiple endings a concrete reason to begin now. The Steam PC version supports full controller input, and its available interface languages may help settle the decision. A player rating of 96% positive from 176,591 reviews also gives a sense of player response. At $0.00 from Steam, Life is Strange - Episode 1 is at this site’s tracked low; English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese-Brazil and full controller support can help guide your choice.
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $0.002023-08Current Low Across Stores~ $0.00SteamAt its historical low now
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Life is Strange - Episode 1
Life is Strange - Episode 1 is a single-player adventure about Max Caulfield, a photography student who discovers she can rewind time. With her friend Chloe, she investigates Rachel Amber’s disappearance. Rewinding lets Max alter events, while choices shape how the story unfolds and which of its multiple endings she reaches. Steam player rating: 96% positive from 176,591 reviews. Supported interface languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese-Brazil. Released January 29, 2015.
Credits
M
DIRECTOR
Michel Koch
French art director
[
Composer
Syd Matters
Art Director
Michel Koch
Developer
DONTNOD Entertainment · Feral Interactive (Mac) · Feral Interactive (Linux)
Publisher
Square Enix · Feral interactive (Mac) · Feral Interactive (Linux)
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$0.002023-08-12 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 3 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-16
02Before you buy
Language and controls
The Steam PC version has full controller support. Interface languages include English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese; audio is in English, with subtitles also in those languages.
Play mode
This is a single-player adventure. Episode 1 is free to play.
03Frequently asked questions
What is the story about?
Max Caulfield discovers she can rewind time and investigates Rachel Amber’s disappearance with her friend Chloe.
Do choices affect the story?
Choices affect events, and the game has multiple endings.
Is Episode 1 free?
Yes. Episode 1 is free to play.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
Not recommendedSteam player
"Multiple endings depending on the choices you make." Let me fix that for you: "TWO endings, depending on THE choice you make RIGHT BEFORE the end." A shame it was such a good game until that moment, but they had to go full Mass Effect 3 on our asses.Show moreShow less
2.6 hours at review842 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
It's strange how this will be the first review I ever write for a game. I always thought it would be written for a game like Fallout, Elderscrolls or some huge open world survival horror. And yet it's this little piece of art that has me aching to write something, if only for a minute. When I had finished this, a few minutes ago, I couldn't believe that they only charge a pittence for it. I thought to myself that if people can charge you 70 euro for games that are poorly executed and badly made from start to finish, then this game should have a much higher pricetag. It wasn't before looking up and seeing that I just finished the first episode in a mere three hours that I understood their reasoning. I feel, however, obliged to tell you all that the three hours spent in this game were worth more to me than the hundreads of hours I've spent in most other games combined. Not because the story was awsome, or the graphics made me gape in awe, but rather that every single aspect of the game in combination managed to grip me and pull me in so that time became temporarily meaningless. Imagine if games held this standard. Imagine if your favorite action, your favorite adventure game or even your favorite driver had this kind of execution. You can tell a good story in a bad way, and you can tell a bad story in a good way. The story in this game might not be the most interesting story you've ever heard, but it's good, and in the execution of it you are drawn in, captured by it, moved by it. Most adventure games will entertain, they'll give you some ups and downs along the way, but ultimately they will feel like games. I've never felt so fulfilled after "playing a game" as I did today. Original, beautiful and masterfully executed. I can't wait for the next episode.Show moreShow less
3.6 hours at review3,717 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
TL;DR: I want to recommend this game so badly, but as the final episode stands, I simply cannot. It seems the writers/developers either ran out of ideas, money, or time, and the Episode 5 finale is noticeably lower quality than Life is Strange's other 4 installments. The ending is a huge slap in the face and goes aginst the whole premise of the game itself. It's like having a full course dinner at a fancy restaurant, only to have the chef come and sh*t on your plate for dessert; the appetizer and entree may have been amazing, but you sure as hell are not going to leave that restaurant happy, much less encourage others to indulge themselves. MILD (VAGUE) SPOILERS AHEAD Let me just preface this review by saying that I enjoyed the majority of this game very much. I am a big fan of the Telltale games, and it felt like this was a step above and beyond anything Telltale has done; my choices, no matter how small, seemed like they actually mattered. The butterfly that lets you know your (perhaps seemingly insignificant) choice will affect something down the road, combined with the ability to rewind and choose differently, provides an extremely unique experience. I was often left sitting, weighing the potential pros and cons for each decision, debating whether or not to go back and pick a different option. The artwork in the game is stunning. The musical choices are outstanding and often add more to an already emotionally-charged game. I became emotionally invested in the story of Max, Chloe, and the mysterious forces of Arcadia Bay. I flew through each episode the day it was released, often sacrificing valuable time which could have been better used for sleeping. That being said, my enjoyment of the game halted abruptly with the release of Episode 5. I don't want to go into too much detail, but essentially, every choice made in the game up until the last 5 minutes or so has absolutely no meaningful impact on the ending whatsoever. I was led to believe that each decision I made was perhaps sending me on a different path that would ultimately lead to a (somewhat) unique ending that would differ with each playthrough. As it stands, you are thrown one final decision which renders all other choices irrelevant, and then are played one of two endings. There are no branching paths. Your choices do not matter. You pick one or the other, and you are done. Which leads to another issue. The disparity in quality of the two endings is, frankly, staggering. One ending -- the one I am assuming the developers deemed the "good ending" -- clocks in at over 9 minutes long. The other, presumably "bad ending," is around 3 minutes long. The good ending provides a somewhat-fleshed-out conclusion to the story, while the bad ending provides an overwhelmingly cliche, ride-off-into-the-sunset conclusion that provides absolutely no further insight. In my opinion, neither ending should be seen as the "correct" one. Both endings should have been fully realized and provided a satisfying conclusion to my journey, rather than essentially saying, "You picked the bad ending, so let's just cut this sh*t off abrubtly and give you no closure." Both endings, however, are plagued by the fact that they leave a myriad of loose ends and do nothing to tie up any of the interesting story lines or provide any more insight into the things which you were investigating the entire f*cking game. The big plot point of "What happened to Rachel Amber?" is, thankfully, answered earlier in the episode, but the answer feels like a complete afterthought and is not satisfying in the least considering how big of a part of the game it was. Other plot lines ("What's the deal with the seemingly villainous Prescotts?", for example) are just abandoned. I understand the limitations of a game; a story with an ending for each unique combination of choices simply isn't possible. However, after touting Life is Strange as a game where your choices matter and have a meaningful impact, it seems that the developers have pulled a very obvious bait-and-switch; 2 arbitrary endings where each previous episode means f*ck-all hardly makes it seem like your choices matter at all. I don't know if this was due to time constraints, a lack of funding, or simply a complete lack of effort, but at the end of the day, I feel cheated.Show moreShow less
19.8 hours at review804 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Episode 1: typical teen school drama Episode 2: uhmmm.... wha..? Episode 3: What. The. Hell. Episode 4: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?! Episode 5: I'm... Sorry. On a slightly more serious note: I cannot thank you enough, Dontnod. GOTY.Show moreShow less
25.4 hours at review3,588 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
It takes a special kind of talent to make a choose-your-own-adventure with a time-rewind ability and yet still end up with an uncomfortably linear storyline. Characters are remarkably bland. I can picture a whiteboard somewhere with a rough sketch of each of them and their single defining personality trait written underneath it. Max is a depressed loner, Chloe is a pothead rebel, Nathan is a schizo with a gun, the janitor - of course - is mentally handicapped, and Victoria is that special kind of movie-land ♥♥♥♥♥ that doesn't actually exist in real life becuse she'd get stabbed. It's like someone read a manual on stereotypes and just pulled out the pages that they liked. And, of course, the adults are all worthless tools. The time-rewind mechanic is annoying. There are distinct breaks between 'scenes' where you have a sequence of events take place and then rewind to tamper with things and make events happen slightly differently. Unfortuantely, the number of things you can actually change for any effect is actually very small and boring. Why do I have to tell the girl to move before the ball flies past? Why can't I just catch the ball? Etc. Etc. The system actually ends up feeling LESS free rather than more free. Even though I have power over time and space, I have to select only the solution that the author intended, and it's going to involve an endless series of fetch quests. Graphically I'm not sure what's going on. There's a kind of "milky" gloss on everything (especailly MC's hair. wtf) that's annoying as hell, and some of the character models are simply low quality (photography professor's hair, for example). It seems like the game pops between relaism and a kind of bad stylization. In any case, I almost don't want to downvote because for once in all of history the game being reviewed is appropriately priced. Nevertheless, I'm aware that I'm only buying 1/5 of the first chapter here, so... No. Not recommended. Just watch a playthrough on YouTube.Show moreShow less
2.6 hours at review479 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
When you water your plant and it says "This action will have consequenses", you know sh** just got real.Show moreShow less
4.7 hours at review3,316 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Episodes 1-4 are great, fantastic even. Episode 5? They will erase all your choices and consequences, making everything you did meaningless. If they release an Extended Endings DLC, like Bioware did for Mass Effect 3 they could turn everything around again. But as it stands Life is Strange is suffering the exact same fatal flaw that the unpatched version of Mass Effect 3 had. If you do buy this game, just stop playing when you get to the art gallery in Episode 5. You can eplore the gallery, just do not look at your picture. This is the last point at which you will have that warm fuzzy feeling like what you did mattered.Show moreShow less
29 hours at review387 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
After Episode 4... jeez. This isn't just about a quirky girl getting fun time travel powers and solving a mystery with her punk sidekick anymore. Brooke likes warren But Warren likes Max Max likes Chloe But Chloe likes Rachel Rachel likes Frank BUT FRANK LIKES BEANSShow moreShow less
51.4 hours at review2,214 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
- Choices don't actually matter; - Generic plot "twist"; Artsy lesbian teenage drama: Butterfly Effect edition / 10 Wish i could go back in time and stop myself from pusrchasing this.Show moreShow less
15.6 hours at review322 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/14/2026.