I’m sure that this is an adventure game that everyone has heard of due to how successful it is and how it swept up gaming awards. It has since spawned a prequel and a sequel, though the latter is still being released on an episodic basis. I may pick up the prequel later but from what I can see the sequel has nothing to do the story here and I have little interest in it.

Now 18-year old Max Caulfield grew up in the town of Arcadia Bay and her family moved away five years ago. Now she is back in order to study photography at Blackwell Academy under her teacher and idol Mark Jefferson. However when she left, she also ceased all contact with her childhood BFF Chloe Price. She’s eager to meet her again but feels guilty about not being in touch. One day in class Max seems to have a waking nightmare about a tornado menacing the town. When she steps out into the restroom for a breather, she sees an argument between local rich kid Nathan Prescott and an unknown girls which ends with Nathan shooting the girl with a gun. Shocked she holds out her hand and seemingly has the power to rewind time back to the classroom she started out in which enables her to alter events and save the girl. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that the girl turns out to be Chloe. With these time powers, Max and Chloe set out to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of a student Rachel-Amber six months and help other people along the way.

Between the time powers, the investigation into Rachel-Amber’s disappearance and how it may be connected to Max having these powers, and the sheer cool factor of the game being set in a college, there is a lot to be excited about here. The graphics here aren’t the best but I do like that they’ve gone for a lightly stylized look reminiscent of watercolors that is good enough rather than even try for photorealism. The music and voice acting however are top notch and really bring the characters and their emotions to life. Still by far the best things about this game is its writing, both its quality and how much of it there is. Max keeps a detailed journal of everything she has been through and it’s great to read it to understand what she’s feeling in reaction to all that is going on. Then there are the text messages and the e-mails and the dialogue and all of it is well-written.

The story goes to some very dark places, far darker than I ever expected. The themes here are friendship and sacrifice but there are good doses as well of bullying, rich assholes and the environment. As I’ve learned from similar adventure games like The Walking Dead, they talk up the importance of choice and consequence but it’s more illusion than reality due to the constraints of a fixed narrative. That said, it is very well done here and some of the choices are so intense that they genuinely take an emotional toll. The time travel is used to give interesting twists in the plot and provide multiple perspectives. Repeating a scene over and over again with only slight differences each time is an easy and cheap trick, but it does resonate emotionally. I did guess how the story would end but I still appreciated the power of the final decision to make.

One thing I’m not enthused about are the gameplay elements, particularly in the earlier episodes. There are puzzle type scenarios for which Max needs to use her time powers to solve but some are so trivial that it’s pathetic. A recurring example is reaching for something that falls, so Max has to use her rewind power to get it in another way. It gets better later when she uses it in more interesting ways such as breaking into offices and saving lives. One form of gameplay that I loved was piecing together clues to work out what had happened to Kate Marsh. The game isn’t too difficult and if you take too long at doing something, it automatically drops you hints to help you along. It is annoying however that the plot implies that you have limited time because other people are waiting on you or whatnot, but you can spend all the time you want exploring, taking photos and looking at things.

The most important relationship in the game is obviously that of Max and Chloe and the writers absolutely nail that too. Scenes like Chloe thinking up ways for Max to prove that her powers are real are fantastic and absolutely what I would do. I also that while Max is definitely good, Chloe often behaves rather badly and Max puts up with it due to their friendship. Underlying the plot the whole time is the suspicion that Chloe is just using Max. I didn’t like that a single kiss between Max and Chloe is interpreted as romantic interest but I suppose that’s the best that we could hope for. Pretty much all of the other characters are great as well. I was so worried that Warren would be a nice guy who turns nasty after Max jilts him as he is obviously romantically interested in Max and Max sees him as a friend. I was so glad that the game avoided that trap and it works out okay.

Finally the dark room stuff is genuinely some of the scariest scenes I’ve ever seen in any video game. Enough so that it’s worth warning people about it. I love the game overall obviously. When I heard that they were planning on turning this into a television show, I thought that might even work better than a video game. This format suffers from the usual faults that you don’t actually have much agency even if it pretends that you do, but the story and the writing are fantastic. Highly recommend. Props to the developers as well for making it easy to go through to get collectibles once you’ve finished the game once.