Life is Strange: Double Exposure

Genre:
Year:
Team Size:
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Recognitions:

Nominations:

Narrative Adventure

2020 – 2022 (shipped 2024)

120+ project, 10 designers

Game Director

PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Switch

Unreal

GDC 2025 - Social Impact Award
GDC 2025 - Best Narrative (Honorable Mention)

GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Video Game 2025

The Game Awards 2024 - Games for Impact

The Game Awards 2024 - Best Performance

The Story

Developing the narrative arc in Life is Strange: Double Exposure

Life is Strange: Double Exposure is a direct sequel to the original Life is Strange (LiS). Set 10 years after the tragic events of the original game, players once again take on the role of Max Caulfield. In the original LiS, Max could rewind time, which resulted in a series of butterfly effects that led to catastrophic consequences.

In Double Exposure, Max no longer rewinds time but instead can step between two different timelines, one in which a friend of hers was murdered and one in which that friend still lived. It is up to the player to find the truth using information no one else has access to—the perspective of the person who was murdered.

Cinematic trailer summarizes the story.

As the game director, I spent multiple hours each day with our narrative director and one of our writers, tackling both the overall shape of the story and then specific plot beats constantly being mindful of the movement of two timelines and the powers we use to tell the story.

Max Caulfield

28 years old

Award-Winning Photographer

Considerations for the Story

Character Design

Developing the characters of Life is Strange: Double Exposure

As the game director, I worked alongside the narrative director to come up with who our characters were and all the details about them. Then, I worked with our artists to capture their looks and feels, and with our casting team and consultants to ensure we found the right people to fill these roles.

Very diverse set of characters. Lot of research. Lot of time giving them their own style, depth, motivations, hopes, and fears. Authentic casting.

Gameplay

Tools to Solve a Supernatural Mystery in Life of Strange: Double Exposure

Temporal Shift

As the game director, I, personally, explored the high-level approaches to take for shifting. I brought in one of my designers to help weed through the various concepts and build prototypes.

As I zeroed in with the one I wanted to pursue, we started working with the Art team and Engineering teams to figure out the best approach to make it happen.

We had some considerations to keep in mind as we were searching for our game mechanics:

Rule: Max will not rewind time in this game as a mechanic
We needed the player to be able to go from one timeline to the other
We explored many ways to approach this.
- Dreams?
- Space between spaces?
- Shift points?
- Shift anywhere?
Because of technical considerations, we went with shift points—pre-defined locations from which the player could shift.

My original stick figure sketch of temporal shift.

Temporal Shift in the final game

Temporal Pulse

As the game director, I expressed to my handful of designers how I wanted to approach the pulse power. The designers then prototyped different ways to realize and use it.

Additional Considerations:

Because the player was going from one timeline to another, we didn't want them blindly stepping into a place where they didn't know the situation. That led to us expanding the idea of "looking before you leap" to "let's give the player a tool to collect information—visual and auditory—from the other timeline."

My original mock ups of temporal pulse.

Temporal Pulse in the final game

Entangle

As the game director, I worked very closely with several designers to determine the role entangle would play in the game and how it would work. We went through many prototypes before we landed on what ended up in the game.

About Entangle:

When the topics of space, time, and alternate timelines come into play, entanglement eventually comes up. Entanglement is the heart of quantum physics. The idea is that two objects are linked even if separated by distance or time. Through our discussions, we started with the idea that if you entangled an object, such as a phone, anything you did to that object in one timeline would also happen to the object in the other timeline.

Over time and due to budget constraints, the pure meaning of entangle morphed. In Life is Strange: Double Exposure, this ended up as an ability that would allow Max to swap an object and whatever state it was in with its counterpart in the other timeline.

My original sketch of the entangle concept.

Entangle in the final game

All concept art by Scott Willhite

Level Design

Content & Gameplay Mechanics in Life is Strange: Double Exposure

Puzzle Design

As the game director, I worked very closely with and directed level designers, gameplay designers, writers, and artists to realize several of our physical world puzzles, including helping Moses and the Icy Pond.

My early demonstration of how we could shifting to design physical puzzles, using the "Helping Moses" situation as the backdrop.

Clip from the Helping Moses puzzle in the final game

World Design

As the game director, I determined the fictional location of our game’s setting. Lakeport, Vermont, was an homage to a town of the same name in northern California where I grew up. I also came up with several of the other in-game locations, such as the Snapping Turtle and the Observatory.

I then worked very closely with our concept artist to design both the layout of the campus and the designs and layouts of many of the locations within the game, including the Hellerton House (Max’s home), the Snapping Turtle, the Icy Pond, the Observatory, Moses’s office, and the university interiors.

Photography

As the game director, I directed our game designers as they worked on various prototypes for our photography mechanic, which is part of Max’s core identity.

Social Systems

As the game director, I made sure our game felt current and modern, making sure the characters of that world had access to social media, text messaging, and more. It also became the “journal” for Max.

The trick was to make it track information happening independently across two different timelines. Part of this was to help the player know what was transpiring while they were away in the other timeline.

Gameplay Beats

As the game director, I calculated how much time gameplay time the player would ideally spend in different segments of the game, how much time they would spend interacting with different characters, and plan drama intensity vs gameplay intensity.

LORI HYRUP