Chrysalis is a solid introductory episode to developer DONTNOD's take on the Telltale formula. It's less concerned with setting up the overall plot right out of the gate, and is instead focused more on introducing players to the gameplay mechanics, world, and characters that inhabit it. Much like other modern episodic adventure games, player choice in the main driving force behind the experience. Your actions have consequences, not all of which are obvious. Where Life Is Strange stands out from its contemporaries is in its time manipulation mechanics. Don't like the immediate consequences of a certain decision? The game gives you the opportunity to go back and change that while still leaving the long-term effects a mystery. You can even go back and alter seemingly minor dialog choices or random events. It's a novel and exciting mechanic that allows for more freedom than, say, a Telltale game.

There's ultimately not too much going on in this first episode. The bigger story at play here is only revealed right at the very end of this chapter's story, and it's not quite clear how everything else is going to tie in together, if at all. We still get to meet some cool characters, watch our lead go through a sort of coming of age tale complete with time-traveling powers, and it's all brought to life with a kind of hipsterish indie-drama vibe. It's compelling and I can already see this going to be an emotional ride.

It might not be the most action-packed start, but the time travel mechanics provide a nice new spin on the concept and I'm curious to see how my choices will affect the story going forward. The amount of decisions to make here already give this episode a high-amount of replay value by itself. I can only imagine the number of possibilities when all of the content is together in the full game. Some very minor glitches are present and while the stylish graphics do help cover up a lot, it's easy to see flaws in things like lip syncing and character animations. I also think the lead actress doesn't always show the appropriate level of emotion in certain scenes. I get she's a hipster, but come on. Most of the issues go away in the face of some truly great decision making and the novel mechanics though. So overall Chrysalis is good and worth trying out to see if the story is for you. It's free so won't even have to put money down on it until you decide to branch out to the rest of the content or not.

7.8/10