True Colors is much better than Deck Nine's previous effort, Before the Storm, probably because this one is a new story with original characters. If you are still playing the Life Is Strange games at this point you pretty much know the routine: the story will be tropey and melodramatic, with lots of angst and coming-of-age stuff, the setting will have kind of a "cozy Americana" vibe, there will be INDIE MUSIC and a dash of the supernatural. True Colors checks all the boxes, and even goes above and beyond in a few areas, like in a creative LARPing sequence.

What True Colors doesn't manage to capture from the first game (LiS 2 might, I haven't finished it yet) is that particular teenage sense that your problems are cosmic in significance, which is imo what makes the first game work despite being extremely silly. Even if you hate Max and Chloe, the game works really hard to convince you that their bond is somehow holding the universe in balance, which is how attachments you have at that age can feel.

True Colors is just as melodramatic—some very heavy shit happens, and the gameplay revolves around sensing other people's emotions, and at one point you can literally sing "Creep" to yourself alone in your room lmao—but never in a way that feels bigger than Alex herself or the cute little mountain town whose name I totally forgot. The stakes never feel larger than life, which, in a melodrama, a genre whose basic principle is "go big or go home," seems like a bad move. Let me feel GRIEF. Let me RAIL against the INDIFFERENT SKY. Let me FLIP OFF the clouds and SCREAM.

Also I swear to god there are so many white boys wearing flannel in this mfin town how on earth do you tell them all apart