8 Video Games That Caught Lightning In A Bottle
2. Life Is Strange
The first Life Is Strange launched at the start of 2015, just as Telltale Games - the king of episodic adventure games at the time - was beginning to lose ground by oversaturating the market with a sea of mediocre rush-job titles.
Life Is Strange was a breath of fresh air, though, not only being an original IP but also touting significantly more impressive visual fidelity and art direction compared to Telltale's output.
The unconventional high school setting for the genre and immediately appealing central pairing of Max and Chloe also didn't hurt, and of course, we can't ignore the game's agonisingly polarising final choice.
This all made Life Is Strange an episodic adventure like no other, and by 2023 it'd reached a staggering 20 million players. However, Life Is Strange was also a flash-in-the-pan success which Square Enix has never managed to recapture.
None of the sequel or spin-off series have been nearly as successful, and last year's direct follow-up, Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, proved divisive enough with fans that it sold poorly, reportedly causing a "large loss" for the publisher.
The success of the original Life Is Strange was a perfect storm of factors which, as the last decade has categorically proven, simply can't be repeated.