“Life is Strange: Double Exposure” is an open-world adventure game which revolves around Max Caulfield, a photographer at Caledon University who reverses time to try and rescue her slain friend, Safi. However, she inadvertently opens another timeline where Safi is still alive and being pursued by her killer. To resolve matters, Max must race through and shift between the timelines to solve the mystery behind the murder and save Safi.
The game is rated M18 for mature themes, coarse language and drug use.
From a third-person perspective, the protagonist will traverse across time and explore indoor and outdoor locations to find items, interact with objects in the environment and fulfil objectives. Dialogue and action choices can also be made, which can affect the reactions and paths of characters, as well as the development of the game’s narrative.
The protagonist has the option to kiss another woman and doing so results in a cutscene of the pair kissing each other. There is also a transgender woman character who is shown with her wife in a photo and talks about her experiences of being discriminated, along with other sexual references and innuendoes. Overall, such portrayals are appropriate under the M18 rating, where the Classification Guidelines allow the depiction of “some homosexual content, if discreet in treatment and not gratuitous”.
The game also contains use of the expletives “motherf**ker” and “f**k”, as well as crude language such as “shit”, “damn” and “asshole”. Under the M18 Classification Guidelines, “frequent use of strong coarse language” is permitted.
There is a scene where the protagonist can choose to smoke a joint, while other scenes include drug references. The M18 Classification Guidelines state that “there may be realistic depiction of drug or psychoactive substance abuse, if it does not promote abuse”.
There are some depictions of violence with moderate details. These includes scenes where a character gets shot in the shoulder with some bloodstains seen, a character who relives a past trauma of being forcibly restrained on a chair, and another who disintegrates in flashes of light. There is also a stylised graphic of a headless man holding a bucket with a decapitated head in it.