Square Enix’s Life Is Strange is among the premier gaming franchises known for deep interactive storytelling and cinematic presentation. Of course, Life Is Strange is not the only game series with those gameplay sensibilities. Here are the best games to check out for story-rich games like Life Is Strange.
13 Best Games Like Life Is Strange
13. The Quarry
The spiritual successor to 2015’s Until Dawn, 2022’s The Quarry tells a very different kind of scary story while maintaining a lot of the gameplay mechanics and sensibilities from its predecessor. As an homage to ‘80s horror movies, The Quarry has players control nine different teenagers working as summer camp counselors at the remote Hackett’s Quarry. However, the camp and its surrounding areas hold sinister secrets as the counselors learn that werewolves have been terrorizing the locals and have the teens in their sights next.
While not quite as good as Until Dawn, The Quarry has its own stellar sections and impressive cast filling the game’s main roles. Like Until Dawn, players must choose their options carefully and competently or risk characters permanently dying in a playthrough or receiving one of the game’s bad endings. The Quarry definitely leans into its cinematic presentation, making the game more rewarding for players not looking to be actively in control all the time, but stands as a worthy enough entry in Supermassive Games’ increasing catalog of story-driven horror titles.
12. Beyond: Two Souls
The French game development studio Quantic Dream has built a well-earned reputation for producing impressive narrative-driven games for a variety of consoles and genres. Its 2015 game Beyond: Two Souls marked the studio experimenting with bringing a multiplayer component to its narrative-driven titles while expanding into an even more cinematic presentation than its previous titles. The game has protagonist Jodie Holmes telepathically linked with Aiden, a separate and incorporeal soul that gives Jodie powers she’s learned to hone over the years.
Beyond: Two Souls feels like a departure for Quantic Dream in terms of its tone and premise, but there’s still a lot to like about the game overall. Actors Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe elevate the admittedly convoluted storyline as the narrative shifts into a conspiracy thriller involving rogue elements of the CIA. A more intimate and character-focused narrative than other Quantic Dream projects, Beyond: Two Souls is offbeat but also inventive and expands the possibilities for the genre.
11. The Walking Dead: The Definitive Telltale Series
Telltale Games used to be the go-to developer for narrative-driven games, often featuring point-and-click gameplay mechanics, following LucasArts leaving that space in the early 2000s. Of all the established franchises that Telltale acquired from its prolific and well-received output, few were as beautifully realized as its adaptation of The Walking Dead. Based on the best-selling comic book series by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, the episodic game series takes place in a world overrun by ravenous undead.
Originally released across four seasons and bonus episodes, Telltale’s The Walking Dead has been compiled and remastered in The Walking Dead: The Definitive Telltale Series. Like its source material, The Walking Dead does not pull its punches with its grim stakes or the hard choices players need to make in order to survive. A beautiful translation of the popular horror comic to the world of gaming, Telltale’s take on The Walking Dead is a bonafide masterpiece.
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10. Alan Wake
After releasing its neo-noir classic Max Payne 2, Finnish game studio Remedy Entertainment began work on a very different and much more ambitious thriller: 2010’s Alan Wake. As best-selling novelist Alan Wake investigates the small town of Bright Falls and its link to his wife’s disappearance, he discovers that the plot of his latest novel is coming to horrifying life around him. Paced like the television series that inspired it, most notably Twin Peaks, Alan Wake is divided into episodic chapters, each with their own plot twists and cliffhanger endings.
A mystery as much as a horror-thriller, Alan Wake revolves around the themes of light combating the darkness, something that plays a key role in its combat mechanics. But more than just aping Silent Hill, Alan has a genuine puzzle to solve, including curing his own writer’s block and memory lapses, as he finds pages of a strange manuscript around town. A critically acclaimed sleeper hit, Alan Wake has since been remastered for modern consoles, upgrading the technical presentation and incorporating its core DLC.
9. Silent Hill 2
As far as psychological horror games go, there are few that have set the bar higher than Konami’s Silent Hill, especially its 2001 installment, Silent Hill 2. The game follows a widower named James Sutherland, who returns to the remote lakeside town of Silent Hill, where he and his late wife Mary honeymooned, only to find the town has nightmarishly changed. As James searches for Mary and evades the monsters stalking Silent Hill, he uncovers dark secrets about the town’s current visitors, including himself.
While the first Silent Hill set a benchmark for the storytelling capable of the gaming medium, Silent Hill 2 raised the bar considerably and arguably hasn’t been matched by the franchise since. Over 20 years after the original classic, the game has been remade for modern platforms to introduce Silent Hill 2 to a new generation while retaining the core story and aesthetics. Though the remake does place an added emphasis on combat and stealth, the deep storytelling and foreboding atmosphere remain in place, providing a new take on Silent Hill 2.
8. The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
Supermassive Games has expanded its interactive drama line of horror games into an entire anthology series of standalone titles under the banner The Dark Pictures Anthology. Like the developer’s previous efforts, each installment features an impressive cast and player choices that dictate how the survival horror experience unfolds. The best from the anthology so far is the 2021 entry The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes, which involves a coven of ancient vampires discovered during the Iraq War.
An improvement over its predecessors, House of Ashes is the most cinematic and atmospheric game in the anthology, taking advantage of its Mesopotamian setting. While the gameplay formula is increasingly apparent for those who have played Supermassive Games’ titles before, House of Ashes offers enough new wrinkles to keep things interesting and exciting. Moody and deliberately paced, House of Ashes best captures the underlying ethos of The Dark Pictures Anthology.
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7. Detroit: Become Human
After focusing primarily on supernatural stories, Quantic Dream ventured into hard science fiction with its 2018 PlayStation 4 and PC game, Detroit: Become Human. Set in the year 2038, Become Human takes place in a world where advanced androids are beginning to gain sentience, leading to their persecution by the government. Players control the android revolutionaries alongside the police investigator android that is assigned to prevent a synthetic uprising from growing out of control.
Even though it’s essentially providing its own riff on Blade Runner, Detroit: Become Human deviates enough from well-worn cyberpunk tropes to create something unique and immersive. The variance in player choices feels wider and more consequential than previous Quantic Dream titles, while the leap from horror-thriller to sci-fi is a welcome change of pace. What Detroit: Become Human lacks in its core premise it makes up for in execution, rewarding repeat playthroughs.
6. Lost Judgment
Sega’s enormously successful Yakuza/Like a Dragon series has led to a number of successful spinoffs, including the thriller mystery title Judgment and its 2021 sequel Lost Judgment. The two Judgement titles star private detective Takayuki Yagami who investigates a disgraced police officer linked to sexual assault and murder. As Takayuki expands his investigation, he finds that the mystery extends to a number of Japanese cities and an unsolved string of murders.
Offering a tighter narrative focus than the Yakuza games, Lost Judgment heightens the emphasis on action compared to its predecessor and significantly revamps the stealth gameplay. Despite being more narratively oriented, Lost Judgment does bring in a number of side quests and activities players can indulge in before advancing the main story. A darker and more cinematic perspective on the world of Yakuza, Lost Judgment offers a more grounded and gritty story-driven approach to the franchise.
5. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
Capcom, the maker of horror games like Resident Evil and fighting games like Street Fighter, delivered an effective courtroom game series, starting with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Following the Phoenix Wright games, the sequel series Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney spawned its own trilogy of titles, with players following defense attorney Apollo Justice. As Apollo finds himself taking high-profile cases, he often must clear his client’s name by solving the case himself.
Originally released for the Nintendo DS, the Apollo Justice trilogy retains the core gameplay from the preceding Ace Attorney games, with sequences that task you with cross-examining witnesses in the courtroom and investigating at the scene of the crime. Apollo Justice goes deeper with these mechanics, including Apollo’s distinct ability to read people while talking to them to determine if they’re nervous or lying. A fuller realization of the Ace Attorney experience, the Apollo Justice trilogy has since been remastered and compiled for modern consoles.
4. The Wolf Among Us
The greatest Telltale Games comic book adaptation isn’t of Batman but rather the postmodern fairytale series Fables by Bill Willingham, in the 2013 game The Wolf Among Us. The game follows the classic fairytale character, the Big Bad Wolf, who has taken on the human appearance of a man named Bigby Wolf. Working in 1980s Manhattan with a community of other fairytale characters, Bigby begins investigating a grisly murder mystery that implicates one of their own.
One of the most popular and acclaimed titles to come out of Telltale Games, The Wolf Among Us was praised for its neo-noir atmosphere, stellar performances, and engrossing mystery. The game initially unfolded across five episodes before being bundled together and offered on a variety of platforms. Before The Wolf Among Us 2, revisit the original Fables gaming classic to remember what makes it so great.
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3. Until Dawn
British game developer Supermassive Games has steadily built a reputation for producing high-quality, story-driven horror games, and the most acclaimed title the developer has released to date is Until Dawn. The 2015 PlayStation 4 game lovingly homages ‘80s slasher movies as it follows eight young adults on a getaway to a lodge and its surrounding cabins at the remote Blackwood Mountain. As the group breaks off into couples or individuals, they quickly learn they’re being stalked by a masked killer connected to a previous tragedy at the mountain, only for even more dangerous threats to be unveiled.
With its seven playable characters and consequences for countless player decisions over the course of the game, Until Dawn is one of those titles that keeps fans coming back to uncover new wrinkles and outcomes to the story. The story and cast performances were lauded, as was the butterfly effect mechanic that directly affected the way that the story unfolded. Until Dawn has since received a remaster with additional content for the PlayStation 5, providing the definitive way to play the game.
2. Heavy Rain
Before Beyond: Two Souls or Detroit: Become Human, Quantic Dream earned widespread acclaim and recognition for its 2010 PlayStation 3 thriller, Heavy Rain. Players control a variety of characters involved with a serial child murderer known as the Origami Killer, who targets young boys and drowns them in rainwater before leaving an origami figure near the scene of the crime. The primary character is Ethan Mars, a troubled single father whose son was kidnaped by the Origami Killer, prompting him to leap into action to save his boy before it’s too late.
Playing Heavy Rain is the closest gamers will probably get to an interactive Zodiac or Se7en experience as they delve into the melancholy world of the game. The experience feels like an interactive movie, with multiple endings depending on how players take the story, including the possibility of major characters to be killed, and story progression relying on surviving characters. Over a decade after its release, Heavy Rain still stands as the best Quantic Dream release to date, leaning heavily on atmosphere and tension to deliver a truly haunting experience.
1. Alan Wake 2
What can be said about Alan Wake 2, Remedy Entertainment’s triumphant sequel to Alan Wake, that hasn’t been said already? Trapped in an alternate dimension for the past 13 years, author Alan Wake tries to escape by writing a horror story following an FBI Special Agent named Saga Anderson. Players can alternate progressing through the story as either Alan or Saga, learning just how far this nightmarish dimension spreads and Alan’s place in it all.
Alan Wake 2 doubles down on the psychological horror aspects of the first game while expanding the world of the game beyond Bright Falls. More surreal and atmospheric than its already atmospheric preceding game, Alan Wake 2 is a haunting experience that will have players want to leap back into the story for additional playthroughs. A deluxe edition of the game containing additional content has since been developed by Remedy, significantly increasing the game’s scope.
Published: Sep 14, 2024 07:32 pm