Life Is Strange Games in Order

Release order, starting with the 2015 original: Life Is Strange, Before the Storm (2017), Life Is Strange 2 (2018), True Colors (2021), Double Exposure (2024), Reunion (2026). Because four of the six stand alone, order matters less here than in most long series. It really only binds in two places: play the 2015 original before Before the Storm, and play Double Exposure before Reunion. Everything else you can take in whatever order you like.

The 2015 original, sold today as Life Is Strange Remastered. It is the only entry the rest of the series assumes you know. Three tempting wrong starts: Before the Storm sits earliest on the timeline but spoils the original's biggest reveals, Life Is Strange 2 shares no main characters with the first game despite the number, and Double Exposure asks you early on how the original ended for you, which is a question you cannot answer if you have not played it. If you want to try before you buy, episode 1 of Life Is Strange 2 has been permanently free on PC, PlayStation and Xbox since September 2020, and episode 1 of the 2015 original is free on Steam too.

Six main games across eleven years: Life Is Strange (2015), Before the Storm (2017), Life Is Strange 2 (2018), True Colors (2021), Double Exposure (2024) and Reunion (2026). Three smaller pieces sit around them: Farewell, a roughly one-hour bonus episode bundled with Before the Storm; The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (2018), a free standalone tie-in to Life Is Strange 2; and Wavelengths, a DLC episode for True Colors starring Steph Gingrich. Two studios split the work. Dontnod Entertainment made the original, Captain Spirit and Life Is Strange 2; Deck Nine made Before the Storm, True Colors, Double Exposure and Reunion.

No, and this is the thing most newcomers get wrong. Life Is Strange is an anthology: four of the six main games start over with a new lead in a new town. The 2015 original and its prequel Before the Storm share Max Caulfield and Chloe Price in Arcadia Bay, Oregon. Life Is Strange 2 is a sequel in name only, a road trip with brothers Sean and Daniel Diaz that shares no main characters with the first game. True Colors follows Alex Chen in Haven Springs, Colorado. Then Double Exposure and Reunion pick Max back up about a decade later at Caledon University in Vermont, which makes the original plus those two the one genuinely continuous thread. The links between the rest are small and deliberate: Steph Gingrich appears at Blackwell in Before the Storm and returns as a lead in True Colors and its Wavelengths DLC, and Chris from Captain Spirit turns up in Life Is Strange 2.

Yes, most of them, which is unusual for a series this size. Life Is Strange 2, True Colors, Captain Spirit and Wavelengths are all genuinely optional, and skipping any of them takes nothing away from the others. Before the Storm is optional too, though it is better played after the original than never. The three you should not break up are the 2015 original, Double Exposure and Reunion: those are one continuous story about Max, and each assumes the one before it. If you are only playing two things, make it the original and then Double Exposure.

Not on your first playthrough. Before the Storm is a prequel set three years earlier, starring a sixteen-year-old Chloe Price, and playing it first tells you who Rachel Amber is and quietly defuses the original's biggest reveals. Play it second, or save it for a replay. The same goes double for its bonus episode Farewell, which is set in 2008 and is the earliest point in the whole series: it only lands if you already know how the original ends.

Yes. Reunion opens in September 2024, nine months after Double Exposure ends, on the same campus and with people you met there, so starting with Reunion means walking in on the second half of a mystery. The run to play is the 2015 original, then Double Exposure (2024), then Reunion (2026). Before the Storm, Life Is Strange 2 and True Colors are not prerequisites for any of the three.

Sometimes, but never by importing a save from a different game. Double Exposure has you re-establish it in conversation instead: early on the game lets you settle what happened to Chloe at the end of the original, and that answer reshapes how Max talks about her past rather than changing the plot, because Deck Nine deliberately refused to make either 2015 ending canon. True Colors' Wavelengths DLC does the same thing for whether Arcadia Bay survived, and Steph mourns different people depending on your answer. The one real save carry-over in the series is between Captain Spirit and Life Is Strange 2, where what you did as Chris changes how episode 2 plays out. Reunion handles it differently again: rather than asking, it explains in-story that Max merged the two timelines, so Chloe is alive and Arcadia Bay is still standing whichever ending you originally picked.

A free standalone chapter released June 25, 2018, an hour or two long, starring a boy named Chris Eriksen and his superhero alter ego in Beaver Creek, Oregon. It is a warm-up for Life Is Strange 2 rather than a story of its own, and it earns the hour for one concrete reason: Chris returns in episode 2 of Life Is Strange 2, and your Captain Spirit save changes how that meeting goes. It has been free on PC, PlayStation and Xbox since launch. Play it right before Life Is Strange 2, not before the 2015 original.

All six main games are on PC, PlayStation and Xbox as of August 2026. The 2015 original and Before the Storm are sold together as the Life Is Strange Remastered Collection (February 1, 2022), which bundles both remasters plus the Farewell bonus episode; the Switch version of that same pair is called the Life Is Strange Arcadia Bay Collection (September 27, 2022). Life Is Strange 2 reached Switch on February 2, 2023, True Colors on December 7, 2021 and Double Exposure on November 19, 2024. Reunion is the gap: it launched March 26, 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC only, and no Switch or Switch 2 version has been announced. The original episodes and Before the Storm are also sold separately on Steam, and both were ported to iOS and Android as well, the original in 2018 and Before the Storm in September 2018. Storefronts, mobile listings and subscription line-ups shift by region and by month, so check yours before buying.

Either works, and the difference is smaller than the marketing suggested. Life Is Strange Remastered (2022) rebuilt the character models and redid the animation with full facial motion capture, and Before the Storm Remastered got the same visual pass plus the deluxe extras and the Farewell episode. The story, the dialogue and the choices are identical in both. The remaster is the default because it is what Switch and most bundles give you; the 2015 episodes are still sold on Steam if you would rather have the version you remember.

Square Enix billed Reunion (2026) as the conclusion of the Max and Chloe saga, and it does close that thread. Whether the series itself is done is genuinely unsettled. No seventh game has been announced as of August 2026, and developer Deck Nine has cut staff three times in recent years: about 30 people in May 2023, 20 percent of the studio in February 2024, and an undisclosed number in December 2024. In March 2025 analyst Hideki Yasuda described Double Exposure's sales as a large loss for Square Enix. The franchise is still moving outside games, though: Amazon MGM ordered a Prime Video series adapting the first game in September 2025, with Charlie Covell as showrunner, and cast Maisy Stella as Chloe and Tatum Grace Hopkins as Max in March 2026.