Every story is the consequence of other stories. This project focuses on intertextual influences in the video game Life Is Strange (2015), developed by the studio DON'T NOD. By exploring the game’s explicit and implicit references, ranging from cinema and literature to television series and visual arts, the study aims to build a structured representation of these connections through a knowledge graph powered by Neo4j. After outlining the project’s objectives and methodology, together with the game’s narrative structure, development, cultural inspirations, and recurring themes, the study proceeds to illustrate the database design through the modelling of nodes and relationships and mapping their properties to established relevant vocabularies. A section on data collection and analysis through Cypher queries reveals patterns in the encoded relationships, emphasising the value of graph-based approaches not only for the case of Life Is Strange, but also for understanding how media more broadly engage with one another in the framework of contemporary storytelling, with potential applications across thematic areas such as gender and queer studies. Ultimately, this project is conceived as a prototype for further research in these fields and as a potential foundation for building new interactive resources for media and narrative analysis.
Project repository: https://github.com/ariadne28/Inside-Life-Is-Strange
// Downloadable PDF file coming soon