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Captain Spirit is - to repeat - completely free to download, and a wonderful couple of hours of gaming. This is, essentially, nit-picking of the highest order. Solving all the puzzles, such as they are, will undoubtedly extend the game’s length, ensuring you’ve read every scrap of paper and looked at each object, but you may well grow tired of the same few rooms before everything is complete. Similarly, several of the puzzles rely on trial and error number-crunching, which is a staple of the franchise, but if this is your first Dontnod game then it can be a little obtuse. Sure, this is only a taster of a game a gateway drug to Life is Strange 2, but it’s frustrating to be given relatively little to explore.

Even the limited environments you’re given aren’t fully utilised - the treehouse and garage are pretty sparsely populated with objects - so you spend most of your time inside Chris’ small house. If there’s any real criticism of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, it’s that the game is too short, and some of the puzzles a little too reliant on knowledge of how Life is Strange titles actually work. It’s incredibly well observed, at times, although perhaps too stereotyped in places. It sounds trite to say this, but if you’re a parent - especially a single parent - you’ll notice that there are layers and behaviours in this game that ring eerily true, even if they often live at the very darkest end of the spectrum. At times it’s utterly heartbreaking to see how this young boy is treated, but there’s a subtlety to the storytelling that rarely means you lose sympathy for Charles, no matter how deadbeat he may seem. You experience it all through Chris’ eyes, as he plays super heroes with himself, pours over memories of his mother, and attempts to get some attention from his father. As a family unit, they’re at breaking point, and while both have the best of intentions, it’s all going very wrong. Without giving too much away, Chris and Charles were both massively impacted by the loss of their mother / wife, and have dealt with it in different ways.

The story itself is classic Dontnod, and is both tightly scripted and succinctly told.