Both Alex Chen and the performance of her actress Erika Mori have been met with a generally positive reception from fans of the Life is Strange series, as well as critical acclaim from video game publications with multiple award nominations and accolades.

The team's creative process behind Alex's story arc involved a significant amount of introspection into their own personal perspectives and an objective consideration of the type of experiences that would be valuable and impactful to play through.

The death of her brother Gabe Chen serves as the inciting incident for Alex to confront her inner demons and fears, setting her on a journey to gradually accept who she is, including her power, and how she chooses to navigate her life moving forward despite the burdens of her past.

It was decided that she is always changed internally to some extent even as the moment dies down, because her feelings of anger, fear, or grief about things in her own life had been brought out in such situations in spite of her best efforts to suppress her emotional outbursts.

[4] Kuan explained that as a result, writing Alex required a lot of care and nuance because she is not supposed to lose her own identity in the moments where she is reacting to the intensity of another person’s emotional state while simultaneously feeling it herself.

Kuan noted in particular that Tristan spoke of many joyful moments in his description of his experiences, which she felt is a compelling aspect of the foster care backstory the team wanted to build for Alex.

In an interview with Inverse, Mori admitted that she was initially unfamiliar with narrative adventure video games in general, and was unaware that her participation would in fact lead to a proper audition for True Colors until she received callbacks from the team at Deck Nine to inquire about her interest in the role.

[2] From Kuan's perspective, Mori's involvement enhanced Alex's "adorable" and "appealing" visual design, because she developed an approach to ground the character as an endearing or relatable personality who still remains hopeful for her future.

[4] Portraying the character through performance capture was a rewarding experience for Mori, as it allowed her to fully express the power of her imagination and explore the potential for Alex's physicality via her background in dance.

Kuan sought input from other Asian-American developers at the studio to enhance the depiction of the Chen family's Chinese-Vietnamese cultural background across the creative spectrum, "from dialogue and art assets to the nuances of casting".

Mori was pleased that Alex represents a protagonist that is uncommon in the video game industry, "a whole basket of diversity" in her words, as her unconventionality extends beyond superficial elements such as race, gender, body shape and sexual orientation.

A self-professed fan of the Life is Strange series, mxmtoon said it was "really easy with Alex Chen as a character to embody what she's going through" due to the fact that they are both Asian American and of a similar age, who identify as a member of a sexual minority.

[5] Commenting on the initial fan reaction towards Alex, Mori remarked that many players could find points of commonality and relatability from her story arc, regardless of whether they share any tangibe similarities with the character.

She took the view that the character carries what she described a "buoyancy of hope" in the face of her difficult past and the death of her brother, as well as her refusal to let that part of herself be diminished in response to negative stimuli, made her "very easy to love and to root for”.

[5] Liana Ruppert from Game Informer highlighted Alex's subtle eye movements and hesitancy in her voice, and lauded the developers of True Colors for taking the emotionally raw experience the Life is Strange series is well known for and raising it to a better standard.

[19] Carolyn Petit from Kotaku wrote in December 2021 that she was very impressed by the expressive range of Alex's face and the subtlety of her reactions, and called it her "favorite video game special effect of 2021".

[20] Writing for Gayming Magazine, Harri Chan praised the portrayal of Alex's relationship with her emotions in True Colors as "uplifting" for Asian American representation, particularly with how it handles the stigma surrounding mental health within immigrant families.

[21] On the other hand, Brian Hendershot from TheGamer argued that the lack of overt racism faced by Alex in the story of True Colors was "out of touch with reality" in light of the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans in the 2020s.