Maxine "Max" Caulfield is a fictional character from the Life Is Strange video game series published by Square Enix.

In 2015's Life Is Strange, Max Caulfield is portrayed with the ability to rewind time to supplement the game's core gameplay mechanism.

[2] While the lead character rewinds time, visual effects such as post-processing, double exposure, and overlapping screen space particles were employed as an artistic approach to be portrayed.

Her old-fashioned camera symbolizes nostalgia and a longing for the past, while her reluctance to make decisions reflects the weight of consequence.

[17][18] Maxine "Max" Caulfield, is the main protagonist of the game, and is a twelfth-grade student attending Blackwell Academy during October 2013.

[19] During photography class with her teacher Mark Jefferson, Max experiences a vision of a lighthouse being destroyed by a swelling tornado.

Leaving for the restroom to regain her composure, she witnesses classmate Nathan Prescott (Nik Shriner) kill a young woman in a fit of rage.

In a single, sudden effort, she develops the ability to rewind time[20] and rescues the woman, revealed to be her childhood best friend, Chloe Price.

Continuing their investigation, Max and Chloe obtain clues leading them to an abandoned barn owned by the influential Prescott family.

Max follows Chloe at the school party to confront Nathan, believing he will target fellow student Victoria Chase.

Max is kidnapped and held captive in the "Dark Room", a makeshift photography studio and torture chamber hidden underneath the Prescott barn where Jefferson has been drugging and photographing young girls.

Max travels back to the moment in which she took the gallery photo, which eventually leads her to sojourn alternative realities as they devolve into a dreamscape nightmare.

[27] In the downloadable content bonus episode of Life Is Strange: Before the Storm (2017), "Farewell", a 13-year old Max Caulfield struggles to break the news to Chloe that her family is moving to Seattle in three days.

She soon discovers that the killer is her future self, who did it to end a chaotic time vortex and also learns that Safi possesses the ability to shapeshift.

Eventually, Max and Safi's powers create a storm similar to the one from Arcadia Bay, leading Max to journey through a transformed Caledon University and past visions of her time in Arcadia Bay before eventually reuniting with Safi and returning to the real world, merging both timelines together in the process.

The two return to Arcadia Bay and Max realizes that she is drifting in and out of different realities, a phenomenon that she refers to as “flickers.” After a conversation with Chloe about their romantic feelings towards each other and multiple experiences in different realities, Max decides to fully jump into a different timeline and abandon her original one in order to stop the chaos of the flickers.

This prompts her to begin to make efforts to return to her original timeline with Tristan's help after revealing to Chloe and Rachel the truth about who she is.

With Max coming to terms with the tragedy and loss caused by the storm, she is able to speak at Victoria's memorial exhibition, honoring the resilience of the town.

[37][38] For their work with Max Caulfield, Dontnod received an award nomination from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences for Outstanding Achievement in Character at the 19th Annual D.I.C.E.

[39][40] In 2018, IGN published an article by Seamus Mullins where he lauded Max as the most complex video game protagonist he has ever experienced.

"[43] Metro commented that Max Caulfield has it all, claiming that "She's witty, intelligent and her outlook on life is perfectly characterised via her music taste.