Rating: 9/10

I reckon that this is among the best in the genre--narrative-driven first-person exploration game if you're nice, walking simulator if you're sassy (and I'm always sassy)--and deserves to be mentioned alongside some of the greats, like Gone Home, which this seems to owe a lot to for the first little bit, before it branches off into its own thing.

The bulk of it still involves you walking around as you click on the objects that the game allows you to interact with. You explore a house, finding out about each member of this family, while you try to come to grips with your own tale. In this way, What Remains is not original, but luckily it does not take long to craft an identity of its own.

The originality comes in the form of each individual story. They range in tone, and some are incredibly short, but they all offer something. I won't spoil any of them, but some mess with the gameplay, some are more simplistic. It adds a variety that this genre usually lacks, which keeps things fresh, which aids the experience of figuring out who these people are and what became of them. Sometimes it's uncomfortable, sometimes it is as simple as holding down a button, but then there are others that perfectly demonstrate how games can tell stories in unique ways that other mediums cannot.

The writing in this genre suffers from being way too vague, pretentiously so, which undermines the message that these games are trying to portray. People only say a little bit in order to push you along, but it's annoying because nobody really talks like that, and it's not especially interesting in fiction either. What Remains is still vaguely weird, but not overly so, which makes the story much more interesting and easily digestible. It helps that the game is quite short and doesn't overstay its welcome, so it doesn't have to force anything onto us. It also uses a few different narrative styles which was welcome.

Even the way the words shift, form or break apart ties into the idea of stories and how they impact our lives. Words are infinitely important and this game embraces that in a way that is uncommon.

If you're looking for a game with a sad story that still manages to end in an upbeat way, all things considered, or you're just a fan of the genre, you should kill a couple hours with this one.

The Finches are an incredibly imaginative, creative and thoughtful family, and they're also cursed to die tragic, ironic and often too early. As Edith Finch, the youngest in a long-line, you explore the 100 year old house you grew up in to learn the fate of each member of your family.

Exploring the house itself is a joy, and the game only once makes you re-tread your steps, making the entire journey feel like a beautiful history lesson. You can gleam so much information, implied and shown just by exploring the house itself, but then finding a piece of writing will turn the game into a playable vignette from the perspective of that person. Each vignette is immensely surprising and somehow, consistently a celebration of life in the last moments before death. There are so many stories here to tell, and each one is made immensely interesting from the expressive game-play at your fingertips.Simple actions like opening a can, riding a swingset and flying a kite become so memorable. The game is absolutely magical because each of these sections can become an embodiment of who that person was, and how they saw the world around them.

The house itself is a testament to people, people who are weird, who sometimes make irrational decisions and who strive to leave behind a legacy. Therefore the house itself, feels incredibly 'lived in' with specific objects everyone can identify, a packet of soy sauce, a weekly medicine container and the little latches on wood-picket fences. The details of this world are there to remind us of who we are and how universal many experiences can be.

None more universal than growing up and eventually (often far too soon), dying. Our lives are temporary, but memories can last forever, and those that love us won't forget us.

The "walking simulator" branch of indie games has become increasingly prevalent and it's easy to feel a touch of cynicism towards yet another game where you explore and "uncover a mystery" and whatnot. There also seem to be a lot where the "mystery" is in the past of the protagonist's family, and you're exploring their creepy old house. And if you're prone to such cynicism, the early stages of What Remains of Edith Finch may not be promising.

Protagonist returning home? Check. Burning family mystery? Check. Will from the mother leaving a key to the mystery? Check. Slow walking and exploration of house? Check and check.

But here is what genre tags fail to capture: Strong writing and enough creativity to deliver an experience that is constantly otherworldly.

Edith Finch is returning home. She's 17, 18 years old and her mom died the week prior. Her whole family is dead--excepting, perhaps, a brother who disappeared and whose body was never found--and the family home is where answers may lie. It is, after all, her house now--a house that has been abandoned since her mother moved them out, a house that looks like Arthur Weasley (that's a Harry Potter reference, y'all) got drunk in a Terry Gilliam drawing (and a Monty Python reference!) before its construction.

First thing I did after the game loaded was fire up the pause menu to take a quick look at the settings. The pause menu features a family tree. And I start looking at this family tree and noticed an odd pattern. A lot of people have died young. 21 years old. 23 years old. 11 years old. It's noticeable. And on the opposite end--perhaps even more notable--only a handful have reached anything you could call a "ripe old age." This is a family for whom reaching 50 years is a crowning achievement.

I honestly think anyone with the mildest interest in the game should just fire it up and start playing without reading anything about it--including the rest of this review. Not knowing the oddities that are scattered throughout the game makes them much more impactful.

Well, I say "game," but What Remains of Edith Finch lands much closer to interactive fiction than most walking simulators. There's no puzzle solving, no items that need to be combined, no flips switched, no maze to navigate. You might be fooled at certain points (particularly early in the game) into thinking that it has at least some of these elements, especially as the house reveals a maze-like interior, but no. There's one basic path that reveals itself organically, and you will follow it. There won't be obstacles, there won't be scares--there will just be rooms and revelations. But you'll feel as though you're finding your own path, as though you could have done any of this in any order you wanted.

The real draw, however, is in exploring the lives of the people who had lived in the house. The lives of siblings, uncles, great aunts. Everyone has a room. Everyone has a story. And you get a glimpse of their story through a playable flashback. This is truly where What Remains of Edith Finch shines. Each flashback is presented differently, with its own perspective and surprises. Some are quick, others feel like whole chapters on their own. They are best experienced blind, but I will spoil one just to give you an idea how these vary from the normal storytelling. In one of her uncle's rooms, Edith finds a poem written (if memory serves) by her mother. It's about her uncle, and him flying a kite. And so we become the uncle, holding the kite. And as Edith reads the poem, you fly the kite. The mechanics are spot on using both joysticks. You can look at one joystick as wind direction, and the other as kite steering, so you get a bit of that "pulled in two directions" feel that kites often have. There is an actual goal to the kite flying--not enough to qualify as a puzzle, but also just nitpicky enough that I floundered for a few minutes before realizing what was going on--but it doesn't matter. It's one of the weaker scenarios, yet it still felt beautiful, still felt perfect. It gave us wonderful mechanics with brash creativity. It's lovely.

What Remains of Edith Finch is one of the best examples of using a relatively new storytelling medium to really tell a story without skimping on the strengths of that medium. Highly recommended.

Well, that was delightful.

I've been interested in this game for a long while, but once it was available for free on the Epic Games store (and will be until January 24), I really had no excuse not to play it.

This style of "walking simulator" game has some unique challenges. If the narrative lacks emotional weight, it won't justify its prominence in lieu of more traditional gameplay elements. But if the game is just a series of unrelenting emotional gut-punches, it won't be as fun as other games you could play. One of the reasons I gave Tacoma a better review than Gone Home or Firewatch was that I could imagine myself wanting to play it more than once without, y'know, crying.

I think What Remains of Edith Finch might strike the best balance of any game in the genre I've played. In particular I was impressed by how the game varied the techniques it used to tell each family member's tale. These stories have emotional weight, but they're conveyed in a way that's merciful to the player and complimented by just enough whimsy to keep you wanting to explore... a task that's made very natural and intuitive thanks to a series of wonderfully subtle usability decisions.

All this would be a waste if the game's story wasn't worth telling, but I loved that, too. There's so much to dig into within the individual stories but also the overarching themes of family, fate and tragedy.

If you like this style of game, I highly recommend it.

My dad died abruptly. He'd been on a business trip, came back with a cough and a week later he just wasn't there anymore. I remember my brother coming down stairs and telling me the news in the same way my dad had alot earlier in my life when my mom had passed away. This frustration on his face, curt, straight to the point, ‘daddy's dead’, and with this almost stoicism he just left the room.

It took me a while to cry, I've always had this odd relationship with death. I can't quite purse it in my head, the idea that a person will exist your entire life and at a specific moment in time they will simply cease to. It's only when I was handed his glasses that It clicked, I'd only ever seen them on his face or in the case beside his bed, I don't think I'd ever touched them once and now, there they were, in my hands cause he didn't need them anymore.

Over time the house that he'd built grew emptier as each of us moved out, as we talked less and less to one another. There was little tethering us together anymore, this two story six bedroom house that once felt warm and too often crowded, now only had echoes to offer us.

I understand Dawn's need to lock everything in place, each room a memorial to a life lived, but also a warning, that no matter what you build, no matter how much it means to you, one day it will be gone, and you will be gone with it. Knowing that, we still build, and we still love, and rush headlong towards the cliffside because what else can we do?

What remains of Edith Finch is the kind of art that I feel honored to have been alive to experience. Bravo. Truly, bravo. I was sitting here looking for a pallette cleanser after 80 hours in Tsushima and while waiting for SILKSOOOOONG! I did not expect to be completely floored by one of the most poignant studies on grief, love and the threads in between us all that I have ever had the pleasure to move through. Again, Bravo.

There are games that are more about the experience than the gameplay, and this is definitely one of them.

In What Remains of Edith Finch you see and experience firsthand the death of most of the members of the Finch family, all of them in different ages and circumstances. None of them is exactly the same, and the format, the tone and even the gameplay is different for all of them, so you won't know that to expect until you are in their respective story.

This is a short game, and you will complete it in 2 hours even if you take your time, but I think it has the perfect length, as you get to know all the family, the life of the protagonist, and the motive of her return to the house after years of abandoning it, so it is like an interactive movie where every single line is impactful and contributes to the whole experience.

I definitely recommend playing it blind, so you can be surprised with how dark and creative the deaths can be, although I wouldn't say this is a story about people dying, but a story about the importance of cherishing your own life and not obsessing over things out of your control.