What Remains of Edith Finch

If you measure a game's quality by length of gameplay, you're not going to like this - it probably took me longer to download it than to do a full playthrough. If you measure a game by its strategic depth, this fails dismally - it's essentially a collection of minigames in various locations of the gameworld. The storyline is very well signposted (some gamers might wish for less handholding, but I thought it worked well), and the minigames are so well integrated into the story that it wasn't until about the third minigame that I recognized the fact that there *were* minigames. The game environment is full of details that add to the experience - the house is filled with books and all the clutter of a multi-generational home, which offers insights into the characters of the individual family members. This has little effect on gameplay, but is great for immersion. This is not so much a game as a work of art - at which it succeeds spectacularly. The minigames are so well This will stay in my memory for a long time. My one wish is that the developers had given us more Finches to darwin.

Despite of the beginning, this is not really a walking simulator in the sense that you can freely roam and explore a landscape like in "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" or "Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture". Actually, instead you move through a house room by room in a very linear way and each room tells the story how its former inhabitant died. These stories are usually quite short and typically presented in a unique way like a dream or comic book. Some of them could be called mini games but this wouldn't do them justice as the interactions are solely used to simulate a certain state of mind. Which works pretty well. Even though not every texture and every 3D model is totally perfect, the game looks beautiful most of the time mainly due to very good lighting and use of shaders. In quite a few rooms, you feel like moving around in a painting. Like in most other "indie" games, there are no real animated 3D models of humans though. The very few humans shown are rather static models with their faces covered, hidden or turned away. Also, all you can see of your protagonists are their hands (and feet), but there is not a single animated human face in the game. Which can be seen as a design element but is of course also the typical "indie" way of saving money. So yeah, this was an interesting experience with stories of bittersweet sadness but a very, very short one, too. It took me just a bit over 2 hours to reach the end. This brevity is partly caused by a lack of content but also by the absence of puzzles which lets you move too quickly from room to room. So I'd advise get it if it's on sale - not because it's bad, just because it's too short for the asking price.

This is the best of the 'walking simulator' genre that I've played. Captured by the attention given to the sound and details of the world before even becoming immersed in the story. It's the kind of world you want to spend more time in, since the play time of the game is short. I probably spent 5-6 hours in a playthrough, and I stop and look at everything, even listen to the frogs in the pond. Jut following the story through would easily be half of that or less. The gameplay feels smooth and intutive, and the guidance for where to go next is subtle and unobstrusive. I'm glad I picked ths up - it was an immersive torytelling delight.

I thought Gone Home and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter were wonderful story naratives but there were some spots I found slow and prolonged. I did not feel that with What Remains of Edith Finch. The overall story is whimsical with each character story being unique to the story teller. This truly added an element of fun and prevented what some walking simulators suffer from: over extended and slow pacing. . I was left wanting to know more about Edie as that story really was never completed, with good reason, but it would have been nice to finish it up. Thank you Giant Sparrow and Annapurna Interactive for a delightful experience.

This game is great! It is excellent for people who are looking for a good interactive story. Just enough videogame and a good story to boot! Enjoy this one all :)