What Remains of Edith Finch

There are many languages available, but you can't change it in game (bad choice for me). In the game installation folder there is an installation_setup.exe to set it. It is a walking simulator and a very short game. And the story didn't connected with me at all. (I cannot say really why to avoid spoilers) I think I was expecting something else. I wouln't recommend for people like me. (I played 2 chapters of life is strange and liked them)

This is a game where you go along the only route and move the mouse when it lets you. As you do so it tells a fragmentary, incomplete and silly tale about a bunch of unlikable people and idiots whose misfortunes seem well-deserved. That's an awful description, but I felt like the game was being antagonistic whenever I loaded it, and struggling to the end was a chore. It started badly. I always check the game controls before playing - but they aren't listed. And you can't change them, so are stuck with what they set. And even those aren't made clear. So I had to hit random keys to find things like the zoom button, and - ridiculously - what I was unable to do. How do you run? How do you climb? How do you step into the edge of the pond? So right from the start I was struggling to even connect with basic things because the devs didn't put them in. The controls were also inconsistent. Sometimes you click on something, it opens - other times nothing happens until you move the mouse, or hold a button and move the mouse, and try and guess whether you move it by pushing up, down, left, right, rotating, clicking, whatever. It's kind of half-hearted and pointless physicality, aimed at making you think you are interacting. It's a system that works much better in older games like Penumbra. The story is melodramatic and silly. Someone was killed by monsters? Someone else lives in a room in a cellar for 30 years? An old woman builds rooms on top of the house? It was frustrating and confusing. Saves - you can't save when you want. Sometimes I quit the game in boredom, came back another day, and had to sit through the same cutscenes and voiceovers. NB: I liked Gone Home and Tacoma, but EF felt overblown and even more linear, with even less freedom. Another sin - you play a character, but the game purposefully hides what you're supposed to know. So left wondering WTF about stuff because you're left in the dark. That's not good storytelling, it is just frustrating.

A young woman returns to an abandoned house trying to discover what happened to her family. Sound familiar? Finch sticks close to the genre convention of exploring a mostly linear environment and finding documents and objects to piece together a story. However, with the fate of each family member presented as a separate mostly interactive experience, the abandoned house, in itself a cool and quirky place rich with environmental narration, soon becomes a sort of overworld to a dozen highly varied minigames that take this above and beyond your typical walking sim. Of course, the magical realism of its narrative, with an ancient family curse and all, allows for flights of fancy, as well as shortcuts and omissions, that wouldn't be acceptable in more down-to-earth games like Gone Home (2013) or Firewatch (2017), so any direct comparison could hardly be fair. In a 2017 Gamespot interview, creative director Ian Dallas explained that they basically cobbled together prototypes that they felt captured the sublime beauty and intense emotion of characters facing their deaths (somewhat twisting his words here), so don't expect super nuanced characterisations or perfect verisimilitude. Still, while I did cry my eyes out first playing this in 2018, Finch neither wants nor needs your empathy. It's not about people per se, it's about the unique shiver you get from things coming to a close, the one thing that never fails to affirm the continuity of life going on. Each individual death in this game is a terrible tragedy, but seen through the medium of the story, there is a tragicomic gentleness to all this history. Story is what remains. "And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth..." "And when you look at that house, at that history of imagination and stubbornness and madness, any of it seems possible." I know of no other game quite like this. If you enjoy narrative games at all, these are four hours you don't want to miss.

FInished in less than 3 hours and i am pretty slow on most games. That in mind, i was ready for it to be over but at the same time really appreciated the game and the art/style. I do recommend this game at full price if you like to play a story... Kind of like an interactive movie. I liked the northwest references having grown up in alaska many of my friends have slimed fish to put their way through college and you get to work in a fish processing plant... Graphics were good, as well as sound. Controls easy and it helps step you through most of the game. It reminds me a little of Firewatch. Really like the end credits. Glad i got it drm free on gog. It is obvious that a lot of work went in to the game. One and Done. Doubt i wil play again.

I guess there are not many games out there (if it is a game... i come to that in a moment) that leave you with a desire to sit on the porch and look into the evening sun, with a mug coffee in hand. This one does. I don't want to spoil the experience, so, no content discussion from me. Just some short pointers- take it slow, there is an awful lot of content to look at and set the mood. Some puzzles are a little bit on the moon logic side, or more precise, are somewhat not intuitive in regard of what is expected to happen as a result. Overall playing time was for me around 3 hours, and exactly this is what costs it the 5th star. I would have liked a bit more content. The content that is there is fantastic however. Don't expect adrenaline rushes, it's more of an story told by solving mild puzzles and exploration. tl:dr + graphis and sound + story + no crashes or whatnot during playtime - a little bit on the short side Would buy again.