What Remains of Edith Finch

Though it only took me just under two hours to complete, the second the credits stopped rolling I immediately restarted What Remains of Edith Finch. Each of the vignettes is so distinct and surprising that I didn't have enough time to absorb and dissect what I had just played before being whisked away to the next one. But after fully piecing together the threads of the family and sifting through the allegories of their final moments, I was left with a beautiful, heartbreaking mosaic that exudes life, even when mired in death.

Giant Sparrow's follow-up to The Unfinished Swan is a beautifully melancholy collection of parables.

An elegiac, memorable and affecting tale of the misfortunes suffered by the members of a deeply eccentric family.

Touching, sad, and brilliant; a story worth forgiving the limited interactivity to experience.

What Remains of Edith Finch is beautiful and bittersweet

The diversity in the Finches' final moments means you've always got another cool story just around the corner, and Edith's personal journey is also interesting

Indie studio Giant Sparrow conjures an adventure that blends exploration, reading, reality and fantasy into one innovative and beautiful experience

A high-water mark of narrative video game design

What elevates it from a fascinating and gorgeous experiment in presentation to an immediate contender for my game of the year is the way that the broader narrative informs the stories it contains, just as the house is home to its many rooms. Without casting judgement or becoming didactic, Edith Finch explores both the good and the harm that stories can do, and how folktale, imagination and superstition can lift us up and dash us down.

What Remains of Edith Finch is about being a human being. Human beings like to press buttons.