Playing What Remains of Edith Finch

The rush of the waters of the Puget Sound fill your ears when you first open this game, with the title fading into the background as if they were clouds. You look around, and you see a ship, and you see the islands nearby. You wonder what there is to do, waiting for something to happen, when you look down. You open the book sitting on your lap, and your voice, a young girl’s voice, starts speaking, and so begins the journey into the memory the words hold.

That describes the experience of playing this game. There is no interface to speak of, only little white dots letting you know what can be interacted with. There is nothing telling you how to move (they assume you know to use the WASD keys) nor nothing else. You only look in front of you, and keep moving. Waiting for the next white dot telling you there’s something to be found there. The game, despite seeming like an open world exploration, somehow makes that an illusion, and takes you across a set path the designers have long ago decided on. As you play the game, you experience the story bit by bit, one dead family member at a time.

In this game, it is the sounds that fill your ears and the uniquely eerie atmosphere that draws you in. There is always little nuggets of information that start to get revealed to you — that something happened one fateful night, that you were left a key, that some long lost relative held a secret, that brings you to investigate further. With each step, you find out a little more about the mystery of Edith Finch and her family.