What Remains Of Edith Finch

User Rating: 6 | What Remains of Edith Finch PC

What Remains Of Edith Finch is a story focussed experience, very much like Gone Home. You play as a female character exploring her unoccupied family home. Edith has just inherited the house that she originally grew up in, and returns there to learn about her Family tree.

Everyone in her family lived in this house and has died in a strange way - the family seemingly cursed. Some sound like exaggerated accidents, whereas others are more fantastical. You replay these scenes by visiting their memorial shrines.

Everyone's rooms have been boarded up. However, the house features hidden passages which allow you access to some rooms, whereas others are accessed through windows. For this reason, Edith is discovering some of these rooms for the first time, or hasn't been in there since her early years.

The death sequences all play out differently, and there's all kinds of interesting ideas. One story has you playing as several animals in the little girl's imagination; it's hilarious when you transform into a shark and rag-doll into the sea. Another has you cutting fish heads in a factory viewed on the right-hand side, while you also walk around as a King in a fantasy land on the left. Another switches between a comic book visual and real life as it goes through a (the film) Halloween-influenced set-up.

The gameplay throughout involves slowly walking around, performing simple gestures with the control sticks. This may be simple as winding a music box, or pulling back to move a piece of paper.

When Edith is narrating the story, the subtitles appear on the environment, often prompting you in a direction. I liked this aesthetic. The level of detail in the environment is also impressive, with the house being full of household items, creating a believable lived-in home.

Just like Gone Home, it is short at around 2 hours. The story was more interesting here, so I definitely preferred this experience.