What Remains of Edih Finch tell us the story about Edith, this person, goes back to her home after many years of being absent, sad thing is, she´s the only person left alive from her family, she´s basically visiting an abandoned home by now, only inhabited by memories of her childhood. It´s said that the reason why they are all dead is because a curse, said curse kill every other family member who is by the last name of Finch.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a first person game, we can interact with some objects while we explore the entire house and by doing so, we´ll find more info about our family and how they met their end. All we ever do is to walk in the game, so you could say this is a walking simulator, all we can do is to wait the protagonist to do some exposition about her family or the story, is that bad? Well, if you are expecting something else, it might be your fault if you get disappointed, the game promises you an interesting story with lacking gameplay and that´s exactly what it offers, there are no puzzles in the game, there is no challenge either, it´s quite impossible to get lost in the house due to its size, so as I said, if you are expecting something else, maybe it´s not your thing.
As we progress in the story, we´ll be able to play as our family members actually, we´ll be able to play as them for a certain moments so we can see how they died, the game gets pretty creative here since all deaths have like a gimmick or an interesting way to be told. My favorite death is about this Barbara person, I don want to spoil something important so I´ll just say her death is represented through a horror comic, imitating the slasher genre we can see in popular horror films like Halloween.
If there is one thing that What Remains of Edith Finch does well, I´d say the atmosphere wins the bet, there is a clear lacking of gameplay but even so, the game manages to make you feel like you were a part of the story due to the first person thing or the narration of the whole thing. I personally visited an abandoned home, I don´t own that home but I did live there for many years when I was a child, I wasn´t there because an invitation or a visit, I was there because I felt I had to say goodbye to that place since I did grow there you know. Believe me when I tell you, I know how it feels to be in a situation like that, and that exact weird feeling being on that house, was the same I felt when playing this game, thanks to that experience, it was easy to connect wiith the game, but what about someone who hasn´t been in a situation like that? I personally played this game with a friend, and as much as I know, he hasn´t been in a situation like that and yet, he managed to get a liking to the game.
There is discussion sometimes if games like these could be considered videogames, it´s a valid point to make because of the lacking of gameplay, and I think it was a debated subject recently because of the release of Hellblade II Senua Saga; however, I do think they are videogames and they manage to bring an experience which could be complicated to imiate in films or even books, one thing is to watch someone doing certain thing or reading about the events of some character, and another thing is to literally control that character through the environment, even if its through linear places. The experience that What Remains of Edith Finch gave me, it´d be complicated to get it in another medium, of course, I´m not saying these mediums are not as inmersive, but I think you get the idea, it´s another kind of experience.
That´s all there is to it, this game took me like...three hours, maybe four and that´s because I wanted to beat it at 100% which is not hard or demanding to do, I´d personally recommend this game just because of the experience but don´t expect gameplay as I said before. Death is probably my favorite theme in videogames or in any kind of mediumoverall and this one does good use of it.
All of the screenshots were taken by me