What Remains of Edith Finch

I wasn't too sure what to make of The Unfinished Swan, Giant Sparrow's last game; while I appreciated and enjoyed it, it felt like a rare example of a game that's actually too clever. Its central mechanic, turning a 3D platformer into a puzzle game by forcing the player to paint their own path through a blank world, followed in the footsteps of Portal by wrapping the first person shooter genre in a pacifist shell, and while it was a great concept and it had an immediately striking and appealing aesthetic, there wasn't really much more to it than that. It lacked Portal's depth and humour, and as a consequence could never really make that step up from goodness into greatness.

For their second attempt, Giant Sparrow have looked toward Gone Home. What Remains of Edith Finch is, on a fundamental level, pretty much the same game - a woman returns to her deserted family home and must figure out her family secrets by exploring the house. The difference this time is that, instead of losing something key from the game that inspired it, What Remains of Edith Finch expands on it, and then expands on it some more. Where Gone Home was a story about one woman, this is now a story about an entire family, spanning the generations. Instead of playing as one protagonist, you find yourself jumping into the shoes of several different members of the same family, as the game weaves an anthology of vignettes into its central narrative, both broadening the scope and diversifying the gameplay considerably. It's only two hours long, but my word, a hell of a lot is crammed into those two hours.

The central conceit is that you play as the titular Edith Finch, the last surviving member of her family. Your mother had just died, leaving behind a key in her will, which Edith knows will unlock something inside the house where she grew up, a bizarre, jagged building put together by her great-great-grandfather and his daughter after they travelled to the United States from Norway. You eventually learn that the family had left Norway in order to escape a curse that kept killing them off. It did not work; the curse followed them. One by one, the family members who lived there died, eventually leading Edith's mother to seal off all the bedrooms (which her mother, Edith Snr, had turned into shrines), move out with Edith, and abandon the elderly Edith Snr, who refuses to leave the house even if it means being left there on her own.

Uncovering the fate of each family member means that What Remains of Edith Finch is, when it boils down to it, a game about death. You would be forgiven for assuming that it would be a bit miserable, given that a little bit of character and humour is exactly what their last game lacked. You'd be wrong, though. This game is absolutely bursting at the seams with it. As evidence, I offer up one absolutely remarkable scene, where you learn about Gregory. Gregory's death is, on paper, the most tragic in the entire game; he dies at the age of one, drowning in the bath after his mother is distracted by a phonecall she receives from the baby's father, and a subsequent argument they have during a period in their relationship that will result in their divorce. And yet there is barely any tragedy to this scene. It's introduced by the divorce papers, including a note from the father saying the he always wondered why Gregory was so happy, and speculated about what he might be seeing. Well, you get to see it, and it's a ballet - [Work12844] to be precise - as performed in the bath by rubber ducks and other toys. It's absolutely lovely, and captures the wonder of a child's imagination as well as anything I've ever seen in a game (or in anything, for that matter). As Gregory falls below the water, surrounding by his toys, and swims toward the light (which is represented here by the plughole), it feels....almost victorious and celebratory, somehow. If this isn't the most charming and heartwarming way a baby's death has ever been presented I'd be astonished. The imagination and wit of that scene is repeated throughout, as the game has you acting out people's deaths with activities that, more often than not, represent fun, and the simple pleasures of life - flying a kite, playing on a swing, reading a comic book, taking pictures of your family. One scene has you performing your character's deeply monotonous job with the right analogue stick while playing through an increasingly detailed adventure game with the left; even the depiction of getting bored at work has an amusing charm and a sense of wide-eyed wonder to it.

And for all this life and fun, What Remains of Edith Finch is a game that manages to touch on some very heavy subject matter, and treat those subjects with dignity and gravity. Death is one, of course, but drug addiction, childhood trauma, depression, mental illness, and suicide are all part of this family tree, and the game repeatedly resists the temptation to batter you about the head with misery over it - it always takes care to remember that people who suffer from those things are still people, and are defined by more than just their conditions. This is a game with character and moral fibre, and its protagonists follow suit.

Capable of bringing both a tear and a smile to my face, sometimes within the same minute, it feels like a very, very long time since a game has hit me this hard. Sometimes you just know on first exposure that something - a book, a film, a TV show, a song - is going to stay with you for years, and I'm absolutely certain What Remains of Edith Finch, a deeply considered and beautifully realised work, is one of them.

"What Remains of Edith Finch" might not be the best graphic novel-like game around, but it's surely worth its three hours of gameplay. In this game, you get to basically walk around your family's abandoned household and get to know about the story of each of your relatives from letters, diaries and other objects found in their rooms.

The strength of this game is the wide variety of visual styles and gameplay choices used to portray each character's story. It's like going through a demo disc crammed with games of different genres. However, while some stories had astonishing visuals and highly imaginative ideas (above all Lewis' and Gregory's stories), some end up being rather dull or feel like they could have been expanded a little more (Calvin's and Walter's stories).

In each individual episode, the storytelling has good pacing and sometimes even deals with deep themes, but overall it just felt that there was nothing consistent to tie up all stories together. Still, it's definitely a refreshing and unique gaming experience, actually kind of impressive for an independent game.