What Remains of Edith Finch

What Remains of Edith Finch was developed by Giant Sparrow and originally released in 2017 for the Playstation 4 and PC. The game also saw a release on Xbox One later in 2017, and came to the Switch in 2019. You play as Edith Finch, the last living member of the Finch family. After her mother’s death she has returned to her childhood home to discover her family’s past.

Shortly after release, the game caught my interest. I ended up purchasing a copy on Steam, but it was lost in my backlog for at least a year. Despite owning it, the Steam version wasn’t the version I actually played. I ended up grabbing the Xbox One version off of Game Pass, and finally took the time to beat it. Sadly, I think playing on Xbox might have done myself a disservice. The game has noticeable stutter and texture pop-in, which might indicate that the performance targets were just a touch too lofty.

That is really the only negative thing I can say about my experience. The game is more or less a walking simulator with bits of varied gameplay interspersed throughout the narrative. If you aren’t into games of this nature, where the focus falls squarely on a narrative driven experience, then this game isn’t for you. The story hooks you in pretty early, and I did not put down for the entire 2-3 hour experience. The length does seem short on paper, but it really does seem like the perfect length as the game ends just before it gets stale.

What Remains of Edith Finch is an excellent experience that will leave you full of an impressive number of different emotions given the relative short length of the game. Go play it.