What Remains of Edith Finch is a first-person exploration video game developed by Giant Sparrow and published by Annapurna Interactive.

As Edith, the player explores the Finch house and surrounding wilderness through a semi-linear series of rooms, footpaths, crawlspaces, and secret passages.

Having the option to skip multiple sequences, the player interacts with objects placed at these memorials to progress through the story, each of which inspire a unique vignette revealing the circumstances of each person's death.

These vignettes vary wildly in medium, perspective, genre, stylization, and gameplay mechanics, as well as intent and veracity of their source; therefore providing a series of unique and semi-self-contained stories throughout the game, oftentimes evoking themes of magical realism, the total accuracy of which the player is made to doubt.

In 1937, in an effort to escape the curse after the death of his wife Ingeborg and newborn son Johann, Edith's great-great-grandfather Odin Finch emigrates from Norway to the United States.

At 10 years old, Molly dies after ingesting fluoridated toothpaste and holly berries due to her mother's neglect;[1] at 16, Barbara is murdered after a heated argument with her boyfriend Rick;[2] at 11, Calvin falls to his death after swinging off the edge of a cliff; at 49, Edie's husband Sven dies during a construction accident at the house; and, at 53, after spending 30 years living in a bunker beneath the house, Walter finally decides to leave and is immediately hit by a train upon exiting.

What Remains of Edith Finch is the second game developed by the team at Giant Sparrow, led by creative director Ian Dallas.

The concept of What Remains of Edith Finch grew out from trying to create something sublime, as described by Dallas, "an interactive experience that evokes what it feels like to have a moment of finding something beautiful, yet overwhelming".

Initially, they considered a scenario similar to The Canterbury Tales but set in a modern-day high school,[3] but soon recognized that placing these deaths in context of a cursed family would work better, forming an anthology work like The Twilight Zone, while borrowing concepts from the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, which similarly involved the overlapping stories of various family members.

Lewis' had been heavily decorated with posters and other items that indicated his drug abuse, and the team realized this shared a lot about his character they did not have to communicate via narration or the death sequence.

[3] Dallas credits suggestions made by Dino Patti of Playdead and Jenova Chen of thatgamecompany, following a playtest of the game, of inspiring the pregnancy and childbirth facets to close out the story after all the death that they had experienced.

[9] In the interim, Sony started to wane on its support for independently developed video games, and Santa Monica Studios dropped the title from its lineup.

[5][10] Annapurna relaxed some of the deadlines that Sony had originally had for the title, allowing Giant Sparrow to keep and refine some of the more significant mini-experiences they created and would have otherwise had to cut under a tighter schedule.

[11] One of the most-changed stories was Walter's, Edie's son that withdrew after the death of his older sister Barbara and locked himself away in a basement bunker, only decades later deciding to leave via a tunnel and getting hit by a passing train.

The sequence involving Barbara, who gained fame as an adolescent scream queen and who longs to return to Hollywood but dies on her birthday on Halloween night, is played out in the pages of a comic book styled after Tales from the Crypt.

Following several horror genre tropes, her boyfriend intends to inspire real fear to induce her to regain her famous scream, but they then seem to be stalked by a serial killer whom she disables, only to be scared to death by either friends throwing her a surprise birthday party or supernatural monsters or a band of hoodlums in costume.

[5] What Remains of Edith Finch received near-universal acclaim across all platforms upon which it was released (PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch), according to review aggregator Metacritic.

"[17] Marty Sliva's 8.8/10 score on IGN stated that "What Remains of Edith Finch is a gorgeous experience and one of the finest magical-realism stories in all of games.

"[22] Andy Chalk's gave a score of 91 out of 100 on PC Gamer and said it was "Touching, sad, and brilliant; a story worth forgiving the limited interactivity to experience.

"[18] Griffin Vacheron from GameRevolution gave the game a score of 3.5 stars out of 5, saying that "If you're more like me, though, and deviate from the assessment of tragic events as an inherently higher form, then you may find the Finch's tale doesn't activate your almonds as much as it probably should.

Still, as a spooky, logical evolution of the Gone Homes and Firewatches of the world, with an impressive short-story style to boot, What Remains of Edith Finch is ultimately worth your time if its premise grabs you.

The final farewell left me crying, but What Remains of Edith Finch is, without doubt, love," was Susan Arendt's conclusion on Polygon with a score of 9/10.

What Remains of Edith Finch plays with those established conventions to create a beautiful story that breaks your heart, while making you smile just as much.