Each story offers a chance to experience the life of a different family member with stories ranging from the early 1900s to the present day. The gameplay and tone of the stories are as different as the family members themselves. The only constant is that each story is played from a first-person perspective and each ends with that family member’s death. As Edith, players will be exploring this house and eventually unlocking bedrooms for all the various family members. Inside each bedroom is something that tells a story about that person’s life (like a diary, or a collection of photos, etc).

The Finch family house is crazy. The family has been living there for the last hundred years and each generation adds on to it. By the time Edith arrives the house is an enormous artifact influenced by a range of eccentric, stubborn folks.

What Remains of Edith Finch may sound like a horror game but it isn’t. It’s not a game that’s designed to scare people but instead make you feel like looking up at the night sky and being simultaneously amazed by the majesty of the universe and humbled by how fragile and short your own life is. It echoes what it feels like to be a child: encountering forces beyond your ability to understand or control. That can definitely feel scary, but it isn’t meant to.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a surreal experience that’s grounded in a familiar world. The deaths in each of the stories are a little bizarre but the really strange thing is death itself.