Do have a go and enjoy being punched square in the heart by grief.
Edith Finch is returning to her family home years after they suddenly abandoned it one night.
It is a stunning home, with rooms added over years until it rises wonkily into the sky.
While the story is grim, the setting pushes hard into whimsical for contrast.
A great game for fans of staring at stuff.
And the obligatory audiologs and diaries are expanded into something stunning.
It is tragic to play through people’s deaths, though they’re often beautiful.
They can poetically reflect a person’s life too, celebrating them at their end.
I want so much to talk about some but it’s best you see for yourself.
The game’s two or three hours long, so hop to.
It holds up, and I am surprised to realise it might have quietly become my favourite explore-o-story.
And the dreamy deaths are still both astonishing and affecting.
It is curious to vibe with the game’s mood more on a second playthrough.
My father died and, soon after, a beloved uncle.
I like the many layers of stories in the game.
The lives of the Finch family revolved around death.
She more actively shaped certain stories rather than confront them, too.
Now here’s Edith come home to learn the stories and secrets and maybe pull them together.
Stories have prospered after dad’s death.
I’ve heard new stories from across his life, and found more by looking through his keepsakes.
Some family secrets and shames have been entrusted to my generation so we might better understand.
Like all people, my dad was a knot of contrasts and contradictions.
He was perhaps spikier than some.
He was often my hero, and I was often terrified of him.
Then he was in a hospice bed, unable to speak and eventually, probably, unable to listen.
God, I wish that had worked like it does in the movies.
In it, his boss detailed the many responsibilities dad had shown no interest in.
He never grew to care about the job but he learned to fake it.
And he kept that letter.
I like to think he was proud of the scolding, rebellious young punk that he once was.
I couldn’t tell one all-encompassing story of My Dad’s Life.
I don’t want to.
