For this assignment, I played What Remains of Edith Finch, a walking simulator developed by Giant Sparrow. The game is available on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and iOS. It’s aimed at players who enjoy narrative-driven exploration. As my first walking simulator, I sometimes became lost or struggled with unfamiliar controls. Yet I gradually see how walking tells the story by controlling where players move, what they notice, what action the environment affords, and how quickly information is revealed. Rather than simply telling players about the Finch family, it asks players to reconstruct their memories through exploration and interaction.
The game carefully releases the information through environmental storytelling. Instead of presenting the family’s history through long dialogues, information is distributed throughout the physical environment. Players uncover the story one room at a time. The house feels almost frozen in time, like an archive of memories. For example, the missing-person posters scattered along the road immediately create suspense at the beginning of the game. After each family member dies, their bedroom is sealed, preserving everything exactly as it was when they last lived there. Everyday objects—Chinese takeout containers, photographs, books, toys, trophies, and decorations—communicate details about each person’s personality, interests, historical era, and social background. Rather than reading a biography, players reconstruct each family member’s identity through the traces they left behind. Walking therefore becomes an act of discovery.
This process depends heavily on attention. The environmental design guides players without relying much on objective markers or arrows. For example, in Molly’s story, light subtly indicates where to move next. Small sounds, such as creaking doors, signal newly accessible spaces, while the bird attracts attention through both movement and chirping sound when player controls the cat. During Edie’s chapter, the huge old house functions as a Weenie, intuitively guiding players towards it. When the house becomes obscured by fog, I immediately felt lost , aligning with Edie’s disorientation and confusion. Other environmental cues, including open windows, broken fences, crawlspaces, and narrow passages, naturally suggest where to go next. Even the floating captions becomes part of the environment rather than a separate interface, encouraging players to walk toward it. Every step determines what players notice next, and therefore what part of the story becomes available. Walking becomes movement through information as much as movement through space.
Closely related to attention is the concept of affordance. The game rarely explains interactions with written instructions because the environment itself communicates what actions are possible. A cracked doorway suggests it can be pushed open. A narrow tunnel invites crawling. A ladder encourages climbing, while a swing naturally invites the player to build momentum. Other interactions are equally intuitive: players rotate door handles and music boxes, fly a kite, turn the pages of a sketchbook, and operate a camera shutter with little explicit instruction. These affordances make exploration feel natural and maintain immersion because players learn through interaction rather than tutorials.
The physical design of movement also shapes the player’s emotional experience. Throughout the game, I looked through peepholes, crawled through tiny tunnels, squeezed through hidden passages, climbed across rooftops, and walked through dark corridors. Narrow spaces create feelings of confinement and tension that reinforce the game’s mysterious atmosphere, while open forests and ocean cliffs provide moments of freedom and reflection. Music further strengthens these emotions: Barbara’s chapter uses dramatic music and comic-book presentation to build suspense, whereas Gregory’s chapter feels playful despite foreshadowing tragedy. Before players fully understand each story, they have already begun to feel it through movement, space, lighting, and sound.
Another creative design choice is that every family member’s story introduces a unique way of moving, allowing players to physically enact another person’s experience. In Gregory’s chapter, players control bath toys; Calvin’s story revolves around building momentum on a swing; Molly transforms into different animals driven by hunger. Lewis’s chapter has players simultaneously cut fish repetitively while navigating an increasingly elaborate fantasy world. The divided controls mirror Lewis’s divided mind, allowing players to experience his growing separation from reality. These changing movement mechanics make every story feel embodied rather than observed. Rather than listening to Edith narrate, players inhabit each character’s way of interacting with the world, and experience their death. The stories constantly blur imagination and reality, making them feel more like expressive art than literal retellings of events.
Interestingly, my own frustrations with the game also revealed an important design challenge. Because this was my first walking simulator, I occasionally struggled with the controls. The game assumes familiarity with first-person conventions, such as using one side of the screen to move and the other to control the camera. Sometimes I searched online because I was unsure how to perform an interaction or where to go. Some sequences (e.g. catching the rabbit), also required many attempts. During these moments, my attention shifted from interpreting the story to solving an interface problem. If walking is the primary storytelling mechanic, unnecessary movement difficulty [i.e. the challenge doesn’t contribute to the story itself] or unsuccessful navigation can temporarily interrupt the narrative. Designing movement therefore requires sufficient guidance, especially for new players, so players remain engaged with story.
Despite these occasional frustrations, What Remains of Edith Finch demonstrates how walking itself can become a narrative language. Through environmental storytelling, attention design, affordances, embodied interaction, and paced exploration, movement becomes the primary narrative mechanism. Rather than simply moving through space, players move through memories, gradually piecing together a story that could not be told in the same way through dialogue alone.
