What Remains of Edith Finch

Lewis's cannery level makes your two hands act out a split mind. In Lewis Finch's vignette you grab fish on the left and chop them on the right, while a daydream maze game on the other side grows more imaginative, takes over more of the screen and finally turns first-person and fills it.

A psychiatrist's letter about Lewis's treatment for substance abuse frames the sequence. The two games are linked: locks in the imaginary world open only when you chop a fish's head off in the real one, until only faint echoes of the job remain and the two worlds merge. Mark Brown calls this "using the interactivity of the medium to draw us into the game and make us think and feel like the character in the story."

Randomize a rote task so players can't fall back on muscle memory. The cannery's fish arrive at no predictable rhythm, so players can't switch off and automate the chopping while they play the daydream game, which keeps attention genuinely divided.

"There's no predictable rhythm to the fish, so you can't completely switch off your brain and rely on rote muscle memory." The monotony of the job is still what lets Lewis's mind wander into the second game.

Simple controller actions bond the player with each Finch. Across the game, small analogue-stick actions open doors, peer through letterboxes and twist can openers, and vignettes cast you as different animals, swinging back and forth or flying a kite.

Game Maker's Toolkit picked Edith Finch as 2017's standout walking simulator, ahead of Fullbright's Tacoma, which turned the audio diary into interactive cutscenes with augmented reality ghosts.