You know that feeling when you finish a game, the credits roll, and you just... sit there? Staring at the screen. Maybe the room is a little darker than when you started. That was What Remains of Edith Finch for me. It wasn't just a "walking simulator." It was a gut punch wrapped in magical realism.
Finding games like What Remains of Edith Finch is actually harder than it looks. You aren't just looking for another game where you walk through a house. You're looking for that specific brand of "sad but beautiful" storytelling. You want a game that respects your intelligence and doesn't mind making you cry over a bathtub or a swing set.
Honestly, the "walking sim" label does a lot of these titles a disservice. It makes them sound boring. But if you’ve played through the Finch house, you know it’s about the texture of the memories. It’s about how the controls change to make you feel Lewis’s dissociation at the cannery or Molly’s hunger.
The Absolute Closest Vibes: Gone Home and Firewatch
If you haven't played Gone Home, stop reading and just go do it. It’s the closest cousin to Edith Finch in terms of environmental storytelling. You play as Katie, returning to an empty house in 1995. No family. Just a note on the door.
You’re basically a detective of the mundane. You aren't looking for murder weapons; you're looking for crumpled-up letters and cassette tapes. It’s deeply personal. It tackles 90s riot grrrl culture and the fear of coming out in a way that feels incredibly human.
Then there’s Firewatch.
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Firewatch is different because you aren't alone—well, you are, but you have Delilah. She's just a voice on the radio. The game is set in the Wyoming wilderness, and the banter between you (playing as Henry) and Delilah is some of the best writing in gaming history. Period. It deals with adult themes—not "adult" like violence, but "adult" like the slow, agonizing realization that you can't run away from your problems, even in the middle of a national forest.
Why perspective matters
In What Remains of Edith Finch, the house is a character. In Firewatch, the forest is the character. Both use the environment to tell you things the protagonist won't admit out loud.
The Weird and The Wonderful: Before Your Eyes
If you want a game that uses a "gimmick" as effectively as the Finch vignettes, you need to play Before Your Eyes.
Get this: the game uses your webcam to track your eyes.
Every time you blink, the scene jumps forward in time. You’re on a boat in the afterlife, showing a Ferryman the story of your life. You want to stay in a happy memory? You have to try not to blink. Your eyes get tired. You eventually have to shut them. And just like that, the moment is gone. It is a literal representation of how life passes us by.
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It’s brilliant. It’s heart-wrenching. It makes games like What Remains of Edith Finch feel like a broad genre of experimental empathy.
Exploring the Family Curse (and the Supernatural)
A lot of people love the "curse" aspect of the Finch family. If that's what hooked you, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is your next stop.
You play as Paul Prospero, an occult detective. You're looking for a missing boy in Red Creek Valley. It’s beautiful—one of the first games to really master photogrammetry—but it’s eerie. It leans more into the "is this real or is it in their head?" vibe that Edith Finch danced with.
- Everybody's Gone to the Rapture: It’s a quiet English village where everyone has vanished. You follow trails of light that play back the last moments of the residents.
- The Unfinished Swan: Fun fact—this was made by the same studio (Giant Sparrow) before they made Edith Finch. It’s more of a fairy tale, but you can see the DNA of their storytelling everywhere. There's even a direct narrative connection if you look closely at the paintings in the Finch house.
- Oxenfree: This is 2D, so it looks different, but the dialogue system is revolutionary. You play as teens on a haunted island. The way people interrupt each other feels like a real conversation.
What Most People Get Wrong About This Genre
People call these "walking simulators" because there isn't combat. But that’s like calling a movie a "sitting simulator."
The "gameplay" in games like What Remains of Edith Finch is actually emotional processing. You are being asked to inhabit a space and care about people who are already gone. It's a high bar for a video game to set.
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Take The Beginner's Guide. It’s a game about a developer showing you the unfinished projects of his friend. It is meta. It is uncomfortable. It’s basically a guided tour of someone’s creative insecurity. It doesn't have a family tree or a big house, but it leaves you with that same hollow, reflective feeling when you finish it.
The 2026 Perspective: New Classics to Watch
As we look at the landscape now, we're seeing a shift. Games are getting more comfortable with being "short." You don't need 40 hours of content if those 2 hours change the way you think about your own family.
Wanderstop (from the creators of The Stanley Parable and Gone Home) is a great example. It looks like a cozy tea-shop sim on the surface, but there’s a deep, vibrating anxiety underneath it. It’s that same subversion of expectations that made the Finch vignettes so iconic.
Quick Hits for your backlog:
- A Short Hike: Only 2 hours long. It’s about a bird climbing a mountain. It sounds simple, but the ending is an emotional haymaker.
- Soma: This is technically a horror game. However, if you play it on "Safe Mode" (where the monsters can't hurt you), it becomes one of the deepest philosophical meditations on identity ever written.
- Tacoma: Set on a space station. It uses augmented reality "ghosts" to let you watch the crew's final days.
How to actually enjoy these games
Don't rush. Seriously.
These games aren't meant to be "beaten." They're meant to be inhabited. If you find a book on a shelf in Gone Home, read it. If you see a photo in the Finch house, look at the background. The developers spent thousands of hours placing those objects there to tell you a story without using words.
Next steps for you:
Start with Firewatch if you want a great mystery, or Before Your Eyes if you want to see how technology can tell a story. If you’re feeling brave and want something truly existential, download Soma and turn on the peace-and-quiet mode. You’ll be thinking about it for a month.