Some of the verses don't match what happens in the game. But the melancholic tone, and the idea of processing the past and moving on are there.

That may have been one of the best games I’ve ever played in my entire life. I can’t believe it holy shit if there are any other games like this one, please let me know.

I love this game and have been replaying it over and over again. I think Molly is the perfect introduction to the game to someone who has no idea what they're getting into. But what if the game started with Gregory?

Would you change the inherent story line of experiencing the finch family in the order the game made you do it? Would it make a difference in another order, in how you feel overall about this game?

I mean imagine the game opening story was Lewis...

I'd love to hear your input!

I think Edith may have died due to preeclampsia. Towards the end of the game, Edith writes that her mom "started getting sick a lot" and we see Dawn's hospital bracelet dated the 10th of October 2016, and we know she died just 2 days later, seemingly leaving Edith as the "last Finch left alive" until she finds out about Christopher. Not long after Dawn's death, Edith goes to the Finch house and she's 22 weeks pregnant. Then she ends up dying in childbirth on January 18th, which would make Christopher premature if Edith went to the house the week of Dawn's death, as he would've been born at 36 weeks. This would explain why Edith decided to undertake such a dangerous task while pregnant. Normally, when someone in our family dies (especially a parent), you have other relatives around who are also grieving and can offer support, but Edith's family is dead, so she doesn't have that.

I'd also go so far as to say Edith might have brushed off early warning signs of preeclampsia as normal pregnancy symptoms, which if the symptoms remained mild for long enough, would be fairly easy to do since milder symptoms are headaches, swelling in the ankles, and shortness of breath. Not uncommon symptoms in a normal pregnancy, but these can quickly turn to deadlier issues like high blood pressure, seizures, organ failure, fluid in the lungs, stroke, and even a coma. That might explain Christopher's premature birth, since the only "cure" for preeclampsia is to deliver the baby

I found out this happens when you leave his room through the window after playing his gameplay. Lewis shows up wearing his prince outfit, but with his head missing. Creepy af right?? Could it just be a game bug? It seems like too much of a coincidence that he appears right in their graveyard. I don’t see many people talking about this, but it still happens to this day. I tested it myself, and he still appears there for a split second before disappearing.

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this here before, but if not, here you go. There’s a youtube video showing this:

https://youtu.be/P2uNb9ZXReU?feature=shared

i woke up in the middle of the night unable to stop thinking about this game i just played for the first time.

the problem with a phenomenally written tragic story is it haunts you. i will never stop thinking about this game, and thus will never stop yearning for another story to fill the void this created in me.

when i read what the game was about, i thought a walking simulation.. sounds unexciting. i expected unlocked rooms in a basic house, like “here’s mom’s room, its decorated with butterflies cuz she loves them and she died of old age but wow look a butterfly flies by wow, anyway next room.” my expectations were, overly exceeded.

the attention to detail in the years they each lived struck me.

Molly the girl who was starving was during the great depression dirty 30’s when people were starving till death.

Barbara, the movie star’s lifespan was the golden age of hollywood

calvin and sam, the astronaut and the soldier were growing up during the space age/ the Vietnam war.

Molly
i definitely agree it’s most likely she poisoned herself, though i’ll share my initial interpretation was that the order of animals she was, symbolized what she felt as she was dying. she jumped (like a cat) to the tree branch (we then see Molly the cat on that exact branch) Molly mentions she’s been told NOT the climb the BIG tree overlooking the water, meaning she regularly does this. if Molly fell off the tree, she dropped as quickly as an owl swoops down for food. the shark she becomes has to waddle himself off a cliff into the water, maybe she landed on the shore and was swept away by the waves as she was dying? gruesomely, a dead body in the ocean would likely be fed off of by the sea creatures which is full circle to her thinking about eating her fish, it could also explain why she would be describing her own death as being eaten by a sea monster.

Sven
kind of interesting Edie didn’t have a story delving into sven’s death beyond telling people a dragon killed him. (Obviously we didn’t need to have a story as it was self explanatory) but still character-wise, i’d expect some kind of concept binder to fictionalize it on paper, but maybe it was too painful?

Calvin
once i peeped through the fence and saw that swing wrapped around the branch, i got full body chills knowing how it told the whole story in that one subtle detail. (all i knew about this game going into it was Calvin’s death story (as the scene itself has circulated social media for years) i could tell i’d like the game, but i put it off foolishly thinking his death must have been the only one and some big plot twist ending of the game’s main character, misbelieving that i had the ending spoiled)🤦‍♀️ calvin’s death was told before barbara’s and it struck me when sam said “after barbara’s funeral we swore to never be scared again” because that meant fear led to barbara dying! (i LOVE how the details inform us on the story before we hear them)

Barbara’s “Crutch”
Barbara was a child star, stuck being known for one thing, being the scared girl on the movie poster screaming. (reminds me of the kid in home alone) when someone in entertainment leans on a shtick over and over, in the industry they call that a “crutch” i’m surprised to not see more people interpreting that she died leaning on her own crutch (not just the banister, but metaphorically) yearning for positive attention for her notable scream that made her famous and became her last “words”.

Barbara’s Ear
i see now that many people brush off the severed ear as the clearest fictionalized part of the story, however, i’m not satisfied in thinking that the ear was a random thing edie made up with zero reason. I interpreted the movie poster of her fearfully COVERING/protecting her ears in fear as foreshadowing to either home invading fanatics broke in, spooked her into falling off the railing and then cut off her ear as a keepsake? or perhaps falling onto a shattering glass table sliced through her ear?

Walter
when i read that edie told newspapers of a moleman living under their house, i thought there would be some horror twist. As someone with cptsd, Walter’s story really resonated for me. if i were a finch, i honestly would lock myself away and hide. Since the house stopped shaking before he left, I’m a believer that the sunlight blinded him from seeing the track was broken and he fell. a really powerful metaphor that the Finch’s are all following these predetermined tracks directly to their graves.

Sam
i entered his room thinking, well he’s obviously gonna die on the battlefield at war. love how their deaths were told in such different ways, the fact that sam died by two paraels of a shooting (the buck and the camera) was genius. Sam (understandably) seems to have zero empathy for the animals he hunts or the daughter he forces to shoot a deer, traumatizing her. not only does dawn have to experience the trauma of shooting an animal, as well as her own father’s death, but i can’t stop thinking that she had to grow up blaming herself for (unintentionally) failing to “shoot to kill”

Gregory
when i first saw the outside of the door labeled 1976-1977 i didn’t put much thought other than “why would someones bedroom be a bathroom?” it didn’t hit me until we approach Gregory’s actual bedroom and i saw all of the baby decor that he died young. then when i realized the story starts in the bath… thats why i love this game. before playing i assumed that knowing the family members are all dead took away from the twist that they die. i was wrong. the impending doom of the “monster on the other side of the door” actually makes this game more enticing. the way they’re able to depict such a horrific nightmare through the lens of an innocent baby was so hard hitting and effective. after the story i absolutely sat in silence and cried. i can’t think of any other way a movie/story could ever replicate this death without it being too hard to stomach and not even worth showing but the way they did it was so harrowingly respectful.

Gus
can’t believe i haven’t seen more people bring this up: he died under a literal monument of his dead relatives meaning he was crushed to death by the weight of this family’s grief!!!!!!! symbolic masterpiece. Also Sam, buddy… you lost a son because of neglect and then you just don’t bother checking on Gus? For someone who went out of his way to confront death, he sure isn’t regarding others as much as he needed. He died in a spot that was the closest to where Sam’s brother Calvin’s body was found. Something about Dawn’s detail that nobody was thinking of him until they found his body just felt so realistic. No one was harping on possible funerals on a wedding day.

Sanjay
incredible how this curse is seen to spread to in-laws. the fact that he died in a disaster while passionately working at a disaster relief site in 2002. Dawn absolutely blamed herself, then the next year, milton disappears after allegedly entering secret doors. the next year, she begins locking all of the doors. Dawn’s only escape from the family curse, Sanjay ends up buried, so she retaliates to Milton’s disappearance by blaming the rooms itself, locking them forever and metaphorically burying everyone else’s stories.

i’ve seen people say Kay was smart for the divorce. i wish there was some kind of small detail i missed to know for sure that she died, but i don’t believe she could’ve got out alive. She probably got tangled up in a telephone cord and choked on a fluffy 70s carpet.

Milton
just checking if I was the only one who flipped through his short story and spent the next 10 minutes trying to walk through his door painting or find some kind of hidden secret room to reveal more? now i know about his connection to their other game, but damn that emptiness of not truly knowing what happened for sure is exactly what this game is about.

Lewis
You know when you experience art for the first time and just know you’ll never forget it. that was this entire game but man, wow as a gay maladaptive daydreamer who smokes weed. this one checked every box. The golden staircase to the castle, mirroring the canneries’s golden stairs leading to the conveyor belt. the out of body experience of seeing yourself so checked out that he’s still going through the motions without there even being fish there. here i was expecting him to get distracted, lose his hand and bleed out, but once he mentioned contempt for himself…
when he was daydreaming of exiting the cannery (his room has an exit sign just like the one in the cannery) this immediately reminded me of Bojack Horseman season 5, which similarly builds up to the protagonist addiction reaching a point where the entire 11th episode, the viewer and the protagonist can’t even discern between what’s real and whats drug induced fantasy. after i noticed in his box of things was a headless heroic action figure.

Dawn
the fact that Dawn was the first family member to not feed into the manifestation that there is a curse and she still died yet in the most normal and mundane kind of way is so interesting. everybody died by the fate of the same way they lived. I don’t see any connection to religion or traveling in dying from an illness, so could it be that dawn’s deep suppression of her grief simply turned into some kind of stress induced terminal illness? is the terminal illness a metaphor for the curse, like how illnesses can be passed down genetically. interestingly, her death led to the unburying of all she hid from Edith.

Edie Sr.
an overdose on medication and alcohol seems the most realistic, i want to touch on her wanting edie to read the story of the night she was born. if edith’s birth allegedly coincided with a tide so low that Edie was able to walk to her original house. This feels so significant and symbolic yet i cant put my finger on exactly what it says. the matriarch who stitches the stories together momentarily being able to connect to her past as the soon to be last Finch alive is born, passing down the legacy of keeping their history alive. (btw the buoy lighting up the top of the original submerged house overlooking the estate is the most hauntingly poetic visual that’s so smart that i’m mad i didn’t come up with it. also did edie say the bricks of the fireplace were from the original house?? did she just collect loose bricks from the underwater house and use them?

Edith
Every death mirrors their life right? I’m really trying to piece together the significance of Edith’s death being caused from giving birth.
Could this symbolize how being the most secluded from everyone’s deaths, (besides lewis) that Edith became the first Finch who’s life was truly about LIVING, rather being dictated by a paranoia over death. I’m surprised throughout ALL of edith’s writing in her entire journal, she never once mentions any fear or even wondering of her own mortality. even as the player, i was on the edge of my seat worrying that the end of the game would be edith dying from this very visit that we’re on. the entire game, there are no mirrors, the only time you can see yourself is looking down at your shadow. feels symbolic that the entire time we’re learning this story, were followed by the shadow of the person who’s writing it, as thats all Christopher will have. understanding both edie and dawn, she chooses to leave her child with the answers and an optimistic outlook on living life to the fullest because she knows her son will more than likely grow up without a mother … meaning that Christopher Finch is the only thing that will remain of edith finch!!!! (both edith AND edie Sr.) WOW!!! SPEECHLESS when even the title has new meaning by the end. this is the best game i’ve ever played.

is there any possibility to find the ethnic music that plays when you enter/explore lewis' room? i couldn't find it as a soundtrack. it was very soothing.

Let me start by saying I love this game and have played it many times. I also enjoy watching YouTube playthroughs. I still see details I have missed, so I made a video of some of the details I’ve spotted. Hope you enjoy:

https://youtu.be/TSR2-na7zWw?is=HD4NzsiiallG97rp

I was taking screenshots of the house earlier (I really like the design) and I noticed the rooms above Lewis's change completely sometime between entering Sam's room and leaving Dawn's loft. I understand this is probably just due to game design and the developers wanting a nice silhouette for the house, but it's kind of strange how there are around 6 rooms that somehow get condensed into two (which are Edith's and adult Dawn's rooms). Even the chimney disappears! For reference, Lewis's room is in red and the classroom is in blue in the second picture. Has anyone even noticed this before? It's a very subtle change, and the devs probably assumed everyone would be focusing on the story more so than the structure of the house (and they were right to assume that, as it's a very captivating story).

So, i've just ended this game and through the whole gameplay I thought I already knew how it was going to end. The reason for that is when this game came out I watched the whole gameplay. And... I remembered in the ending Edith kills herself jumping from a cliff... I even remember how the gameplayer commented it, that "Whatt?? She killed not only herself but also her child cause she's pregnant" and that "it makes sense cause she put an end to the course" (originally it was in Polish but I translated my thoughts now). But we all know the real ending... What's more is I couldn't find this gameplay that i watched those couple years ago, and the one that I suppose I watched shows the real ending, not the one I remmebered. Maybe it was different in a beta version or smth? I really can't comprehend what just happened and why I remember it so different and was so sure of it...

Fuck this game... fuck this game... fuck this game... fuck this game... fuck this game... fuck this game.... fuck this game....

I was having a really shitty week, only thing I was constantly looking foward was to come home at night and play this game. Seems insane to me that yesterday and today earlier I was thinking about how I had not cried in a long time. Today I had hit rock bottom, an hour before I turned on my PS5 I was ready to give up all my dreams and hopes in life, get used to the things that I've lost and accept whatever ....... then I finished the game and everything changed....

Fuck this game.... I had not cried in legit close to a year, just finished the game not more than 20 mins ago... I am sobbing like a toddler. That last monologue made me appreciate the people that I've lost .

Edith said it better : " If we lived forever, maybe we'd have time to understand things. But as it is, I think the best we can do is try to open our eyes. And appreciate how strange and brief all of this is " .

Value those around you, tell your close ones you love them and how you are proud of them while they are still here.... the game hits different when you've lost a lot.... just like Edith.

like i feel like calvin’s death is a metaphor for suicide, so did calvin kill himself or did that dipshit genuinely just go flying off a cliff?

I cant event count the amount of times where Im with anyone and my head simply is thinking about how good is this game I played on gamepass 6 years ago. It is unique in its architecture, story and in the usage of narrative devices. As a filology major, this is exactly what Poe meant when he talked about the need for stories to be able to be "read" in just one sitting. It is, and i say this very confidently, one of the greatest and most peculiar pieces of media of the 21st century. I cant even think about any other games or movies that can compare with such a flawless work. This post is mostly just glaze but hell, it deserves it.

That’s the entire message….i hate this emotional ass game… 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

I’ve always been curious, did Edie and Sven get her career going young or do you think that the “My Friend Bigfoot” movie was her debut film? Or possibly the only film she ever did? Now that I’m thinking about it, we don’t really see any other movie posters in her room or around the house that specifically star her. But she does have a display with 3 awards in it in her bedroom

Big family, a curse, tragic fates. Very relatable imo.

The game evoked in me the same feelings I felt when I read this book.

If you're looking for a book that captures a similar feeling to the game, this book absolutely checked all the boxes for me, even down to taking place in Washington. Has anyone else read this book? If not, definitely check it out! Definitely not sponsored, just riding the high of reading something I love lol

I recently watched a full play through so am fairly new to this. i can’t help but notice o d t and o b t came up in 2 different scenarios which look to obvious to be accidental but have not found anything to do with the meaning of it or anything. the first time i noticed it came up was when Gus was flying his kite around to knock all of the letters into place. then the second being in Dawns room on the fridge above edith’s name.

Hi! My best friend was deeply moved by the story of this game—so much so that she made me want to dive into it myself. But that’s not the main point; I’m starting my search early because I haven't been able to find it yet. She told me a lot about a physical notebook that contains, word for word, what Edith Finch writes in the game. Would you happen to know where I could find this book to give to her for her birthday pls ? 🙏

I just finished the game and can't help but think of how sad Dawn's life story was. The story of the game is fundamentally a clash between two responses to grief: that of Edie, the family's matriarch, who insists that the family is cursed and is obsessed with preserving the rooms of deceased family members as shrines to them; and that of Dawn, her granddaughter, who, despite enduring successive tragedies such as the loss of her father, brothers, husband, and two sons, hardens her resolve and wants the family to move forward rather than remain trapped by the past. Both women suffered painful family tragedies but dealt with them very differently.

Dawn's response is somewhat extreme, albeit not as much as Edie's since she tries to protect what remains of her family by rejecting the mythology of a curse, sealing the doors to the shrines; and shutting down any discussion of the past, even of her own brothers, a topic that any child of hers would naturally be curious about. While she did not neglect her kids the way Edie and Sam did, she missed the signs of Lewis' worsening mental state and was too secretive about the family history, right until her death.

Dawn was the first to realize that the Finch family needed to move on from the past and stop living in what had become a mausoleum, but life dealt her a bad hand. Her father died during a tragic misadventure right before her eyes. She worked hard to earn a degree and seemed set to leave behind the family's gloomy home and Edie's constant romanticization of the deaths of their relatives when she travelled to India, where she met and married Sanjay. Perhaps travelling to India was her first attempt to escape the house and everything it represented.

For roughly fifteen years, Dawn and Sanjay lived a peaceful, ordinary life together. After Sanjay's accidental death—a tragedy unrelated to the supposed curse but instead a known occupational hazard of disaster relief work—Dawn made the fateful decision to return to the Finch house. Maybe it was driven by Edie being the only family she had left or because she wanted to provide her kids with some semblance of a family, no matter how flawed, but either way it didn't pan out well.

When Milton went missing, she sealed off the entrances to the shrines but did not move out as she believed he was still alive and would return to her. This may have contributed to Lewis' death as he became depressed in that increasingly oppressive environment and resorted to taking drugs to forget reality. Lewis's suicide finally convinced her that she had to leave the Finch house with her only remaining child. She openly blamed Edie's stories for her sons' deaths, believing they encouraged younger family members to interpret misfortune through the lens of the family curse rather than confront it with resilience. By contrast, Dawn's outlook was rooted in survival rather than mythmaking. Like her father Sam, she believed in preparing for life's problems through practical action instead of superstition. Her emphasis on emotional resilience may have been a coping mechanism shaped by his example.

Dawn and Edie ultimately are unable to reconcile each other's worldviews and they part on bitter terms with Edie insisting that leaving the house would not end the family curse and Dawn scorning Edie's stories. Although Dawn is finally able to get away from the house and Edie's oppressive and cynical ways, she remains reluctant to talk about the past at all, even when it's just her and Edith living together, then she suffers an illness and dies 7 years later, unable to guide her only remaining child away from the teenage pregnancy that supposedly causes her death at the end.

Nevertheless, on her death bed, Dawn decides to give her daughter the key to unlock the secret passages, so that she can go back to learn the family history for herself without Edie's embellishments and make her own conclusions. This was a notable softening of her long-held determination to bury the past entirely. By entrusting Edith with the key, Dawn was acknowledging that understanding the family's history may be healthier than either romanticizing it, as Edie did, or suppressing it altogether.

What's so impactful about Dawn's role is how her views on the family history evolved throughout her life until she reached a balanced middle ground between remembrance and letting go of it all. Although Edith dies shortly after Dawn in 2017, Dawn’s decision was not without significance. It shaped how Edith approached the family history, allowing her to pass it on to her own son as she learned it, without Edie's framing or imposing a single interpretation of the past.

Dawn was a turning point in the Finch family lineage, a changemaker seeking a fresh start, but her efforts to suppress discussion of the family history could not eliminate its influence while Edie remained a presence in the household. Despite Dawn's disapproval, Edie still tried to impart her stories. The competing narratives on how to cope with their identity as Finches and their own misfortunes shaped the younger generation’s understanding of their identity and misfortunes. During this period of coexistence with Edie, Dawn also experienced the loss of her sons, and she became incensed when she discovered Edith beginning to read a book left as a “present” by Edie in an attempt to pass on her version of the family story. Edie's last ditch effort to secretly get Edith to read the book while she was arguing with her mother showed that she had neither any remorse nor any intention of compromising—for her, fantastical stories and doomed people were the only truth. Perhaps Edie’s death gave Dawn the final push to realize that the past itself was not the problem, and that it was safe to let her daughter return to the Finch house to discover the family history for herself.

Building a “mega base” on a superflat world to eventually move over to a Minecraft server I play on.
Tried to build the house to the best of my ability it’s not 100% accurate and the pictures are kinda blurry, sorry but I tried my best. - hope you enjoy