What Remains of Edith Finch review: A temple of fantasies

What Remains of Edith Finch is an inspired game that uses simple yet poignant gameplay mechanics — flying a kite, taking pictures with a camera, etc. — to draw players into a web of fantastical vignettes. Teenage Edith has returned to her creepy childhood home for the first time in six years. As a child she was barred from entering many rooms that were sealed up by her mother. As Edith makes her way through the house, which is now hers, she discovers documents that whisk the player into other stories, each as compact as it is emotionally resonant. Playing the game brought to mind a couplet from Keats’ “Ode to Melancholy,” which captures the oscillating sentiments embedded in the tales, “in the very temple of Delight/Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine.” Play it once for the story, then again to savor the details.