Embodied Engagement with Environmental Storytelling in Walking Simulators: A Case Study of What Remains of Edith Finch

This paper examines how environmental storytelling (ES) is experienced by players in walking simulators, using What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow, 2017) as a case study. Its central argument is that players often absorb narrative information intuitively and bodily as they navigate a game world, rather than deliberately searching for narrative evidence in the manner of an archaeologist. The author positions this embodied perspective as a complement to existing archaeological and indexical frameworks, which have tended to emphasize deliberate interpretation of spatial traces. The study is situated within game studies scholarship on ES, drawing on Henry Jenkins' four narrative functions of game space and Fernández-Vara's notion of indexical storytelling.

The analysis is grounded in the 4E cognition theory, which holds that cognition unfolds through physical interaction with the environment, and employs playthrough poetics as its method. Data consist of the author's own gameplay, documented through field notes and screen recordings. The study therefore reflects a single-player, first-person interpretive account rather than a multi-participant empirical study, and its findings are offered as a productive avenue for inquiry rather than as a comprehensive account of ES across games or walking simulators.

The study identifies four interrelated dimensions of embodied engagement. The environment functions as perceptual cues, where objects such as scattered books, salmon cans, and a wind chime convey narrative meaning through sensorimotor familiarity and affective attention. It operates as action affordances, where the possibilities for movement, such as playing as a crawling and climbing expectant mother, reveal the family's dysfunction. It serves as affective tones, where the house's atmosphere becomes a shared emotional space of collective grief. Finally, it acts as spatial metaphor, with the house's irregular, layered structure and sealed rooms symbolizing the family's fractured yet interconnected history.