it's a little ironic that What Remains of Edith Finch is decried for being a walking sim when it makes use of its medium impeccably when it comes to telling its story. i would even go so far as to say it conveys a kind of story that can only be told properly at all in the form of a game.

i don't have a lot to say right now because it packs a lot into a <5 hr game and there's plenty of aspects of it that are still marinating in my head. only thing i really wanted to make a point of is that it's an 8.5/10 and not an 8 [or 9]. not too bothered about the 5 star scoring system most of the time but some impulse in my brain won't accept this game as anything other than an 8.5. i'd love it if we could just Pitchfork it and start giving 8.7s, 5.3s and shit but alas. then again "actual video game critics" can't even be trusted with a review scale so perhaps it's too much power for an average backlogged user like myself to produce any real meaning from heh.

No Case Should Remain unsolved is a fantastic adventure game that runs at about 3~ hours but never understays its welcome. Abstract, narrative-based indie games have had their time in the sun in the past decade or so but No Case Should Remain Unsolved nonetheless manages to keep things fresh with how it intuitively dispenses its narrative and intertwines it with the gameplay. The protagonist is essentially piecing together memories of a cold case about a child kidnapping that appear in the form of instant messages. The entire game takes place within this screen, more or less, but there's a very satisfying quality of working out the "how" and piecing together related fragments of the messages, while drawing inferences to guide you to the next piece of information that needs to be looked at. It's really something you have to try for yourself but it's immensely enjoyable and hits the sweet spot of "challenging, yet fair".

Hard to go to deep into the writing without spoiling anything (which I don't want to do), but it's excellent and the story wraps up very nicely.