I didn’t like Gone Home. At the time I thought that was because I played it too long after its release and after it had been spoiled for me. Some games just have their moment, and if you don’t catch them then you can’t go back. There were other things I didn’t like about it too. I didn’t like the fact that your character was following another character’s story, instead of learning her own. I didn’t like the character being followed, or find her story compelling. I thought the environments were not super attractive and the 90s kitsch was cute but also a little annoying. I came away from the game thinking “Really? This caused that big a stir?” It’s not that I hated it, it’s just that it didn’t resonate with me. I found it a little bit boring.

But I loved Firewatch, and I loved Night in the Woods, which is not strictly a walking simulator but shares many elements with the genre, so I was excited for What Remains of Edith Finch. What I heard about its macabre sense of humor and absurdism seemed right up my alley. I went (mostly) media silent on it, picked it up just before release and…it drifted into my backlog for a bit. But last night, after I finished Horizon: Zero Dawn, I pulled it out, intending to at least start it as a major change of pace from Horizon’s open world action.

Instead I finished it and…meh. Didn’t do much for me and definitely wasn’t worth the price. And this time I can’t blame it on coming to it too late or having it spoiled. This time I had pretty much the experience I was supposed to have. So why didn’t I like it?

What Remains of Edith Finch is as close to a Gone Home clone as you can find in a genre that’s all about presenting a unique environment and story. You play as a young woman returning to an empty family home to explore the environs and learn what happened to its inhabitants. The house unlocks bit by bit, with secret passages and routes, and you learn much of the story through notes you find stashed around the dwelling.

The key difference between What Remains of Edith Finch and Gone Home is that while Gone Home focused on a grounded story of a particular character, Edith Finch tells surrealist tales of a bunch of the Finch family members and how they met their various demises. And unlike Gone Home where the story played out via audio logs, in Edith Finch you get to actually play through the vignettes. It promises to be like an Edward Gorey or Tim Burton book brought to life, with a rambly old house and lots of delightful little deaths.

It promises, but it doesn’t really deliver. What Remains of Edith Finch lacks the courage of its convictions. It gives you the rotting old storybook house and then tells a bunch of stories with various styles and tones. This creates variety in both visuals and sort of gameplay, but takes away from the cohesive feeling. What Remains of Edith finch is also a lot less gloomy than I expected from the house and description, at times being even lighthearted.

What Remains of Edith Finch also isn’t only a walking simulator. It has a bunch of minigames in it that you play as you experience each character’s death. These range from a not very good first person platforming segment to a kind of boring kite flying simulator (I guess walking was too intense?) to a segment where you walk around but actually have a weapon you can use, which makes it kind of like a real video game, only it sucks.

That’s too harsh, but the various playable segments vary wildly in complexity and quality. The first one starts quite promisingly with a variety of play styles (though they’re pretty janky) and a cool little fantasy tale from a child’s mind, but most of the later segments cannot match it. You fly a kite. You swing in a swing. It’s not walking but that doesn’t make it fun.

That’s not to say they’re all bad, A couple of the lengthier experiences have enough complexity to at least feel clever or interesting, and there are a few moments that genuinely delighted me, mostly relating to the imaginations of very young children. The main story in the house is also presented well and has its moments, but it’s very short too and the whole game can be wrapped up in less than two hours. $20 for a two hour experience is a lot to ask, and when that experience is mediocre its way too much to ask.

I think, in the end, though, the reason I didn’t like Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch isn’t because they were short or had simplistic gameplay. It’s because the player characters are pretty irrelevant to both stories. They walk through a house, they learn about the actual, important, people, and that’s it. What Remains of Edith Finch does more to build your character with her monologues, which show up as text in the environment in a cool effect, but in the end it doesn’t amount to much. She isn’t all that interesting and this isn’t really her story. It tries to connect you to the other family members by having you play their stories but that didn’t work for me either. You spent too little time with them to really get to know them, for the most part, and…I didn’t care. I said that aloud to the screen multiple times. “I don’t care. Get on with it.” I was bored and disconnected. Not a good sign.

Firewatch and Night in the Woods, on the other hand, tell stories about their main characters. You learn about other goings on as well, of course, but both Henry and Mae are dynamic people with goals and problems and I connected well with both them. It propelled me through the narrative and involved me in those games, which made everything else much more interesting. Both games also presented larger areas and bigger stories, which let me settle in and get involved in the world. Night in the Woods features a side activity where you steal pretzels and feed them to rats, and you have to go do it every day until the narrative wraps up, and it’s super repetitive and not great mechanically, but damn it I cared. I cared about Mae and I cared about her rats and I wanted to make both of them happy.

What Remains of Edith Finch didn’t make me care. It felt like I was going through a museum, viewing the various exhibits and reading the plaques and being bored. I don’t think video games are a great way to tell this kind of story. They’re best when they’re focused on the protagonist (if there is one) and what they’re doing. I’ve never played Street Fighter and wished I was playing as one of the guys in the butcher shop in Chun Li’s stage; holding a chicken and watching the fight. What Remains of Edith Finch and Gone Home make you background characters to the real story (though What Remains of Edith Finch does try to change that dynamic) and that’s not a good method of video game storytelling for me. I’d rather read a book or watch a movie if I’m going to be a passive participant.

Still, What Remains of Edith Finch isn’t a terrible game. It has some nice visuals, some good writing (though not consistently so) a decent environment and some moments I genuinely enjoyed. The short run time means it’s not around long enough to miserably drag. I wouldn’t strongly warn anyone against it. It’s short and not totally unpleasant and it was clearly a labor of love. I wish I liked it more than I did. Who knows, maybe you will.