The Berlin Apartment is What Remains of Edith Finch except with, y’know, nazis

Every place has a story to tell. Large, multi-story apartment buildings even more so, having housed countless people over the years. If you’ve ever lived in a big-city apartment, you’ve surely wondered about the lives of the people who walked those same halls, slept in those same rooms. Pulling on those threads is exactly what the narrative-focused exploration game The Berlin Apartment does so memorably.

From developer Blue Backpack, The Berlin Apartment finds a handyman renovating an apartment in 2020. He brings his daughter to the worksite, and you play as her, exploring the space. Found objects, like a letter discovered after ripping down wallpaper or a picture hidden behind a tile wall, catch her eye and prompt her father to tell her a story behind it. Through those stories, the imagined lives of previous tenants are explored. Those past lives are beautiful and colorful, but also haunted by the oppressive history of 20th-century Germany.

A deft storytelling hand guides each of the four narratives, telling personal tales against the backdrop of climactic events in the nation’s history. In 1933, you play as the elder Josef, who is all too eager to comment on and tell a little story for every little item in the apartment. Listening to him recount his time as a film theater owner — with some sections presented like black-and-white silent films — was enough to lull me into a false sense of calm. That relaxed mindset was interrupted by seeing a menorah in the windowsill juxtaposed with red Nazi party flags flying on outside buildings. What year was it again? 1933? Scheisse.

In 1945, you explore an apartment damaged by war as young Mathilda. She, her mother, and her brother are preparing the apartment for Christmas, and the absence of Mathilda’s father hangs over the family and their fractured living space like a specter. Through decorating the Christmas tree with bullet shell casings and exploring the devastated home, Mathilda grapples with realizations of the true character of her father. What’s left unsaid in this section speaks as loudly as the characters’ dialogue.

Image: Blue Backpack/ByteRockers’ Games

Kolja, a young man with only a fish to talk to, lives with the Berlin Wall outside his window in 1989. He exchanges letters via paper airplanes with someone on the other side of the Wall in a memorable and touching story that encapsulates another turbulent and seminal period in Germany’s history.

1967’s story, the game’s last, is the only one that didn’t land with me. It’s an insular tale of a young novelist, Tonia, who’s trying to keep her book true to herself while fighting against her publisher’s requests to constantly change her plot, characters, setting — everything. While nailing the personal angle, taking the game outside the apartment and onto the maze of a spaceship she imagines was a misstep. The story is drawn out, and loses the attachment to the world outside the window of the Berlin apartment that the other stories perfectly captured.

Image: Blue Backpack/ByteRockers’ Games

Back in 2020, young Dilara looks outside the window of the Berlin Apartment. The rubble of 1945 no longer crowds its streets, and the Berlin Wall is long gone, yet the bones of the surrounding buildings are still there. She notices the apartment of Kolja’s pen pal, and spots where Josef’s old theater once was. She has a newfound knowledge of and appreciation for the histories of the world around her.

Clocking in at around five hours, The Berlin Apartment is as much a digestible history lesson as it is an interactive game. Like Dilara, I came away from it with a new perspective on the world around me, and the stories that world holds.

The Berlin Apartment is out now on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a prerelease download code provided by Blue Backpack and ByteRockers’ Games. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.​