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During the game's introduction, an old woman is seen looking out her window, before she adjusts a picture of a baby and picks up a ball of yarn. As she proceeds upstairs, a lone ball of yarn rolls out of shot. Yarny, an anthropomorphic creature made of red yarn, and the game's protagonist, then walks into shot, and is looking around in wonder at the environment.[6] Through various picture frames in the house, Yarny can visit environments that were significant in the home owners' lives, and discover their memories about the places; the initial memories are happy, such as visiting the sea shore, or hiking in the mountains, but eventually darker memories are revealed: the rural forest area is industrialized, which in turn causes accidents with toxic waste, and people start moving to the city. A memory also reveals that the old woman's husband died from a heart attack.

At the end of each level, Yarny finds a red yarn badge it collects on the cover of a photo album in the house, which then fills with photos of the memories encountered along the way. On the final two levels, however, Yarny only finds one half each of a heart-shaped badge. On the final level, played in a cemetery, Yarny struggles its way through a snow storm to find the final half of the badge, but it slips from its hands, and jumping after it, Yarny unravels completely, with only a red thread of yarn remaining in its place. The badge piece is then picked up by a human hand.

Yarny awakens in a camping backpack, holding the missing piece; it quickly runs home to place it on the photo album. Startled by a child entering the room, Yarny feigns to be inanimate again, and once the child leaves, it places the missing piece on to its final place on the photo album cover, which it then opens up to reveal the final passage and the end credits.

According to Sahlin, the yarn that makes up Yarny represents love, and that the character unravels as they travel away from what they love.