A cheating father plunges a family into tragedy. Now it’s up to the player to find out what family inheritance and Rachel Foster are all about.
Ten years later, Nicole’s parents were dead. The young woman should now fulfill her mother’s last wish and sell the splendid hotel where the family once lived. So she heads to the property to prepare everything for sale – and wants to leave the proceeds to Rachel Foster’s family. But the weather changes, Nicole is stuck in the hotel and the idyll changes more and more into an atmosphere like “The Shining”.
“The Suicide of Rachel Foster” has recently caused a stir on Steam. Not because the game from developer One-O-One Games and publisher Daedalic Entertainment stands out particularly playfully, but because it offers a dense atmosphere and an exciting story. In terms of play, it is a slightly pimped walking simulator, but it is far more exciting than the term would suggest.
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–Search, research, creep
Once at the hotel, the game puts the player in first-person perspective and shines with nice details. The lighting effects are great, the gloomy style and the silence in the hotel seem scary from the first second and little things like rattling window shutters or ringing telephones have been taken into account. Speaking of the phone: On the answering machine, we immediately find the message that the lawyer who should appreciate the hotel cannot make it to us in time.
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Not much happens at first in “The Suicide of Rachel Foster” – but in the huge hotel you always have the feeling that you meet the Grady twins from the horror hotel in “The Shining” behind the next corner. Even away from the horror, the hotel offers a presentable backdrop: there is a small museum to see, hanging photos show the former family life and when the snowstorm was blowing outside, one would like to sit by the fireplace in the living room.
Is it haunted here or is it all imagination?
The creepy feeling does not come from anywhere: Gradually, more or less paranormal incidents occur in the hotel and our only contact, a disaster relief worker on the phone, can not really calm us down with his well-intentioned advice. However, the contact between the employee and Nicole becomes more intense and is a small ray of hope in the increasingly dark looking hotel.
Class is the dynamic between the two characters, the emotions are understandable and the dialogues in a nutshell. Too bad: You can choose from answer options, but they don’t seem to have much influence on the gameplay. The game, although you can explore the incredibly large house room by room, is relatively short with only five hours of play. Atmospheric, however, it is overwhelmingly good hours of play.
Simple controls and no puzzles
“The Suicide of Rachel Foster” offers limited control options. Rooms and objects can be inspected with a click of the mouse, but you can only interact with some of them. Equipped with a camera, microphone and flashlight, you search the hotel, but you won’t find any puzzles. The only goal is to get to certain rooms or to find and examine certain objects.
By the way, if you want to see the different ends of “The Suicide of Rachel Foster”, you have to restart the game, because you can only save one game. But it’s worth it: Although the gameplay is leisurely, the plot, atmosphere and, above all, the great graphics work fantastic. Anyone who likes games like “Dear Esther”, “The Vanishing of Ethan Carter”, “Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture” or “What Remains Of Edith Finch” will love “The Suicide of Rachel Foster”.
