The Suicide of Rachel Foster

Rate it

Snowed in at your father's empty hotel, with the ghost of what he did.

Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
Stores: Steam
Price: Paid
Rated: Mixed on Steam (68% of 6,912 reviews); 63 on Metacritic for PS4; 4.06 of 5 from about 1,200 ratings on the PlayStation Store
Players: 1
Made by: ONE-O-ONE GAMES
Released: 2020

Get it on Steam PlayStation Store (PS4 and PS5)Xbox Nintendo Switch

What frightens Snowed in alone at her dead father's closed mountain hotel, Nicole searches its dark corridors, kitchens and locked rooms by torchlight with only a stranger on an old radio phone to talk to, while footsteps, creaks and signs of someone else in the building suggest the girl who died there has not left.
Content: suicide, sexual relationship between an adult and a minor (discussed,, strong language.

A first-person psychological mystery set in a closed Montana mountain hotel in 1993. Nicole returns to sell the hotel where her father's affair with a teenage girl ended in the girl's suicide, a blizzard traps her inside, and the only voice she hears is a stranger's on a radio phone.

About The Suicide of Rachel Foster

The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a narrative thriller by the Italian studio ONE-O-ONE GAMES, published by Daedalic Entertainment. It came out on PC in February 2020, on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later that year, and on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch afterwards.

It is December 1993 in Lewis and Clark County, Montana. Ten years earlier, Nicole and her mother left the family's mountain hotel after learning that her father, Leonard, was having an affair with Rachel, a girl Nicole's own age who became pregnant and later killed herself. With both parents now dead, Nicole comes back to sell the hotel. A storm closes the roads, and she is left alone in the huge empty building with a torch, a map and a brick-sized early mobile phone. On the other end is Irving, a young FEMA agent who keeps her company and starts helping her look into what really happened.

You explore the hotel day by day in first person, following leads through guest rooms, the bar, the kitchens and the places staff and guests were not supposed to go. Nothing attacks you. The fear is the building itself: its size and silence, the darkness beyond the torch, binaural sound that puts creaks and footsteps right behind you, and the growing sense that Rachel is still somewhere in the hotel.

The game is divisive. Players praise its atmosphere, its sound and the detail of the hotel; many found it slow, and its handling of its central subject and ending split opinion. It suits players who like slow, story-led psychological horror such as Gone Home with more dread, and who are prepared for its subject matter.

How to play The Suicide of Rachel Foster

Buy it on Steam, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox store or the Nintendo eShop.
Explore the hotel in first person, using the map and the hotel's room plan to find where Irving sends you.
Answer the radio phone when it rings and talk with Irving to move the investigation on.
Use the torch, and later the tools you find, to search dark rooms and closed-off areas.
Follow each day's leads until the story of Rachel's death comes together.

Screenshots

A dim hotel staff apartment seen across a table piled with books, a clock and a mountain painting on the wall

Nicole's hand holds a brick-sized early mobile phone beside a desk with an open notebook and a lamp

The hotel's empty bar at night, wall lamps glowing over bare wooden tables and a leather armchair

A model of the snowy valley with a red You Are Here flag over the hotel

Tips

Play with headphones; the binaural sound tells you where noises in the hotel come from.
Check the map often; the hotel is large and easy to get lost in.
Take your time in each room; the story is told through objects, notes and photographs.
Read the content warnings first if suicide or abuse are hard subjects for you.