The Suicide of Rachel Foster

About The Suicide of Rachel Foster

The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a first-person narrative thriller by ONE-O-ONE GAMES, published by Daedalic Entertainment. It came out on PC in February 2020, on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in September 2020, on Nintendo Switch in October 2021 and on PlayStation 5 in September 2024.

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 and make amends to Rachel's family. The weather turns, the roads close, and she is left alone in the huge empty building. Her only company is Irving, a young FEMA agent on the other end of an early radio telephone, who starts helping her look into what really happened.

You explore the hotel day by day, following objectives marked on your map through guest rooms, the bar, the kitchens and the places staff and guests were not meant to go. You talk with Irving by picking replies, and you solve small practical puzzles: finding a screwdriver, getting the generator back on. As the days go on you pick up a Polaroid camera, a wind-up torch and a parabolic microphone, each needed to get further. Nothing attacks you. The fear is the building itself: its size and silence, the dark past the torch, binaural sound that puts creaks and footsteps right behind you, and the growing sense that Rachel is still somewhere inside. Its makers wanted fear from suspense rather than monsters, and took the hotel in The Shining as a model.

Reception was split. Critics and players praised the setting, the sound and the voice acting of Nicole and Irving; many found the story slow to start, and several critics judged its handling of child sexual abuse and suicide, and its ending, insensitive. Critics compared it with Gone Home and Firewatch: it is closer to them than to most horror, with more dread. It suits players who like short, story-led psychological horror and who are ready for its subject matter.

How to play The Suicide of Rachel Foster

1. Buy it on Steam or GOG for PC, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox store or the Nintendo eShop.
2. Explore the hotel in first person, using the map, where your current objectives are marked.
3. Answer the radio phone when it rings and choose what Nicole says to Irving to move the investigation on.
4. Pick up what each task needs, such as a screwdriver or the generator switch, and later use the Polaroid camera, the wind-up torch and the parabolic microphone.
5. Follow each day's leads until the story of Rachel's death comes together.

Tips

• Play with headphones; the binaural sound tells you where noises in the hotel come from.
• Check the map often; your objectives are marked on it and 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.
• Plan on one evening: a first run takes about three and a half hours.
• Read the content notes first if suicide or abuse are hard subjects for you.

Questions