It doesn’t take much to make a big, old, empty house feel creepy. Indeed, the more actual, overt threat you add to such a setting, the less fear it inspires – better to let your visitor wander undisturbed, drinking in the silence of the hallways and spotting goblin faces in the contours of broken plaster. This is one thing the creators of The Suicide of Rachel Foster grasp well, though their workmanlike blend of Firewatch and Gone Home is ultimately tripped up by a half-baked story.
A three-hour, first-person psychodrama with a gossamer-thin dusting of puzzles, the game is set in the Timberline Lodge, an abandoned mountainside hotel in 1990s Montana. You can roam about freely from the outset, though chapter breaks teleport you from room to room, and to do so is to be gently assaulted by the peculiarities of a structure that wouldn’t seem out of place in Silent Hill. Floorboards creak, window-frames rattle, beams shift under a mounting weight of snow. Photographs stare from the ends of corridors, shrouded objects tempt you to pull back the sheet, and stainless steel kitchens tease your fight-or-flight circuits with their abundance of gleaming points and angles.
The Suicide of Rachel Foster reviewDevelopers: One O One Games, Reddoll Games, Reddoll S.R.L., Centounopercento – 101%Publisher: Daedalic EntertainmentPlatform: PCAvailability: 19th February 2020
Spread over three storeys plus a basement and carpark, the Timberline is closer to a Comfort Inn than some Gothic resort, but in the absence of holidaymakers and staff, its spaces loom. It’s also a not-so-discreet homage to The Shining’s Overlook Hotel, which means that the sightlines and decor feel vaguely predatory, like they’re trying to get into your head. You’ll find those legendary geometric carpet patterns, a mountain diorama akin to the Overlook’s model maze, and bathrooms painted a diabolical red.
Mixed in amongst these mildly threatening objects are hints of outright paranormal activity – a point on the stair where you can hear a voice (or could it be the squeak of carpet on wood?), a strange pink butterfly, hovering by a gap in the wall – but the spooky elements are sparingly deployed. Where mood is concerned, The Suicide of Rachel Foster trusts its architecture to do the heavy lifting. At least, that is, until the memories those walls contain emerge into the light.
You play Nicole, daughter of the hotel’s owners. Years ago, she and her mother fled the property after learning of her father’s infidelity with the titular Rachel, a 16-year-old girl. With both her parents and Rachel now deceased, Nicole has returned to survey the Timberline before selling it off and washing her hands of a painful upbringing. Fate, as ever, intervenes, and Nicole is trapped for several days by a snowstorm, holing up in her old teenage room and scouring the property for supplies. Keeping you company throughout this unintended vigil is Irving, a boyish FEMA agent who contacts you over cellphone to offer survival tips, banter and a sympathetic ear, as Nicole sifts through old belongings and revisits her relationship with her dad.