Review for The Suicide of Rachel Foster. Game for PC and Steam, the video game was released on 19/02/2020
In the fall of 2018 we tried, in a crowded GamesWeek, The Suicide of Rachel Foster, a walking simulator that immediately gave us great feedback with its eerie atmospheres reminiscent of The Shining backed up by a beautifully crafted audio design. We closed our test of the alpha build of this title with good expectations for the full title, and after just over a year we were able to close the circle and play the full ONE-O-ONE GAMES title. While the genre is definitely not for everyone, The Suicide of Rachel Foster establishes itself as an excellent title, in which the lack of complex interaction with the game world is replaced by a technical sector that tells its story in a more than excellent way.
As the game will warn, as soon as a new game starts, the details are very important in The Suicide of Rachel Foster; in fact, the developers made sure to include an almost obsessive amount of detail in the setting, with signs, papers, magazines, and small writings on the models perfectly visible. The first great merit of the title emerges precisely in the details: the insane technical and aesthetic care of the hotel. The setting conveys a sense of realistic, thus helping a lot the build up of restlessness that comes from having to spend several days in solitude, inside a huge abandoned hotel, accompanied only by a rescuer's voice and constantly "pricked" by strange happenings.
This accompanied by the aforementioned frighteningly well-finished audio sector, create an adventure comparable to the best titles in the genre, in particular to Firewatch, a game from which The Suicide of Rachel Foster takes more than inspiration.
Speaking of the fiction itself, this is written in function of the fact that The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a video game. Therefore it bases itself not on the continuous progress of events and discoveries, but on the gradual passing of the days and the exploration of the hotel, always trying to propose some kind of new activity to the player, with fluctuating results.
However, the more banal points of the adventure, such as the end of the second day, are more than largely supported by noteworthy peaks, in particular on day 3 with a gameplay gimmick that we found brilliant and capable of creating a " horror vibe ”that few titles can afford. Considering also the limited length of the title, the pacing is not particularly affected by some sequences that have succeeded worse than others, so we do not consider this a particularly evident flaw. The narrative itself is compelling and open to interpretation, in fact paying attention to the details is not only to be able to appreciate the modeling work of ONE-O-ONE, but also to understand that something is not right in the narrative itself, and look for alternative explanations. .
One thing to complain could be that, given the good ideas of the game in some points, we believe it would have been possible to insert more interaction with the environment, which instead remains very limited. In addition, the previously mentioned Firewatch inspiration also plays to the disadvantage of the game itself, since the two games also share similar scenes and a management of the narrative that can make you draw very obvious parallels. In general though, these aren't things that spoil the experience, e The Suicide of Rachel Foster remains a title we highly recommend.
The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a great walking simulator, which it shares a little too much perhaps with another good exponent of the genre: Firewatch. The Shining-style atmospheres, the ambiguous narrative that hides more than it seems and an excellent technical sector are more than enough to recommend this adventure. We have to go over some limits of environmental interaction and the weird lack of chapter selection that kills replayability a bit, but the ONE-O-ONE GAMES title is definitely worth trying.
► The Suicide of Rachel Foster is an Adventure-type game developed by ONE-O-ONE GAMES and published by Daedalic Entertainment for PC and Steam, the video game was released on 19/02/2020
