The Suicide of Rachel Foster

What to Know

Critics Recommend

Average Score

Total Reviews: 38

Skip It

Wonderful environmental storytelling can’t overcome the tired, melodramatic story.

Skip It

Critics Recommend

Critic Reviews: 38

Critics Consensus

# Reviews: 38

Wonderful environmental storytelling can't overcome the tired, melodramatic story.

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Critic Reviews for The Suicide of Rachel Foster

Reviews

High Score - 90/100

Low Score - 30/100

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell (Eurogamer)

Not Recommended

“The setting is elegantly eerie, but this Gone-Home-inspired first-person mystery struggles to overcome its tired, melodramatic story.”

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Alice Bell (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Not Recommended

“The most glaring problem is how The Suicide Of Rachel Foster fails to meaningfully engage with its central themes.”

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Chris Hyde (God is a Geek)

8/10

“The Suicide of Rachel Foster tackles some tough issues but in a respectful way. Surrounding it is a mystery that will intrigue and surprise right to the end.”

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**Read all 38 critic reviews on the desktop version of VSG.

Read the Reviews (38 total)

Outlet	Author	Score	Date	Quote	Read
3DNews	Денис Щенников	7 / 10	02-18-2020	Sad story of the tragedy and the truth behind it. Intriguing ’till the last minute.	Read review
Chalgyr’s Game Room	Izzy Gadoury	6 / 10	09-21-2020	I know it may seem difficult to believe, but I didn’t actually hate the game. Aside from the issues I have with it from a narrative standpoint, it was fine, and therein lies my struggle to recommend it outright: It’s just fine. There is nothing particularly special or interesting or revolutionary in The Suicide of Rachel Foster that you couldn’t get in any other walking simulator without having to simultaneously excuse a story that explores predatory behaviour in a way that is questionable at best, and seriously harmful at worst.	Read review
Checkpoint Gaming	Elliot Attard	5 / 10	02-18-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster has all the components of a great game. It has mature themes and storytelling, an idea for a mysterious and captivating narrative, and the ability to replicate a style of game that’s been embraced by gamers for the last decade. Unfortunately the game also stumbles across a few hurdles that it was never able to recover from.	Read review
COGconnected	Erin Castillo	60 / 100	09-19-2020	If you’re unsure whether you can handle some uncomfortable and disturbing topics, this is definitely not the game for you. If you’re looking for a creepy and dark mystery to get lost in for a couple of hours, or you’re curious who Rachel Foster is, this is worth a playthrough.	Read review
Cultured Vultures	W.B. Mason	8.5 / 10	02-17-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster walks the fine line between adventure and a thriller-supernatural horror. It’s not perfect, but it is certainly up there with the best in the genre.	Read review
Darkstation	Lee Mehr	2.5 / 5 stars	03-18-2020	In the end, The Suicide of Rachel Foster feels like the quintessential first draft of a horror/drama flick latched to a graceless gameplay template. The excitement and deliberate pacing early on suggest learning from the industry’s best exemplars. Ominous warnings suggest ghosts are roaming The Timberline’s halls. As it progresses, however, uncoordinated game design and tonally-tangled storytelling turns that engagement frozen stiff. Like walking through a grand hotel with years of decay, you can’t help but wonder how it could fare under new management.	Read review
Digital Chumps	Nathaniel Stevens	7 / 10	08-27-2017	The Suicide of Rachel Foster does its best to get you in that uncomfortable gameplay horror structure it aspires to achieve, and it succeeds in engaging and pulling you into the experience. The game just falls short in the story and never really brings the actual horror you would expect to the table, which hurts the gameplay. The long journey to start the horror and the payoff by the end doesn’t match up. That’s not to say you won’t get something out of the game, at least some mystery and suspense, but your expectations of what you should get and what you want to get will never quite come to fruition.	Read review
Eurogamer	Edwin Evans-Thirlwell	Not Recommended	02-17-2020	The setting is elegantly eerie, but this Gone-Home-inspired first-person mystery struggles to overcome its tired, melodramatic story.	Read review
Everyeye.it	Giuseppe Arace	7.2 / 10	03-09-2020	Turning a blind eye to some uncertainties, one to discover the past of Nicole and Rachel remains a journey that is still worth taking.	Read review
FingerGuns	Greg Hicks	7 / 10	09-21-2020	A dark premise that, like most uncomfortable experiences, deserves to be told. A few technical issues knocked my pacing back slightly, but didn’t stop me from seeing this through.	Read review
Gameblog	Filipe Da Silva Barbosa	7 / 10	02-24-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster is primarely focusing on its chilling atmosphere and a subtle writing between two characters rather than spread jump scares everywhere as we’re used to with most of horror games. Gameplay-wise, the game might seem a bit classic though and the protagonist is too sluggish.	Read review
GameMAG	Unknown	5 / 10	02-17-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a beautiful, promising introduction and a slow, meaningless story with minimal interactivity, far-fetched mysticism, and a frustrating ending. All that can sweeten a failure is the graphics, but there are also drawbacks. If you love a good and deep detective adventures, your princess certainly is in another castle.	Read review
GamePitt	Rob Pitt	8.7 / 10	03-02-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster delivers a haunting narrative within a beautiful, yet creepy, isolated hotel. With only an unknown companion on the phone to keep you company, you’re trapped in the last place you’d ever want to be, surrounded by memories of the past and secrets best left hidden from the world. Although delivering a conclusion which left me with questions, the experience throughout the entire three-hour narrative had me intrigued, invested, and captivated as to what we’ll uncover next and what’s around the corner.	Read review
GameSpew	Kim Snaith	8 / 10	02-17-2020	Packed with droves of tension and atmosphere, The Suicide of Rachel Foster will keep you on your toes.	Read review
God is a Geek	Chris Hyde	8 / 10	02-17-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster tackles some tough issues but in a respectful way. Surrounding it is a mystery that will intrigue and surprise right to the end.	Read review
Hardcore Gamer	Jordan Helm	3 / 5 stars	03-04-2020	With a lengthier campaign and better character development, The Suicide of Rachel Foster could’ve been an engrossing equivalent to first-person adventure-style mysteries prior.	Read review
Hey Poor Player	Heather Johnson	1.5 / 5 stars	09-17-2020	There will be people who like The Suicide of Rachel Foster because they are able to sidestep away from the whole pedophilia aspect, which is only a possibility because the game itself tries to frame it differently. I can’t tell you how much I initially wanted to like The Suicide of Rachel Foster — I played it twice and watched several let’s plays to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. But the developer really needed to handle these topics better, or at least have one character that didn’t sympathize with the sex offender. Ethical issues aside, the environments were great, but everything else fell flat. There is no recommendation here, only concern.	Read review
Impulsegamer	Scott De Lacy	3.95 / 5 stars	09-19-2020	An interactive story telling with some minor gamer input. Flawed, but eclipsed by the story and enigmatic experience.	Read review
Jump Dash Roll	Kate Fanthorpe	7 / 10	02-19-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster builds an environment with depth, intrigue and genuine atmosphere, surrounding you with sound and visual design that immediately immerses you. But its boundless potential is not seen to fruition, and ultimately the game fails to move past the narrative clichés of the first-person narrative genre.	Read review
KeenGamer	Limarc Ambalina	8 / 10	02-19-2020	Another captivating adventure game from Daedalic Entertainment, The Suicide of Rachel Foster employs beautifully written dialogue, great level design, and solid voice acting. Throughout our review of The Suicide of Rachel Foster, the game constantly reminded us of one undeniable truth: video games are a powerful storytelling medium.	Read review
MonsterVine	Brian Seymour	1.5 / 5 stars	04-02-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster doesn’t try to hide its muse. Anybody who has seen Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 hit classic, The Shining, will certainly see similarities between both properties’ settings and pieces.	Read review
New Game Network	Ben Thomas	70 / 100	02-26-2020	Uncovering the past has its ups and downs in The Suicide of Rachel Foster. While not a horror game, it only needed a slight nudge to become one and it would have been better for it. At least its roomy hotel setting is nice to explore, even if the world needed more detail and excitement.	Read review
PC Gamer	Rachel Watts	40 / 100	02-24-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster builds a haunting hotel, but fills it with an insensitive story ill-equipped to deal with the issues it covers.	Read review
PC Invasion	Unknown	8 / 10	02-25-2020	Anyone who likes walking simulators or solid mysteries will likely be satisfied with The Suicide of Rachel Foster. It’s got a well-written story and is set in a convincing location. It’s also very easy to blow through in a single evening in lieu of watching a similar movie.	Read review
Player2.net.au	Unknown	Not Recommended	02-18-2020	While audio issues stop it from reaching its full potential, The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a dark and intriguing walk-‘em-up that will keep fans of the genre on their toes. Just be ready to weather some frustrating technical problems to get to the good bits.	Read review
PlayStation Universe	Timothy Nunes	6 / 10	09-18-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster offers up some wonderful environmental storytelling, creating palpable tension. Once everything starts to come together however, the game itself starts to fall apart. What could have been good ideas fall into thoughtless choices, and the strengths of the game as a whole are wasted on the finale. Outside of the gimmicky triggering ending, this game had the potential for something interesting.	Read review
Rock, Paper, Shotgun	Alice Bell	Not Recommended	02-21-2020	The most glaring problem is how The Suicide Of Rachel Foster fails to meaningfully engage with its central themes.	Read review
Screen Rant	Peter Morics	4 / 5 stars	02-24-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster is an engaging and pulse-pounding exploration of a family’s dark history.	Read review
SECTOR.sk	Ján Kordoš	7 / 10	03-04-2020	Dramatical walking through Hotel with weaker narration and interaction.	Read review
SelectButton	Kevin Mitchell	6 / 10	09-17-2020	The complicated issues and themes hinted at in The Suicide of Rachel Foster present a haunting tale of digging up the past based on one’s perspective. The start of the game hammers home Nicole’s father as the leading cause of the death of teenager Rachel Foster, but when you first reach the hotel, the game’s narrative focuses on her survival. Slowly day after day, things unwind, as memories come flooding back. A few plot twists are sprinkled throughout, but nothing should feel like a surprise once they happen if you are paying attention.	Read review
Softpedia	Cosmin Vasile	6.5 / 10	09-15-2020	Despite the heavy topics at its core, The Suicide of Rachel Foster in the end proves to be a bit overly melodramatic. It resembles the work of a playwriter that tried too hard to be dramatic, with overacting characters, the entire experience being a sizzle rather than a bang. But, thanks to the few moments when the tension can give you goosebumps, The Suicide of Rachel Foster is worth experiencing on a rainy afternoon, but only by the fans of the genre.	Read review
SpazioGames	Domenico Musicò	8.3 / 10	02-17-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster is an awesome and unsettling “Italian Giallo” set in an abandoned hotel that recalls the one seen in Shining, rich of details that tell a story of love and tragedy.	Read review
The Digital Fix	Posted by Dan Goad	9 / 10	02-17-2020	The Suicide of the Rachel Foster is a masterpiece in atmospheric storytelling. The slow-paced unveiling of the truth is crafted meticulously, and whilst the ultimate ending is a little disappointing, that doesn’t make the journey any less thrilling. The game knows exactly how to manipulate emotions and does so throughout. Equal parts intriguing, frightening, disturbing, and thrilling, The Suicide of Rachel Foster sets a new high-bar for the already strong first person exploration genre.	Read review
The Games Machine	Daniele Dolce	8.5 / 10	02-17-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a fascinating interactive thriller that manages to treat extremely delicate issues such as suicide, depression, and love with extraordinary tact. The writing is always on point, even if near the end of the adventure the events appear perhaps a bit rushed. In any case, the game developed by One-O-One Games manages to leave its mark by making us, the players, think about the consequences of our actions in other people’s lives.	Read review
ThisGenGaming	Justin Oneil	7 / 10	09-28-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster takes on some heavy subject matter but doesn’t quite nail the execution with all of it. Despite that, I did enjoy the story and the game’s great visuals and audio design made the hotel a very immersive setting for me to explore. If the subject material here doesn’t bother you then I do think it is worth a playthrough.	Read review
Use a Potion	Unknown	8 / 10	09-14-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster tells a harrowing and emotionally driven tale that’ll keep players completely hooked in as they uncover its unsettling secrets. It’s worth noting that it does tackle some dark themes that might hit a little close to home throughout its three-hour runtime too, but it does so in a meaningful way that builds upon them to strengthen the story it is telling rather than feeling exploitative of people’s struggles. It’s good stuff.	Read review
Wccftech	Nathan Birch	5 / 10	02-17-2020	The Suicide of Rachel Foster tackles challenging subject matter and bravely invites comparisons to recent indie favorites, but all the ambition in the world can’t make up for an unengaging story, clunky gameplay, and some unfortunate tone-deaf moments. If you loved Gone Home or Firewatch, you’re better off just playing them again – Rachel Foster is a ghostly shadow of those classics.	Read review

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About The Suicide of Rachel Foster

Game Description / Storyline:

1993 LEWIS & CLARK COUNTY, MONTANA, US – Ten years ago, teenager Nicole and her mother left the family hotel after discovering her father Leonard’s affair with, and pregnancy of Rachel, a girl her own age who eventually committed suicide. Now that both of her parents have passed, Nicole hopes to fulfill her mother’s last will to sell the hotel and make amends to Rachel’s relatives. With the will and determination to put that chapter behind her, she returns to the hotel with the family’s lawyer to audit the decaying structure. As the weather unexpectedly turns for the worst, Nicole has no way to leave the large mountain lodge, and finds support in Irving, a young FEMA agent, using one of the first radio telephones ever built. With his help, Nicole starts to investigate a mystery far deeper than what people in the valley thought. A story of love and death, where melancholy and nostalgia melt into a thrilling ghost tale.

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