The suicide of rachel foster nicole simulator#

The suicide of rachel foster nicole simulator#

Since walking simulator games are almost all about storytelling, it is absolutely imperative for them to deliver a compelling narrative. There is hardly any character development that takes place in the game to make players care about anything that's happening to Nicole or her relationship with Irving, and that disconnect makes any and all attempts at emotional impact fall completely flat.

The Suicide of Rachel Foster struggles with a dull script, phoned-in voice acting performances, and characters that are impossible to like. Every few seconds, Nicole will bring the phone back up to her ear to talk to Irving about something, and unlike Firewatch, the two don't really have interesting conversations. Irving and Nicole are constantly talking to each other, to the point where it's pointless for them to even stop talking at all. The Firewatch inspiration comes into play as Nicole becomes acquainted with a FEMA employee named Irving, who talks to her using a bulky 90s cellphone. The hotel is in the mountains, and just like Jack Torrance's family becomes trapped at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining because a nasty winter storm, so too does Nicole. In the game, players control a character named Nicole, who has been summoned to her family's old hotel in the Montana wilderness so that she can sell it. Anyone that has played Gone Home will see The Suicide of Rachel Foster's 'twists' coming from a mile away, and so the story stops being a fun mystery and getting to the end becomes a chore.īesides liberally borrowing from Gone Home, The Suicide of Rachel Foster throws in some Firewatch and The Shining into the mix for good measure. There are no stakes, no jump scares, and nothing for players to get invested in or overcome besides some confusing geometry. The Suicide of Rachel Foster comes apart once one realizes that the developers are just copying Gone Home, effectively sucking all of the tension and atmosphere out of the proceedings. The second half is boring, tedious, and potentially problematic. The first half of the game is engrossing, interesting, and genuinely creepy. The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a tale of two games.

The Suicide of Rachel Foster is the latest walking simulator game chasing Gone Home's popularity, but its mimicry is far less subtle than most, which is just one of the game's downfalls. Since Gone Home's runaway success, many other games have attempted to emulate it, though few have reached the same heights.

Back in 2013, The Fullbright Company released Gone Home and popularized the 'walking simulator' genre in the process.