2.5/5 ★ – jake84's review of The Suicide of Rachel Foster.

A game I’m deeply conflicted about. It’s a mixture of games I love: Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch and Gone Home. The gameplay mechanic of talking to someone via a phone throughout the game is lifted directly from Firewatch down to the icon’s look. I’m saying they could sue if they wanted to. The visual side and theme of returning to a child hood home and opening doors while discovering family trauma is lifted from Edith Finch. And the elements of subverting horror and returning to a place in the middle of a storm while dealing with taboo subjects are straight from the book of Gone Home. The difference between those three games and this is that they all dealt with their subject matter respectfully. The setup and visual side are the best things about this game, the voice acting is above-average too most of the time. The setup is a woman returning to her childhood home and old abandoned family business - a mountain hotel in Montana. The way the plot is revealed is not totally inefficient. The problem is that the plot is so predictably structured; the twist is the first one you think of when you arrive. But the most severe problem I had with it, is how defensive the protagonist Nicole is about her dad who had an affair with a 16 year old girl whom he groomed. It’s so problematic and disturbing. I think it’s deliberate to reach the climax and conclusion they were going for. But frankly, I don’t think the message is clearly enough stated, and the game isn’t adressing it very elegantly. That and the fact that Nicole explicitly says numerous times that she’s jealous of Rachel, her dad’s lover, which seems really weird, and made me feel uncomfortable. And I don’t think that part was intentional. I wished this game’s themes and intentions lived up to its technical side. And the ending trophy is in bad taste.