The Suicide of Rachel Foster (TSORF for short) is a Psychological Thriller Environmental Narrative Game. It was developed by ONE-O-ONE Games and published by Daedalic Entertainment, released in 2020 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Leonard McGrath, owner of Timberline Hotel, a mountain hotel in Lewis and Clark county, Montana, has an affair with the much younger, 16 year old, Rachel Foster, daughter of a Reverend. Once the relationship is revealed, the girl jumps off the cliff, and Leonard's wife, Claire Wilson, leaves the place with their daughter Nicole, also 16.
The game's events begin 10 years later, in December 1993. After the death of her father, Nicole returns to the hotel to inspect it before selling it. Unfortunately, a huge storm arrives, cutting off the hotel from the world for several days. Nicole's only companion is a FEMA agent named Irving Crawford, who she talks with on a radio telephone. Soon enough, weird things start happening. Someone calls over the, supposedly dead, main-line telephone telling her that Rachel didn't commit suicide and warning her not to sell the hotel. She decides to investigate. As time progresses, things become more and more weird.
The gameplay is typical that of Environmental Narrative Games: you explore the hotel and try to find out what happened from Story Breadcrumbs along the way. Most of the playable area is available for explore from a fairly early point, but new areas become available progressively as you reach the conclusion. To advance the story, you have to achieve certain objectives, from mundane things such as finding food to investigating the past.
Not to be confused with Angels of Death, whose two main characters are named Rachel Gardner and Isaac Foster.
Spoiler warning: due to the mystery nature of the story, even the trope names can spoil.
This game provides examples of:
- The '90s: The game takes place in December of 1993. Nicole has to use a radio telephone to communicate with Irving and has no other way of contacting the outside world. Some of the technology in the hotel is even older, given how it's been on the decline since The '80s.
- Abusive Parents: Rachel's father Reverend Foster is described to have been a very strict parent who placed high expectations on Rachel. This might have been the reason for Rachel's attraction to Leonard.
- Anyone Can Die: Irving and potentially Nicole both commit suicide at the end. All other significant characters are already dead when the game begins.
- Artistic License – Biology:
- When Nicole finds the blanket which was used to transport the dead Rachel to the cliff to fake suicide, she starts washing it and bright red blood starts seeping out of it. The murder happened 10 years ago. That blood would be dried to the point of being black and unwashable.
- Early on in the game Irving says that walking around outside in a blizzard with the temperature at twenty below would cause her "lungs to collapse within minutes". Anyone with personal experience of harsh winters can tell you it may feel unpleasant, but with reasonable winter clothing you can easily spend an hour outdoors in that weather without dropping dead. Irving could be deliberately exaggerating, but Nicole is supposed to have grown up in the region so she should know he is speaking nonsense.
- Bathroom Stall Graffiti: There is a large graffiti in the men's bathroom. It must be recent, made after the hotel was closed down, given that even the can of paint is there. Nicole comments "Vandals" when she sees it.
- Big Electric Switch: The generator room has a few of these.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: Nicole has a pedophile father and a child-murdering mother. She is eventually Driven to Suicide.
- Bland-Name Product: They are all over the place in the hotel, from cleaning to food products.
- Calling Parents by Their Name: Nicole refers to her father as "Leonard" after she got alienated from him because of his relationship with Rachel.
- The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House: Near the end it turns out that Irving is calling Nicole from inside the hotel.
- Chekhov's Gun: Nicole's car. In the beginning, she tries to leave in it, and mentions it being a 1984 Dodge. Then the car does not take any role and is not mentioned until the last scene, when Nicole uses the car to commit suicide.
- Closed Circle: Nicole ends up stuck at the hotel for nine days because of the snowstorm; when she does try to leave on the first day she also finds her car keys are missing and the garage door is jammed shut.
- Deadpan Snarker: Nicole snarks at Irving a lot.
- A Deadly Affair: The crux of the plot is the tragic outcome of Leonard's affair with teenage Rachel. After their affair was discovered, a now-pregnant Rachel disappeared and was found dead at the bottom of a cliff a few weeks later; everyone believed she killed herself due to be unable to cope with the fallout. It's revealed towards the end of the game that Rachel was actually murdered by Leonard's wife Claire, who then pushed her body over the cliff to make it look like a suicide or accident. The fallout of the affair leads to the death of Rachel's brother and potentially the death of Claire and Leonard's daughter too.
- Downer Ending: After The Reveal that Nicole's mother murdered Rachel, Irving kills himself. Nicole follows soon after, though you can have her back out at the last second, at which point she seemingly goes full Norman Bates and decides to reopen the hotel while talking to her parents as if they're both still alive.
- Driven to Suicide: Rachel jumped off a cliff after her relationship with Leonard got revealed. At least that's what everyone believes. Subverted as she was actually murdered by Claire. After this revelation, Irving and potentially Nicole play the trope straight.
- Falling Chandelier of Doom: The chandelier in the ballroom is on the floor. It probably fell due to disrepair while nobody was there.
- Female Rockers Play Bass: There is a bass guitar in Nicole's room, and you're even required to play it to advance the story at one point.
- First-Person Ghost: Played straight with Nicole, to the point there is no character model of her face (all mirrors in the building are too damaged to work). We only see her hands at times.
- Flat Character: Rachel Foster is mostly defined by her sordid affair with Leonard and tragic death, and by her relationships with the other characters (or at least she's defined by how they felt about her; we don't get much insight into how she felt towards them). All we really know about her outside of this is that her father was controlling yet apparently still favored her over her brother, she struggled academically due to her dyslexia and she often cried herself to sleep because she was bullied at school.
- Gamer Chick: Nicole's room features an ancient game console (though it was probably cutting edge the last time she was there). Putting the crosshair over the joystick gives it the label "Old Friend".
- Go Mad from the Revelation: This is one possible reason for Irving's and Nicole's suicide at the end. Another reason might be the isolation, especially for Irving. Probably both.
- Hell Hotel: The Timberline Hotel was a neat mountain hotel in its heyday, accommodating hikers and skiers alike. However, since Rachel's death 10 years ago, it doesn't fare well financially, leading to its slow deterioration. The second floor experiences serious water damage, and an entire wing lacking windows because of an aborted renovation, making that part completely falling apart. To add to the creepiness of the place, the hotel has recently closed down due to the death of the owner, making Nicole alone in the whole building (or not, but the alternate scenario is probably even worse).
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Inaccessible areas are often blocked off by boxes or other furniture that could be moved by Nicole at any time if she wanted. Once the plot advances to the point that you are allowed to access the area, they will be conveniently moved.
- It Always Rains at Funerals: In the intro, Nicole attends her father's funeral. It's raining heavily.
- It Will Never Catch On: Nicole is skeptical when Irving tells her that soon everybody will have radio telephones. Granted, she is using one of those bulky early versions that hardly fits in your pocket.
- Karma Houdini: Claire killed Rachel and made it look like a suicide. Not only she got away with it, but by the time Nicole finds out, she's been dead for years.
- Locked in a Freezer: While searching for food to eat, you accidentally lock yourself in the freezer, then it opens by itself after a short time. The incident adds to the feeling that you might not be alone in the hotel after all.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: What could have caused all those mysterious things Nicole experiences? Some of them such as Nicole losing her car keys or the mysterious lipstick in the power room are revealed to be Irving's doing, but the others such as the strange noises or her sleepwalking have no definite answer. Is there some supernatural presence in the hotel or is it caused by Nicole breathing in too much mold? Then there's the thing the ghost hunters experience. Are they faking it just for the show (as suspected by Irving), did Irving do it to scare them off, or are there really ghosts? It's not made any more obvious by events such as the chalk board flipping itself or the door moving slightly after the ghost hunter video with no one except Nicole present.
- May–December Romance: Leonard was almost 50 and Rachel was 16 at the time of their affair.
- Multiple Endings: There are two: Either you allow Nicole to go through with her suicide or you have her abort her suicide attempt by turning the car off at the last second.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Claire murders Rachel when she finds out that Rachel had an affair with Claire's husband, Leonard, though she ending up leaving Leonard anyway.
- Never Suicide: Hints start popping up early that Rachel might not have committed suicide. In reality, she was murdered by Claire.
- Ominous Pipe Organ: There is a small organ in the church. When Nicole starts playing on it (more like pushes a key; she admits she cannot play it) while the telephone line is accidentally kept open, Irving lampshades the trope asking why would she want to play an organ in the middle of the night.
- Pædo Hunt: Leonard and Rachel's relationship is not mentioned explicitly as pedophile most of the times, except for one threatening note in his bedroom.
- Parental Favoritism: Irving was the overlooked brother of Rachel. He complains that while Rachel was a popular girl, he was unnoticed by everyone.
- Posthumous Character: Rachel dies 10 years before the events of the game, Claire is dead for a few years, and the game begins at Leonard's funeral.
- Product Placement: At the beginning, you can go into Leonard's office room, where you can see one of the floppy disks on a stack of books on his desk next to a Commodore 64 (complete with monitor, keyboard, and mouse). Also during Day 2, you go into the freezer room and collect a bean soup can, labeled as "Betty Crocker's
Mug-O-Lunch", no less. - The Reveal: Two in quick succession near the end.
- Once you enter the previously sealed off part of the building, you find out that Irving has been operating out of there the whole time and has been following you since the beginning, probably being the cause of most weird happenings. He then reveals himself as being Rachel's brother instead of a FEMA agent, and deliberately kept Nicole there so that she would find out what really happened to his sister.
- The final revelation that Rachel was murdered by Claire.
- Reverse Psychology: When Nicole finds Rachel's room in the basement, Irving tries to scare her out of exploring it. Given The Reveal, it is most likely that he did really want her to explore, and realized that Nicole has the tendency to do the opposite of what he tells her to do.
- Sanity Slippage: Signs of insanity appear on Nicole near the end of the game. The Reveal also tells that Irving has been mad from the beginning, but he had somehow managed to hide it well.
- Shout-Out: Several to The Shining. The carpet in some of the hallways resembles the carpet from the Overlook Hotel, along with the game's setting being an empty hotel located in snowy mountains. The ghost hunters who previously tried to scope out the hotel are also named Wendy, Danny, and Stan.
- Significant Anagram: For Irving: virgin. He is the brother of Rachel and he says he was always overlooked.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Leonard and Rachel's affair began after Leonard began privately tutoring Rachel, as she struggled in school due to having dyslexia.
- Teen Pregnancy: We learn at the beginning of the game that Leonard got Rachel pregnant when she was 16, although she died nine weeks into the pregnancy.
