![]() ![]() It’s just too bad that the intentional shabbiness isn’t made more satisfying to explore with some visual narrative nuggets. This at least makes perfect sense given the state the old building is in – after all, it’s been inhabited exclusively for years by the late Leonard McGrath, a reclusive shut-in alone in his mountaintop retreat. In addition to there being little of note to catch your eye as you walk around, the hotel isn’t exactly glamorous to look at either. The all-important environmental storytelling, tragically, falls rather flat. ![]() With little to do and even less happening around you, the rather spacious hotel just becomes a bit of a chore that you nonetheless have to navigate through to reach the next objective and move the story along. The majority of guest rooms remain locked and inaccessible for the entire duration, and common areas like the dining room and observatory can be visited once and then safely be forgotten about. It’s a shame that the Timberline itself isn’t particularly interesting to explore either. It’s clear there’s a scandal in her family’s past, but you’re given no breadcrumbs to reach a conclusion yourself before it’s spelled out at the end, so you are reduced to passively observing a mundane tale a large chunk of the time. Seemingly afraid to fully commit to the idea of an unwelcome visitor, the game fills its 5-6 hour runtime with largely uneventful free-roaming, first-person strolls through the surprisingly uninteresting building, largely devoid of anything to actually do.Īs each chapter ticks by, sometimes lasting mere minutes, there aren’t enough interesting events or revelations to maintain suspense, and it doesn’t help that Nicole’s personal recollections don’t add much excitement until late in the game. In fact, there seems to be no concrete reason to suspect anyone but Nicole to be in the hotel, so as day after uneventful day goes by, the sense of safety becomes absolute. This very ambiguity could have been the basis of a thrilling mystery in its own right, but the hypothetical threat of an unseen presence, human or otherwise, isn’t capitalized on in a timely manner. It’s really never clear whether we should expect a supernatural ghost story or be wary of a more corporeal source of tension when Nicole’s car keys, left on her front seat, suddenly go missing, or boots dripping with freshly melted snow mysteriously appear near the locked front doors. Even when Nicole receives creepy phone calls and hears the occasional odd noise…well, people sometimes make prank calls, and old buildings have a tendency to be creaky, and that’s all. Freely roaming around the empty hallways of the Timberline easily conjures up spooky vibes indeed, there’s even a short subplot at one point, told via conversation snippets and found video footage, revolving around a group of paranormal investigators who once visited the hotel following sightings of a ghostly Rachel still haunting the place, only to flee in terror shortly after.īut the game undermines these attempts at tension, almost tripping over itself in its haste to have Nicole and Irving Crawford, a voice-on-the-phone from the local ranger’s office who’s in constant contact with the protagonist, assure each other that there is absolutely nothing at the Timberline to be afraid of. ![]() The main issue is that the game sometimes gets in its own way while trying to establish atmosphere and ends up sending conflicting signals to the player. It’s an intriguing mystery that is satisfying to reflect on overall, but unfortunately isn’t always executed in an interesting and consistent manner. Alone with the rooms and hallways of her childhood, Nicole begins piecing together how the death of a young local girl named Rachel Foster tied into her and her mother’s flight from the place many years ago, which left her father behind all alone. Having inherited the Timberline after the death of her father, Nicole Wilson revisits the mountaintop retreat one final time before selling it off, only to promptly become trapped there by a violent snowstorm. ![]() The story takes place over a period of eight days in 1993. Hoping to rekindle similar magic, One-O-One Games and Reddoll’s The Suicide of Rachel Foster places environmental storytelling at the forefront as players are invited to investigate a dark secret at the Timberline Hotel, accompanying its protagonist as she confronts the skeletons in her family’s closet in an atmospheric, slow burning tale that ends up just a bit too anemic to have as much impact as its premise would suggest. Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick both got excellent mileage out of the Overlook Hotel with its sprawling grounds, multiple floors and several wings of seemingly empty guest rooms. Vacant mountainside hotels are tasty fodder for a good haunted house tale, right alongside abandoned hospitals and derelict asylums. ![]()
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