Puzzle design tends to be fairly straight forward with nothing being ridiculously difficult to work out. We never actually get to see Irving (who contacts Nicole out of the blue as the local Federal Emergency Management Agency representative) but he acts as a guide and his presence is greatly appreciated, especially when hunting for food or trying to navigate the decomposing hotel alone late at night. Whereas in Firewatch, the protagonist was male and had a female acquaintance providing assistance and guidance via short wave radio, in this game Nicole has a male helper at the end of her comically large 80’s style mobile phone.

You will have to pick up the game to find out exactly what happened.Īlthough very different graphically and stylistically from Firewatch, the hero of this ‘Walking Simulator’ also relies heavily on another character that is always out of view. I will not go any further into the story during the review for fear of giving away any spoilers.

Is the walk in freezer as randomly dangerous as it seems? Is there a Ghost still roaming the corridors of the hotel? The suicide of the pregnant daughter of a local Preacher is mentioned early on in the story, with the implication that her fate may have been connected to her relationship with Nicole’s Astrophysicist father. In the longer Second Act of the game the end goal changes, with objectives instead revolving around finding clues to unlock the mystery of the events that went on a decade before and drove Nicole’s parents apart. This involves getting the boiler fired up, finding a torch to enable navigating the dark corridors, (a wind up Torch no less) and searching for food to eat. In the First Act, these are mainly focused on survival and to ensure that Nicole lives through the harsh Winter conditions both outside and inside the building. The objective of the of the game is to explore the rather sinister hotel and carry out a variety of tasks.

The heavy rain turns pretty quickly into heavy snow and after a long drive in blizzard conditions followed by a quick look around the property, Nicole somehow loses her car keys and finds herself snowed in and alone. We learn from the letter that now both of her parents are dead, Nicole needs to go back to the mountains of Montana in order to put the family Hotel (where they all once lived together) up for sale. A top down view of a sea of umbrellas at a biblically rainy funeral, interspersed with the reading of a letter from the deceased, introduces us to the main character Nicole.

The suicide of rachel foster nicole