If you're an avid internet user you've probably seen some things that no human being should ever witness. Whether it be awful music videos on Youtube, trolls on online forums or quite simply some of the darkest corners of the internet of which none shall be named in this article for the integrity of your own mental health.
One of the darkest corners of the internet that I will reveal though goes by the title of Creepy Pasta. Now the Creepy Pasta was a pretty underground thing for a long time, some well known stories like Sonic.exe may have slipped into the mainstream now and again but none had the mainstream success that was gained by the Slenderman.
The child stealing and murderous entity that has no face, wears a suit and floats as well as growing tentacles out of his back has supposedly been doing what he does best for decades, though he only originated in 2009. Since then the legend has gone onto spawn cosplays, fan fictions, real life crimes and most notably two independent video games from Parsec Productions.
Slender: The Arrival, the second of the two games is the first full length Slenderman game and an upgrade and evolution of the original game titled The Eight Pages.
You play as Lauren, a young woman who is visiting her friend Kate who lives on the outskirts of some woods and a nearby mining facility. When Lauren arrives she finds the house abandoned and defaced with drawings of trees and a tall man. After hearing screams from the forest, which Lauren believes to be Kate's, she ventures out into the darkness armed only with a flashlight in hope of finding her friend and getting answers to the drawings of the tall man in the house.
What ensues is an hour or so of pure pant wetting terror as you begin to unravel the mystery of the Slenderman, his origins and his purpose.
Slender: The Eight Pages was one of the first games to popularise the first person, non-combat horror genre as seen in titles such as Amnesia and Outlast. With no way to fight yourself out of a situation and very little health, not to mention complete lack of direction the majority of the time made the genre an instant hit at the turn of the last decade. The Arrival does not deviate from this formula and instead provides more of the same gameplay we saw in The Eight Pages, though this does good things for holding tension, making you panic because you don't know where you are or where your attackers may be and for being able to very quickly scare the willies out of you with no need for a set piece climax; it doesn't however bring anything new the genre and is instead a retread of perhaps the most basic and dull game in the genre.
The game has five chapters with three main gameplay sections. Two of the chapters are travel only chapters, with no gameplay devices whatsoever besides walking along a linear path to the next area. The three main sections of the game are maze style collection based activities, wherein you must collect either eight pages, switch on six generators, or lock eight windows and doors. These collection tasks must all be completed whilst avoiding the Slenderman who will teleport around the map and end the game if you get too close to him.
As each one of the collectibles is found, the Slenderman A.I gets progressively more difficult to escape and the more lost you begin to feel within the mazes from walking down the same corridors over and over again.
As effective at being scary as these sections are, they provide nothing but cheap shocks and in one particular case a large amount of irritation due to their random difficulty. Each maze has a define layout, however the collectibles can theoretically be placed in any part of the map as their spawn positions are randomised, meaning its unlikely what was there last time will be there again.
The second main gameplay section introduces a new enemy to the Slenderman lore, the Proxy, a human under the control of the Slenderman. The Proxy is a fast moving enemy that doesn't kill you in one hit, but will often kill in two. In order to escape you simply have to run as far as you can in hope of losing it. Though this does add something new to the Slenderman formula, it becomes frustrating as the Proxy is faster than you and the level it appears in takes place in an enclosed space often with little opportunity to escape.
The Arrival is technically speaking an alright looking game. Its not got any jaw dropping visuals but for an independent game on a budget as low as this it does look relatively pretty when in lighter areas. Unfortunately the majority of the game takes place in the dark meaning that the nice views are never there to sample for long before being plunged back into blackness where textures look muddy and animation is jerky. There were also several instances where I would clip through scenery and where shadow animations weren't matching the animations of the characters.
Sound is a key component to any horror game and none more so than the non-combat genre. The sound design in The Arrival is among the best in the business thanks to sounds getting quieter with distance, sound direction being extremely sensitive and small sound effects being able to make you jump out of your seat even though there is nothing there.
As a whole package The Arrival is hard to recommend unless its at a good price, I'm talking under £5 here. As a game that usually goes for £7, that recommendation is a little tough due to its short length, shallow repetitive gameplay and only three main gameplay sections. The lore and story of the Slenderman though is gone into great detail thanks to notes left by Kate in the linear sections of the game. It also includes a remastered version of the original Eight Pages map and a secret level that alters the way the game works in freakish ways, but these extras must be found and unlocked.
On the whole, Slender: The Arrival is a scary game, however that does not stop it from being one of the weaker games in the non-combat genre and an extremely repetitive title in general that did very little to improve itself from the predecessor.
Slender: The Arrival – 5/10
+Good Lore
+Scary
+Great Sound Design
-Criminally Short
-Extremely Repetitive
-Very Basic Gameplay Compared To Similar Titles
