This atmospheric horror game for your PC is free and easy to play, offering spooky thrills
This atmospheric horror game for your PC is free and easy to play, offering spooky thrills
Vote: (10,154 votes)
Program license: Free
Developer: Parsec productions
Version: 0.9.7
Works under: Windows
Vote:
Program license
(10,154 votes)
Free
Developer
Version
Parsec productions
0.9.7
Works under:
Windows
Pros
- Completely free to play
- Environment and monster design are very creepy
- Smart and unpredictable computer behavior
Cons
- Very limited moves and tools
- Can be finished in almost no time
The Slender Man myth may have been born in the domain of creepypasta stories, but Slender: The Eight Pages really brought the character to life in perhaps the most vivid manner yet. This indie survival horror game strips the genre down to the basics, and the sense of surprise that elicits creates a sense of tension that few other horror games can manage. The results are a lo-fi approach to horror game design that largely strips out character development in lieu of an experience that plays like a surrealist dream sequence. It's that distinct sense of atmosphere that has made Slender: The Eight Pages a popular choice for Let's Play videos.
In terms of gameplay mechanics, there's not a whole lot to learn to properly play Slender. Your objective is to wander through a dense and dark copse of woods at night and recover the eight pages of a manuscript. Complicating matters is the fact that the Slender Man is hunting you. Unlike the visceral and meaty zombies of Resident Evil, this is an entity that you can't stop. There are no weapons or ammo to pick up, and there isn't even an attack button. Instead, your only real option is to run.
Getting caught by the Slender Man won't end your life immediately, but it will drain your sanity - and the longer you look at Slender Man, the faster your sanity will drain. It's a smart way of obscuring the monster in a genre where creepy monster designs eventually just become cannon fodder for your increasingly well-equipped hero.
You do have one tool at your disposal. The flashlight you carry can help you read the environment around you, but it's easy to be shocked by the sudden appearance of the Slender Man in your beam of light. Making things more difficult is the fact that the flashlight runs on a battery and regularly needs to be charged to continue working. Searching the environment for the randomly placed page adds a significant air of tension to the hunt, but it also forces you to spend extended periods of time fumbling through the dark. The only other resource to consider is your stamina, which allows you to sprint away from Slendermam but which rapidly decreases while running. All of these elements tie together to create a tone that's discomforting and disorienting throughout the whole experience.
Horror is all about spikes and valleys - the rush of endorphins at a scare and then the high of a comedown in between. Slender Man: The Eight Pages is all spike. The fact that the Slender Man can appear anywhere, the lack of what many games would consider mandatory features, and the absence of save points mean that you're never safe even for a moment. It's not a level of tension that can be sustained, but the developers were smart enough to understand that. A full playthrough of Slender: The Eight Pages can be completed in just a few minutes, and that's just about the right amount of time for the style of scares at work here. This isn't a refined meditation on the concepts of horror, but it can provide you with a quick jolt of excitement in just a few minutes, and it's a great experience to share with friends - particularly ones who scare easily.
That this game works as well as it does really comes down to the sense of design. Thanks to the dark moodiness of the game's tone, the developers have managed to do some pretty impressive work with relatively basic textures. It's just another testament to what indie creators can accomplish with a bit of creativity, and it suits the mood like a glove. But much of the heavy lifting in the scare department is handled by the Slender Man himself. The ambiguity and the urban myth status of the Slender Man in the real world has helped turn the Slender Man into one of the most notorious ghost stories of the internet age, but it's his haunting design that makes him so unsettling. When seen from a distance or out of the corner of your eye, that awkward gait and almost but not quite human frame is as scary as any monster from a horror game.
If you love a good scare and aren't expecting an epic story-driven experience, Slender: The Eight Pages could be a promising diversion. While the experience may not last long, but it offers more scares per second than just about any game around. Between the first-person perspective, the midnight black environment, and the inherent creepiness of the Slender, Slender: The Eight Pages stands out as a small but precious indie horror gem and a great diversion even for people who aren't experienced gamers.
Pros
- Completely free to play
- Environment and monster design are very creepy
- Smart and unpredictable computer behavior
Cons
- Very limited moves and tools
- Can be finished in almost no time
Pros
- Perfectly Spooky Areas
- Fullscreen or Window Mode
- Easy Gameplay
Cons
- Limited Depth
Slender is a video game based on the paranormal entity known as Slender Man. The game places the player behind the perspective of their character, and the creepy nature of the game combined with the first-person point of view is enough to leave your skin crawling.
The game centers around the idea of collecting eight lost pages to a manuscript that have been scattered in a forest. Slender Man is hiding in the forest, waiting to scare you and drain you of your sanity. If you look at Slender Man, your sanity meter drops, so don't face him for longer than you have to. You are equipped with a flashlight, but it also has a meter that drains as you use it, so you must conserve energy when you're safe. You also have to worry about stamina, which is used up as you sprint away from Slender Man.
When you combine the creepy scene with the sound of crickets chirping, you get a real sense that you're actually in the forest trying to avoid Slender Man. Unfortunately, the only goal in the game is to collect the eight pages of the manuscript, which presumably is used to defeat Slender Man in some way. This leaves a lot to be desired from a premise that's actually full of potential.
Even if you haven't heard of the myth of Slender Man, this game can be a fun and eerie experience. Fans of the horror and suspense genres should certainly try out this game.
Since the first version of the Slender Man game, it has received a number of updates. In this version, the main menu now has a musical background track. As you collect pages of the manuscript, your default speed increases slightly. There's no longer a recovery period after using stamina, but every time you begin sprinting, you automatically lose 5 percent of your maximum stamina. This prevents an exploit in an older version of the game where players could repeatedly tap the sprint button to move at a much faster rate without any real drain on stamina.
Even though your speed increases each time you collect a page of the manuscript, your visibility range decreases in the same fashion. Since you can turn the fog off in the settings of the game for greater visibility, this decrease in vision counteracts that advantage. In older versions of the game, you could turn off the shading of the most distant areas from you, and this would provide a much clearer view of Slender Man's location. This is not an option in Slender.
There's now a button that lets you skip the introduction automatically, and you can pause the game for the first time in any version. The pause function cannot be used when you see Slender Man since it won't work in the presence of static, which he creates when you see him.
Pros
- Perfectly Spooky Areas
- Fullscreen or Window Mode
- Easy Gameplay
Cons
- Limited Depth
