The Slenderman was always something which I found very interesting: an evil entity that looks like creepily proportioned tall and thin man in a suit with no face and a mysterious origin… how could you not be intrigued? I loved reading the stories about Slenderman and I loved looking at the images people had created. So as I’m sure you can guess, I was very excited when a Slenderman game was created!
Slender: The Eight Pages is quite a basic game, but it does a good job of creating a rather spooky experience. You are a random person who’s out in the woods and investigating Slenderman. The story is never really delved into very far, but there are eight pages scattered throughout the forest which you need to find – each of them has some kind of creepy Slenderman related sketch on it. What makes finding them hard is that Slenderman hunts you the whole time…
The game is shown through the camera footage of the person who headed into the forest (and who presumably wanted to capture Slenderman on video) and this helps you to feel quite immersed. It’s the middle of the night and the forest is very dark, you can only see with the help of a torch, but the longer you take to complete your task, the higher the chances of your torch power being drained! Your torch can and will run out and then you’ll be left in almost total darkness – when you know Slenderman is near, this is very unnerving.
When the game starts, all you hear is the sound of your footsteps and the wind, but music slowly builds up in the background as Slenderman beings to pursue you more and more aggressively and it becomes rather intense as you get more and more pages! Then there’s also the fact that Slenderman causes the camera to make weird, screeching noises, meaning you get a creepy warning whenever he’s near. It all adds up to make a very creepy little game.
Overall, it’s really fun to play, especially late at night, in the dark, with your headphones, but it isn’t a hugely comprehensive title. I can’t rate it too highly, because it is essentially just one “thing” but what it is, is very good and since it’s free, I can’t really complain.
Rating: 8/10
(D0n’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)
