For those of you who aren’t 9gag fans or who haven’t delved into short games for a while let me introduce you to the harrowing world of being stalked in a park by a faceless supernatural entity called Slenderman. You will never know such terror and you may very well cry or wet yourself.
The twisted mind of Mark Hadley has brought you an experimental first person horror game where you play a girl who has jumped over a fence into a park at night. Your primary objective…to collect 8 pages ,presumably written by a collection of his former victims, and escape without being caught by the Slenderman who is always chasing you and becomes more persistent and relentless with every new page you find. If that isn’t horrifying enough the new updates to the game have added effects like fog and a dying torch battery as well as a faster more perceptive Slenderman who has a new habit of just popping up in front of you or waiting for you at the page sites you need to get to. While the graphics are nothing to write home about the music that starts and increases in beat and terror level as you find each new page really helps set the scene.
The Slenderman Legend The original creation of the Slender Man is credited to the Something Awful Forums in a thread entitled “Create Paranormal Images.” The Slenderman is depicted as a tall creature with inhumanly long limbs wearing a suit with tentacle arms coming out of his back and no face. According to legend, he can stretch or shorten his arms and teleport at will. Being near or looking at the Slender Man can cause memory loss, insomnia, paranoia, coughing fits (nicknamed “slendersickness”), photographic and video distortions and once his arms are outstretched his victims are put into a kind of hypnotized state in which they cannot stop themselves from walking into them. Not much is known about the origins of Slenderman but he is known to be seen right before the disappearance of a child or multiple children who have been said to be able to see him when adults in the vicinity could not. He appears mostly at night and stays in the shadows of the woods and hides in the fog. He has been said to peer into left open windows or appear in front of lone motorists on desolate roads. Children have nightmares about him before they disappear but normally parents attribute it to an overactive imagination until it’s too late.Whether he absorbs, kills, or merely takes his victims to an undisclosed location or dimension is also unknown as there are never any bodies or evidence left behind in his wake to deduce a definite conclusion. Slender: The 8 Pages
The back story to why you are in a park at night, alone, with no weapons and nothing but a torch has not been defined. The two most important things to know are you have to find 8 pages and you can’t let the Slenderman catch you. The game starts at the bottom of the map after an audio intro of you jumping the fence, then you start being hunted. You are in the park and have the choice of following two paths to end up either at the Scary Tree or the Silo. You can of course by all means wander off into the trees in any direction but speaking from personal experience that is the fastest way to get lost and get caught. For the fastest game play it is best to have a copy of the map on your phone or printed out to follow as it is incredibly easy with the darkness, fog and with the dying torch to get lost and walk in circles. It doesn’t really matter which way you choose to start but be aware that the pages spawn in different points on the map. There are 10 possible locations and only 8 pages and there are also different areas in those locations for the pages to spawn. For example on the Large Rocks the page may be on the front or the back to you have to make your way all the way around and search as fast as possible before moving on. On that note always search the bathrooms as close to the beginning as possible. The later you wait the faster and closer Slenderman will be and he will corner you and make you cry like a baby. Some additional tips, the more contact you have with Slenderman the faster he drains your sanity and the more he appears to you so don’t look at him for too long if you do see him or your screen will fill with static as you slowly pass out. If you don’t see him but you still get static on your screen don’t turn around he is most likely right behind you. Rather run or turn at a slight angle and move off in a different direction. As previously stated the more pages you have the more aggressively he will chase you but by turning your torch off, as scary as that prospect may be, you can evade his notice for longer and conserve your battery for when you really need it to find pages. The flashlight while seemingly comforting actually makes it easier for the Slenderman to hunt you which means your game probably won’t last until 8 pages. Other Slender Games There have been additional games created with the Slender: the 8 Pages title but they don’t really add anything to the game besides new maps but if its new maps you’re after you’ll still enjoy the exact same thrills and chills of the original game in the Slenderman’s Shadow Maps which have many new maps to download for free as add ons to the game with more new maps released every few weeks. If you are interested in the original game Slenderman which was partly the inspiration for this game go have a look at the writeup but be warned the graphics quality is more scary than the game itself. And finally in more exciting news the new Slender game from Parsec Productions Slender: the Arrival has been announced and looks to be an incredible new twist on this already terrifying game. With updated graphics and a more intense storyline it could be one of the best new horror games to watch out for. The Game You can download the game for free at the Official Website or the Fan Site. The Game is in Beta stage so new updates are released all the time and its worthwhile getting them and staying up to date with all the new terror. So please go get it then call up some friends, turn off the lights and prepare to scream. (As an added tip this game is far more terrifying when playing drunk, see here, not for sensitive viewers)