Slender: The Arrival Review

Ghost in the broken machine.

→ April 3, 2013 When Slender: The Eight Pages was released in the summer of 2012, horror fans praised its short, experimental, and completely free take on the genre. Manically dashing through the forest and trying to snag all eight pieces of paper before the creepy Slender Man finds you remains a surprisingly unnerving experience. Cut to spring of 2013, and we now have Slender: The Arrival on PC. This paid-for sequel attempts to pump up the horror experiment into a bigger (though still quite short) game, but it quickly becomes apparent that the simple mechanics of the original Slender crumble under the weight.

Most importantly, The Arrival remembers that the core of any good horror lies in its boogeyman. The Slender Man himself still stalks you with the same terrifying persistence he has in the original, exuding a menacing presence that evolves throughout the story in some unexpected ways. Though his iconic design may be simple, I still got freaked out every time I spotted his silhouette in the distance. You can't fight him, only run from him, and that in of itself makes him more frightening than most game monsters.

The world he haunts is larger and denser, as well. Instead of a dark forest, you’ll wander through abandoned homes, creepy mines, and sunbaked hillsides. Some of the better-lit areas

look genuinely great. Trekking through autumnal forests and rummaging through homes that actually feel lived in make the world of Slender an interesting environment.

Some impressive sound design surrounds you with an ambient soundtrack and jarring noises, and it really adds to the already creepy atmosphere. Boards creak, children whisper, and there are some truly terrifying moments that wouldn’t exist without the impeccable use of audio. Like all great horror games, Slender is best served in a dark room with a pair of headphones.

These parts, at least, are done pretty well... but it's simply not enough. While I appreciate the lengths that developer Blue Isle went to flesh things out, The Arrival relies far too heavily on the rudimentary game mechanics of the original, which was only ever meant to last for a few minutes. Like its predecessor, the vast majority of The Arrival essentially boils down to finding a certain number of objects while an increasingly dangerous enemy stalks you. Whether it’s pieces of paper in a forest or generators in a mine, you’re repeating the exact same actions in every part of The Arrival. It feels like being asked to finish a Where’s Waldo book while your house burns down around you.

The fact that I got tired of it during a game this short shows just how repetitive The Arrival is. While a lucky player can dash through in about 20 minutes, it’ll probably take most people a few hours thanks to the unfair nature of the enemies. Slender Man and his minions don’t mind warping directly behind you and causing instant game over. The worst offender of this comes once you reach the abandoned mine and are introduced to a second enemy type. The Proxy, a creepy knife-wielding kid, stalks you throughout the level as you (yup, you guessed it) once again attempt to find a series of objects. He continually killed me with no warning whatsoever, which as you might imagine, gets pretty frustrating.

Although the mine level was genuinely spooky at first, it and many other areas quickly lose their terrifying charm once you’re forced to replay them dozens of times. I appreciate games that are tough yet fair, but those that arbitrarily punish their players sabotage their own fun. This problem persists throughout Slender: The Arrival. The horrifying atmosphere that Blue Isle manages to create is consistently squandered by dull mechanics and unfair difficulty spikes.