Slender: The Arrival

Genre: First-Person Horror

Players: 1

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Review:

The Slender Man horror franchise has been an undeniable cultural phenomenon for over a decade now, beginning its life on the Something Awful internet forums as a part of a Photoshop contest in 2009 and going on to reach memetic levels online, inspiring books, comics, a movie, two videogames… and unfortunately multiple real-life attempted murders, which resulted in a predictable moral panic that saw the popularity of the franchise go into decline. Still, whether these real-life events add an extra element of creepiness to the franchise for you, or make it distasteful, there’s still the question of whether they stand on their own merits, or whether they live or die on the ebb and flow of the franchise’s cultural relevance.

Slender: The Arrival is technically the second game in a series, the first being the 2012 PC-only release Slender: The Eight Pages. Coming out a year later in 2013 on PC, Slender: The Arrival expands on the ideas presented in the first game, with this one similarly being a First-Person Horror Game that takes place at an abandoned rural property where players find themselves searching for clues while being hounded by the Lovecraftian Slender Man, a tall and featureless figure in a suit with distorted proportions and a reality-warping presence. After its initial release, this game was gradually ported to numerous other platforms, with the game coming to Nintendo Switch in 2019.

With this game being a small-budget release that’s over half a decade old, it is perhaps no surprise that its graphics have aged poorly. The game has low-quality textures and fairly low-poly environments with lots of pop-in, although I can say at least in some parts the lighting is quite good.

However, while the graphics here don’t fare too well, the game’s sound design is still excellent, with the game’s atmospheric ambient noises and creepy sounds making for a truly unsettling experience. If I had to highlight the best part of this game, this would be it.

As for the gameplay, Slender: The Arrival has a lot in common with a Walking Simulator. Players cannot fight, and have very little interaction with their environment. Mainly, players are running around the game’s darkened environments looking for objects to interact with to complete tasks, all while evading the Slender Man. It’s a simple formula that works well enough to deliver a scary vibe, but the gameplay can get a bit tedious, especially with how easy it is to get lost in the game’s indistinct environments.

In the end, if you’re looking for a creepy game to scare you, Slender: The Arrival still works well after all these years, despite its simple formula and archaic visuals. Thanks largely to its iconic central character and great sound design, this is still a solid horror experience… but it’s a bit lacking as a Horror game, in part due to the tedious nature of the game design and world design. Bear that in mind when deciding whether this is the sort of game you’re looking for.

tl;dr – Slender: The Arrival is a First-Person Horror game that has players searching an abandoned rural property while being hunted by the Lovecraftian Slender Man. The graphics have aged poorly and the gameplay remains simple and tedious, but the game’s iconic central character and excellent sound design still make this work wonderfully as a horror experience even if it’s a bit lacking as a Horror Game.

Grade: C+

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