The subconscious paranoia born from the idea of being watched is a powerful one, twisting your nerves in such a way that you can’t help but feel helpless and vulnerable. The palpable tension here hinges on one simple concept; your own disbelief. Merely envisioning the idea of an ominous creature lurking behind you instils something horror titles often fail to acknowledge, the player’s own imagination. Slender: The Arrival fabricates a convincing enough mythos to pull you into its dark and believable world, but a host of repetitious mechanics and barebones level design hold it back from being enjoyable for long.
Based on the “Slenderman” internet creepypasta. Slender: The Arrival takes the ghostly antagonist and twists the mythology behind it into a clumsy yet convincing narrative. Told entirely in first person, you play a young woman searching for her sister, whom has presumably been abducted by the suave, suit donning monstrosity. Much of what you see is shown through a video camera style HuD, giving proceedings a somewhat authentic personality. As the first stage begins you are told almost nothing as you cautiously lumber towards a nearby house, the night gradually engulfing you as you progress. The ambiguity surrounding not only your own identity, but the contextual reasoning behind your actions makes this an experience you won’t forget. Especially when the short lived adventure that follows this stellar opening is so drenched in mediocrity.
The opening mission sets up a pace reminiscent of a modern horror film. The encroaching darkness drawing you into a false sense of security whilst you are subconsciously aware that something is about to go very, very wrong. An answering machine shines some foreboding light on what’s to come as the dishevelled furniture strewn about the house indicates what exactly might be occurring. The visuals are clearly constrained by a limited budget, as the environments you explore lack the realism and poignancy of the atmosphere that surrounds you, ripping away what is otherwise a convincing illusion. This cohesion in environmental design soon grows stale though, as you are thrown into unimaginative mining facilities and sparse mountain tops. Your objectives follow the same tiresome routine, having you turn a number of switches as you hastily avoid the horrors stalking you.
The narrative keeps its momentum for the most part however. You stumble upon frequent answers regarding your sister’s whereabouts, whilst new questions simultaneously arise. Why is the Slenderman so morbidly obsessed with young children? Who is this spooky masked lady that keeps trying to cuddle me? Revelations are constantly thrown at you as you progress, resulting in a finale that piles on the tensious dread in a fantastic style. The campaign can be finished in less than 2 hours, leading to some stages feeling rushed or inconsequential to the plot. Two particular flashback sequences come out of nowhere and feel inherently forced when you have to play through both of them back to back. I wish Slender: The Arrival didn’t peak in creativity so early, leaving its ambitious plot to limp towards finish line as its gameplay simply fails to catch up.
The Slenderman is terrifying at first, forcing a startled jump out of your skin the second he appears before you. His tall and looming figure is oddly unsettling, causing your vision to devolve into a barrage of twitchy static just before he swoops in and takes you away. This is absolutely horrifying on paper, but having to restart the stage every single time you end up getting caught is nothing but frustrating. Objectives boil down to little more than basic exploration and tedious trial and error. I found myself memorising the locations of objects/switches I needed to interact with and sprinting as fast as I could towards them. Thoughts of relief were the only things on my mind as the credits rolled, happy I didn’t have to succumb to any further tedium.
Other adversaries pop up occasionally. A hooded figure can be kept at bay with your formidable flashlight, but otherwise combat is almost non-existent. Such a lack of mechanics helps to emphasise how truly helpless you are, but also means there is very little to the game other than tense, unfulfilling exploration. This is compounded further by A.I that often feels unfair, catching you off guard and forcing you to restart entire sections by no fault of your own. Fumbling around in the dark after collectibles and meaningless objects quickly grows tiresome, feeling more like an endurance test in patience than genuine survival horror.
There is true potential for an excellent horror experience at the core of Slender: The Arrival, but it is stifled by obscure design decisions and frustrating gameplay. The ambitious and paranoia infused exploration are crippled by repetitious objectives and a flimsy attempt at horror that soon grow tiresome. Avoiding the Slenderman grows into a convoluted game of hide and seek once you have him figured out, and he can be so much more than that.