[Gaming On a Budget] Slender

After taking another hiatus from my journalistic pursuits (to continue all that romancing and Great American novel writing I told you all so much about in my last post), I've decided to come back and write another article for our "Gaming On a Budget" section.  Since I figure the six-member audience this blog has is comprised mostly of college students, graduate students, and post-college/graduate students, the amount of money in our collective pockets probably isn't enough to buy the latest and greatest video game that just hit the market.  I just want to point out now that I do not consider Madden NFL 13 to be the latest and greatest video game.  Anyway, let's get the meat of the article.

Image Courtesy of Gameranx

Slender is a free game developed by Parsec Productions, an indie game developer, based on the Slender Man meme that has become all the rage on the Internet thanks to games like Slender and the YouTube video series "Marble Hornets."  For those of you who don't know who or what the Slender Man is, allow me to enlighten you.

"Hello children!" "Hey Slender Man!" | Know Your Meme

Slender Man is a tall, gangly (if not well-dressed and somewhat posh and dapper) humanoid with abnormally long arms and a featureless white face.  He can elongate or shorten his arms, and it is rumored that tentacles sprout from his back.  While this might seem scary enough such as it is, Slender Man can also cause memory loss, insomnia, paranoia, and coughing fits in people (much like these popular pills).  He also distorts audio and video, making it almost impossible to catch him on film.

There isn't much of a story line for Slender, you simply appear in the woods at night armed with nothing more than your wits and a flashlight.  The controls aren't very complex.  Moving the mouse allows you to look around, the WASD keys control your movement, holding down Shift lets you run for a brief period of time, the left and right mouse buttons let you pick up pages or turn your flashlight off and on respectively.

The goal is to collect eight pages scattered across the forest before the Slender Man catches you.  It starts off easy enough, with the Slender Man not moving too fast and the forest being pretty easy to navigate

Just like Brittany, Slender Man just wants to be left alone. | Up to Down

As you continue exploring the forest trying to find the different pages you may start to notice some things.  The fog might start to get thicker, making it hard to navigate through the trees.  You'll find that you can't run as long or as fast.  Maybe your flashlight's battery will die, leaving you alone in the dark.  Then you'll start to notice the screen getting fuzzy...

That's your cue to run.  If you're familiar with the Slender Man mythos (or if you read my brief and informative section about the Slender Man about three paragraphs up) you know what that means: Slendy is near.  When that happens holding Shift will allow you to run even faster so that you can try to escape Slender Man, but it comes at the permanent cost of your stamina.  Running from the Slender Man is physically and emotionally taxing and you can only take so much before you finally succumb.

If you're lucky you'll be able to escape from the Slender Man and continue your quest to find the different pages.  However, if you're like me during my second play through you'll notice the visual tearing and run...

He is a very dapper dresser! |  Softonic

... Right into the Slender Man's waiting arms.

I'm not going to tell you what happens if you manage to collect all eight pages.  You can either play the game or go to some other website for that information.  I will, however, recommend that you play the game while sitting alone in your room with all the lights off and as little outside noise as possible.  It really helps set the mood that Slender is aiming for.

I definitely recommend giving Slender a try, especially if you're a fan of psychological horror games.  Nothing else has quite made me jump or scream (if you can call the noise that came out of my fear-distorted face a scream) like Slender.  You can download Slender for free here.