14 DAY TRIAL // 
Horror-themed video games have recently undergone a revival and the most recent title I have experienced is Slender: The Arrival, which takes the Internet meme that appeared in the last few years and aims to create an entire experience around it.
Developer Blue Isle Studios has taken an idea and has managed to build some pretty scary moments, a world that feels beautiful and ruined at the same time, while returning to the core mechanics of horror that we experienced as kids.
The game exists because of Slender Man, a creature that, as the name suggests, is like a tall man with a white face that is easy to recognize in the distance and can teleport in order to reach the player’s position.
The title will also introduce a new enemy, called the Proxy, once the story progresses a little, but the Slender Man remains the most terrifying of the two and generates the flight response every time his silhouette appears somewhere in the game world.
As in other recent horror titles, The Arrival does not allow the player to fight back in any way and the only tool he is able to use is a flashlight that makes the creeping darkness a little less scary but a lot more mysterious.
Failure is a constant threat in Slender and it would have been nice to give gamers a few options when it comes to the difficulty, because at times, the game can feel like a bit of a chore.
The story Slender is telling is somewhat interesting, told via small bits of information that’s collected as the levels progress.
But there are times when, even if this is a short game, the idea of abandoning it seems like a good alternative when the difficulty level is taken into account.
What has kept me coming back to Slender: The Arrival is the quality of its scares, which are very simple but effective at the same time, the kind of moments that horror movies managed to deliver when we were kids and we huddled together to watch them.
The game is simple from a mechanics standpoint, but that only serves to force the player to focus on the scary moments and on the general feeling of terror that’s permeated with.
The environments through which the player needs to find his way are pretty varied, starting with the forest in which the character first appeared and them moving to some surprising sun-drenched hills, abandoned homes and creep mines.
The world is quite beautiful to look at, but there’s never any real time to take them in because every moment when the player stands still is a moment when the Slender Man can get close to make the game end.
The fact that the development team has added a slight film-like filter to the game increases the effectiveness of the entire experience, as does the fact that the game is so sparse and never introduces more characters or any kind of other information.
The sound landscape for Slender: The Arrival is another reason to experience the game because it uses subtle changes and a limited number of effects to convince the player’s brain that he is in much more danger that’s actually around.
Slender: The Arrival is not the best horror game of the fall, that honor still goes to A Machine for Pigs, but it’s the most effective when it comes to actually scaring people and generating long-term fear that somewhere in the world a silhouette is ready to prey on you.
