I love Slenderman

Slender Man returns more terrifying than ever. You're on your own. No one to help you. No one to hear you scream. Relive the horror all over again with cutting edge visuals for the 10th Anniversary Update and experience survival horror at its finest.

You play as Lauren who is searching for her missing friend Kate. You search for clues to her disappearance while being chased by Slender Man. The game is quite short and takes about 2 hours.

The game is quite simple and straightforward. All you have to do is look for various objectives while avoiding Slender Man. The only thing you have at your disposal is a flashlight. The first chapter is a Prologue where you get to learn the game. The second chapter is the classic Eight Pages. The third chapter is basically the same as the Eight Pages, but instead you are in an abandoned mine where you have to start 6 randomly placed generators while avoiding both Slender Man and The Proxy who is a human child that has lost his/her mind to Slender Man. You can temporarily stun The Proxy by blinding him with your flashlight. This is the hardest part of the game. Chapter 4 & 5 were much easier, almost just a walking simulator.

After you have completed the game once you will unlock Hardcore difficulty. It should have been available from the start, because the game is much scarier on that difficulty. But after playing through the game once I didn't feel like playing it again. I did it anyway to get all the achievements, and it was better on Hardcore difficulty. For example, they made Chapter 3 with the generators harder, as you also have to find fuel for each generator.

The environment is varied enough for such a short game. The atmosphere is not particularly scary. I don't think Slender Man and The Proxy are particularly scary either. Charlie Matheson Jr. was the creepiest of the three, but he also looked kinda ridiculous when he ran. The game mostly consists of chase sequences, but also has some cheap jump scares.

The game got a 10th anniversary update in 2023, which made a significant improvement to the graphics. The animation of The Proxy when he catches you looked a bit weird though.

The sound design wasn't that great. I'm mostly referring to the sounds The Proxy makes when you shine your flashlight on him. It sounds like a squealing pig. Charlie Matheson Jr. also sounded a bit weird.

Slender: The Arrival is the best Slender Man game out there, since it has the original classic in it, but just an okay horror game in my opinion. The first chapters did scare me a few times, but I got a little bored after chapter 3. The rest of the game wasn't as good and just got a bit tedious. It just wasn't that scary or impressive. Getting bored after one hour in a two-hour game is not a thumbs up for me.

Would you recommend this game to other players? YES