Slender

The onslaught of pop culture continues in this post with my discovery of a computer game I played for about ten seconds before raping the escape button and fleeing in terror. Based on the ever-expanding, ridiculously populer Slenderman mythos, Slender is a game which lets one experience the nightmare of being stalked by the internet's very own version of the boogeyman for themselves.

Slenderman has been characterized over the last couple of years on forums as a tall, human-like creature who appears to wear a suit. His main gimmick is looking creepy and standing ominously in the background of old photographs. But apparently he also eats children. From what I can remember he was invented on a website called Something Awful as part of a competition to create your own urban legend or something like that. Since his conception he has appeared in numerous, Blair Witch style documentary/found footage Youtube series and now he has his own game.

I'm a fan of Slenderman. He's a perfect of example of the kinds of messed-up things that can only exist because of the internet. People show how strange and creative they can be when given the opportunity to express themselves to the world. Take this blog for example; these posts and the pointless crap I address in them are the product of me being given the freedom to say what I want and when I want. If it weren't for the internet there wouldn't be a Slenderman and you wouldn't know what I think of him and there wouldn't be hundreds of videos on Youtube showing roughly human-shaped whales singing pop songs in something vaguely resembling their original key. Slenderman is an extreme example of this liberty, because he came about as a result of countless people adding to his bizarre mythology, and seemingly independant of each other too.

But my God is the game scary!

The player spawns in a forest somewhere with nothing but a torch and I guess a camera, since you can zoom in and out on the scenery and it makes that camera zooming sound when you do. You have no weapons and your torch's battery is slowly running out. Straight away the game establishes just how vulnerable and isolated you are.

Your objective is to locate eight pieces of paper, which sounds easy enough. But they're scattered all over the game and once you find the first one the music immediately changes, signalling Slenderman's arrival somewhere on the map. From that moment on you're only hope is to keep moving and find those pieces of paper before he collects your soul or whatever the fuck it is he does to his victims.

What's so effective about this scenario is that the music continues to become more intense, and your wiry opponent more and more relentless, as you find each sheet. If he is near you the screen will fill with static and in order to survive the encounter you'll have to run. Like I said there are no weapons, so running is the only thing you can do. Often you'll see him lurking in the distance. If you turn the other way, the worst thing you can then do is turn back to see if he's still there, because most of the time he'll have teleported right up you and you'll shit yourself and lose the game simultaneously. This represents one of the cleverer aspects of the game, in that it uses your naturally curious and paranoid state of mind to your disadvantage.

If you're interested in playing this game, make sure you do so during the day and make sure there are other people around. Otherwise you'll turn into a catatonic mess. However you might find comfort in the very indie/primitive look of this game. It looks more like a prototype than a finished game, and if the mythos continues to enjoy popularity, I'm sure someone will release an improved version like they've done with Minecraft and other indie-type games.