Opens laptop
Opens steam
Opens slender
Plays for 10 minutes
Closes Slender
Uninstalls Slender
Uninstalls Steam
Closes Laptop
Smashes Laptop with giant hammer
Stomps on it
Throws Laptop out the window
Can't sleep for 1 week
Other than that 10/10 : )

Imagine it, you're walking down a dirt road in the woods at dusk, it is autumn the leaves are turning orange and red. You come across an abandon vehicle on the road. The sun quickly sets, leaving you in the dark without a flashlight and suddenly, you aren't alone anymore. You are being watched and stalked by something. It feeds off of the power of your video camera, which is the only way to see it (I guess).

When your video camera flickers, it is closing in on you. It is drawing the power from the batteries as it draws near. It is Slenderman. A tall thin humanoid creature that looks over you from afar from hilltops. The creature that opens the doors that you just closed. The creature that your only defense is to not look at it. To wish it away as you cower in fear by looking at the ground. No... just run away until your video recorder stops flickering. How do you run from something that just teleports in front of you? You can always walk backward.

This is Slender: The Arrival, less of a game and more of a first person experience along the lines of Dear Esther and Gone Home. It preys on your fears. It has a great, creepy atmosphere and great sound design. You have little in the way of controls, left stick to move, right stick to look, a sprint button, flashlight button, zoom button, and a use button. There are other buttons, but they feel redundant.

The game dumps you in and never explains why you're there. Not just the first chapter of the game, but over and over again, its the same thing, you start at dusk in the woods and go into the night and then find an abandon building. Each chapter has a different task, such as turn on X generators, find X pages in the woods and close X windows. Simple things, but you're just stuck with something that can be anywhere at anytime that will warn you when its near. The more things you collect, the more intensely you will be harassed.

As you wander in the dark you quickly come across an average house. Depending on where you enter, it looks like there is nothing wrong. Just a normal house for sale with a playground in the back. Soon enough you'll find things scrawled on the walls and rooms in disarray. Eventually, you'll find a flashlight that will help you. The idea of wandering in the woods might seem like an easy way to get lost, but as you roam the darkness, you'll be enticed by audio and visual cues such as paths, lights and dozens of arrows pointing in one direction that will guide your way.

If you think you'll get used to Slenderman, once you progress far enough, eventually you will reach an abandon facility and have a follower. Perhaps it is a follower of the Slenderman, but it follows, chases and strangles you. This isn't a creature like Slenderman, so it doesn't have magical powers other than it is getting closer, running after you. You'll hear its footsteps running up to you. Your only defense is to focus your flashlight and blind it. That adds something different to the game. Getting trapped in a side room means there is no way out and no where to run away from the follower.

It is a toss up if this experience is for you. If finding stuff in the dark isn't for you then skip it. You'll be searching open areas for sometimes tiny things (sheets of paper). Lost in the woods and abandon buildings. Being thrown off your direction from having to run away and forced to figure out where you're going again in an area that is mostly woods. If you can't handle bobbing and weaving cameras, avoid this game. It might be a nitpick but sometimes the camera seems to be at a person's waist. The height of a sink or a doorknob.

I couldn't really recommend Dear Esther or Gone Home. They were both beautiful and immersive, but I didn't feel anything playing those games like I did with Slender: The Arrival. Is it worth $10 for an hour or two of gameplay? I feel like I was engaged and always challenged by a single strange foe with powers to teleport anywhere.

As a man who enjoys stalking children in the woods and murdering them, I find this game incredibly offensive, as it depicts good, innocent people like me as if we're evil or some bogus nonsense.

I give it a 9/11

Taught me how to press Alt+f4 quicker than sanic 11/10 quickscopez - ign

I punched my monitor

10/10

Compared to all the other Slender games, This one is a masterpiece, instead of relying solitarily on being jump scared by slender, this one uses the entire mythos to create a rather suspensful game. While it does contain the standard "Walk around and collect things" scheme, it doesn't really take you out of the experience. And the design choices deffinately go a long way to add to the scares.
Not to mention, this one is Story driven to some extent.

I loved this game, loved the story, and loved the scares and I reccomend giving this one a try.

Long story short, I love this game


Slender: the 8 pages was an introduction. Slender:The Arrival is the masterpiece.


Pros:
-Good suspense
-Great design choices
-Great atmosphere


Cons:
-Standard 8 pages gameplay.
-Considerably short.
-A little repettative



As a slender game 10/10

As a game 9.5/10

Was really impessed with this little horror treat. Beautiful graphics, great suspense building and effective jumpscares. Only downside, was very brief, could realistically finish it in 2 hours. Took me 3.6 because I'm a thorough explorer and I died a lot... first time I saw Slender I just ran right up to him to say hi... But other than that, it's much better than expected. And well worth it at the sale price of 3.99. I would place it somewhere between The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and Outlast, as far as style and gameplay. If you like either one of those, and a good jumpscare, you'll like this one. The story seemed like a prologue, so hopefully it's just The Arrival and we'll see some fully fleshed out sequels. Definitely tracking this studio to see what they come up with next.

2spooky4me

REALLY scary. Although it's pretty easy to beat, you will still have to change your pants a few times. Worth every penny.

EDIT:
Spent few more hours on the game, rewrote parts of the review, fixed up some grammar
your comments and feedback matter, so please keep commenting :)


Remember Slender: the Eight Pages?
It basically was a level where you collect 8 spooky pages with child drawings, while being chased by so called Slenderman. And while nothing really special, it was pretty fun, atmospheric and scary

Now, this game is basically the Eight Pages on steroids, which is both a good and bad thing...
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Let's start with positives:
1. Game is very atmospheric and it gives you feeling of hopelessness. Since you only have a flashlight and a camera, your only options of defence is running away with your tail between your legs

2. Sound design is pretty good. Wind blowing through trees, camera static, creepy ambient sounds and echoes sound pretty great

3. There is also a new enemy type that you will meet on a few levels, adding some variaty

4. If you are easily scared, you'll probably get your heart and adrenaline a nice little workout

5. Game got some love with patches and some new (and old) levels completely for free, which is nice
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Now let's go over negatives and man, are there lot's of em:

1. Story is basically non existent. You're there to find some boy or a girl, but why, where and when is never really explained, unless you find and read all the collectibles.
Even then I had to go to on the internet to get my story fix. I know, it's a "scary simulator" but it is such a shame we don't get to know any of the rich lore behind Slenderman or ingame characters.

2. If you're into horror games, have played a few, or are not so easily scared - you will get bored pretty quickly. This game relies heavily on jump scares and spooky sound effects, which, while scary at first, will get repetitive pretty quickly

3. Difficulty is way to easy on easy (no pun intended) and medium but WAY to unforgiving on hardcore.
On medium you're pretty much unstoppable, save for a few spots, but on hardcore some levels are so EXTREMELY annoying and unforgiving, you'll be sent to the retry screen so fast, you'll think that the game has crashed and got stuck on the same screen.
Protagonists movement speed is something of the worst I have ever expirienced! Your movement speed is comparable to a turtle and sprint makes no sense at all, since it's completely random... Sometimes when you spot Slenderman, your character will run like a Nascar vehicle on a rampage, but other times (especially when you really need to) you really start to wonder if main protagonist you play as has a death wish or something, since her run speed will be so bad, a toddler would crawl past her while he was asleep...
It also doesn't help that the game is just so dark 90% of the time, which lead to...

4. This game is so friggin dark... I mean brightness cranked all the way to maximum but still dark - dark!
But don't give me flak about that, I know Slender: the Arrival is supposed to be dark and spooky game, which is the point, but I mean really? This games darkness will give a black hole a run for it's money!
Even with brightness at maximum, you are blind as a bat without you flashlight. You won't see crap and it is really frustrating, especially on hardcore, because you flashlight have limited battery.
Got 7 out of 8 pages but you flashlight depleted the battery? Might as well restart, since there is no way you'll be seeing anything, except maybe Slendermans buttcheeks rubbed against your face anyways if you're lucky.

5. Graphics are pretty terrible, even for a indie game. I mean, most of the game is dark and you won't be seeing much anyways. It still isn't good excuse for this game to look like Half Life 1. Textures looks old, muddy and dated, animations are just... basic, and water, trees and grass will probably make a senior pc enthusiast cry.

6. Game have been out for a year now, and it ran pretty terribly back then. Well, 1 year and 3 days later and it still performs somewhat terrible, even after patches...
While not nearly as bad as before, on some spots however, this game will really live up to it's predecessors name, the Eight Pages since your top notch gaming beast machine will cry and sweat proficiently to spit 8 FPS out of this game

7. For me personally, Slender: the Arrival got repetitive pretty quickly. While game started out really great, jumpscares got old and missions became repetitive and just plain boring. But It's hardly a problem though since Slender: the Arrival is so amazingly short...

8. Yes, this game is alarmingly short. I mean REALLY, REALLY short. There is even an achivement for completing it in 45 min. Don't worry, it isn't hard since you can easily ace through it in no more than 30 min with some practice.

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All in all, Slender: the Arrival is hit & miss. While some people will enjoy it, for me, it got boring really, really quickly.
I was hoping for a really scary game with rich lore and lot's of exploration, but what I got was a boring, short, walking simulator with a lot of jump scares, bad graphics, non existent story which was way to easy on normal and way to frustrating and rage indusing on hardcore.

My honest opinion?
Try it at friends house, get it on sale, or spend your money on something else

Ive Seen Enough Hentai. To know were this is going.

Slender: The Arrival is a very spooky horror game with an excellent coordination of music, sounds, atmosphere, and visuals that keep the chill factor high throughout. The story provides 8 different locations to explore, and offers a fair amount of clues that slowly unfold a sinister evil that has taken over the land. The game does a great job of presenting scares in moderation which creates a prolonging sense of anticipation of what's going to happen next.

Although the game can be relatively short, an initial playthrough should take several hours. Slender: The Arrival felt almost like starring in my own Blair Witch Project movie. One of the better horror games I've played that doesn't involve shooting.

Great game, great update. Love it. No matter how much the media demonizes Slender Man, it's an excellent series.

Slender The Arrival is a worthy successor to Slender The Eight Pages. More beautiful, immersive, still scary, the title gives chills and cold sweats the most courageous of you. Unfortunately, the player becomes accustomed too quickly their graphics and sound effects. In addition, the life duration is low and lack of variety in the objectives prevent him to rank among the essential of survival horror. Absolute fans of the genre can still be tempted.

This game scared the ♥♥♥♥ out of me, yet I can't get enough of it! I love it! I try to always expect him, but when I finally let my guard down, he pops up out of nowhere

this is a great game if you want to be scared

This is one of my favourite horror games on Steam. The graphics are beautiful and the intro level genuinely made me close my game the first time through. Slender is done justice with a faithful recreation of the gameplay from the flash game. My only complaint is that the game is a little too short but with the free DLC recently released I think it is just the right length for the game :).

The game is short, but it's certainly one of the best horror games I've had the chance to play.

This is even more impressive considering that the development team is new and didn't have the funds that some other horror game developpers have.

Great soundtrack, great level design, awesome ambiance !

Really scary, and fun watching your friends replay levels :P

I personally had really liked Slenderman as a horror character/myth or whatever you wish to call him. I found his design and behavior to be very intriguing, that was the original reason I picked this game up. I didn't expect too much from it since I had seen a playthrough of it when it first came out, BUT this game has truly stunned me! They added soo many bloody new things to enjoy! New levels, more story, another antagonist, and soo much replay value. I was very surprised at how satisfying the gameplay was, and it did quite a good job of making an erie atmosphere. Now being the manly man I am, I wasn't even scared for a second! But to some people I suppose this game would be considered pretty freaky. So in the end, if you like Slendy and horror games, I would suggest you give this one a go!