Terrifying Brilliance in Slender

Slender is, by far, the most horrifying game I've ever played.  It's the first game since Resident Evil 2 that I've been too scared to continue playing, and it was much more efficient at doing so.  My first attempt to play ended in under a minute, chills running through my spine.  Nothing has given me chills like this to me since I was a kid watching The House on Haunted Hill.  It's an amazing and free experience - go download it if you're feeling particularly brave.

What is it?
 Slender is a first-person survival horror game in which the player is searching for eight mysterious pages from a fenced off section of woods at night.  All the while, there is a sole enemy hunting you - the Slenderman.  The Slenderman is a modern fireside ghost-story myth, a phantom in the woods born from the internet.  There's very little to know about the Slenderman, but all you need to know to play Slender, is that it is hunting you.

The gameplay itself is simply an exploration of these dark woods.  You have a flashlight and nothing else (more on this later).  You have no direction aside from a readme file detailing controls and the task at hand:  Find the eight pages before the enemy gets you.  However, this simplicity has a great layer of depth hidden underneath.

I called this game a survival horror - that means that there are limited resources that the player must manage in order to survive.  There's an economy here with various currencies:  Flashlight battery, maximum stamina, and health.  The flashlight battery slowly drains while in use, maximum stamina is lowered by running, and health is lost when looking at the enemy.  However, it gets deeper.

The flashlight keeps the enemy at bay.  While looking at the enemy with flashlight on, the enemy stays in place.  With the flashlight off, the player is more easily captured, but looking at the enemy costs less health.  Running is the only way to get away from the enemy when he gets close, but every sprint costs stamina.  Running away too much leaves the player incapable of running.  Looking at the enemy offers you a time to get away, but it costs health.  There's a lot of balancing of resources - and they're all being balanced against your fears.

Why is it so scary?
First of all, the first-person perspective is a horrifyingly claustrophobic experience - it's like wearing blinders, killing off peripheral vision.  When the player enters a building, their sight is tremendously limited, and the enemy could be lurking around the corner.  To gather a page, the player's entire view is taken up by the page and the wall it's on.  This limited view makes the player realized just how much they don't know about their surroundings.

Also from the first-person perspective, everything that happens to the character happens to the player instead.  It sells the experience, because the player can't step back and say, "Oh, it's just happening to Murphy."  No, there's very little disconnect here - it's happening to you.  You are in the woods at night.  You can't see around the corner of this building.  You are hunted by the Slenderman.  You don't know where he is.  You are the target.

Sound is tremendously effective.  There's a lot of silence in the woods.  Most noise comes from the player's footsteps.  There's an ambient forest track playing throughout.  As the player gathers pages, throbbing ambient music layers on itself, building the horror.  Meanwhile, the Slenderman is lurking in the darkness silently.  If the player turns the corner and the Slenderman is suddenly there, a harsh piano kicks a deep note, selling the jump-scare.  With so little sound, every element has incredible strength.

The Slenderman's movement takes place out of the player's view, silently.  This leads to a lot of unknowns about where the enemy is, and people generally fear what they don't understand.  This is surprisingly effective at keeping the player from looking around.  I never turn around while playing, making wide turns to avoid the possibility of finding the Slenderman suddenly behind me.  Not knowing that he really is there is just as terrifying as if I were to turn and see him just behind me.  Not understanding his movement algorithm fully is horrifying.  Does he move slowly out of the player's view, slowly tracking the player?  Does he just teleport every now and then?  It's an unknown, and that scares people.

All in all, this is a package of horrifying unknowns built around a modern ghost-story with a very intricate survival economy.  Again, it's free to download, so go download and play it - if you can handle the void of those dark woods.