HORROR: The free computer game Slender has incited mass hysteria around the Internet and inspired a potential new horror icon.
By Aaron Sanders, Diversions Editor
The past 80 years of horror have instilled fear into the hearts of millions with such icons as Michael Myers, Jason, Freddy Krueger, Pinhead, Jigsaw, etc. For decades, horror aficionados have craved for something new to keep them up at night—something to make them fear the dark once again. In June 2012, they got their answer, and that answer was Slender.
Slender is a free online horror game that is based on the relatively new urban legend of the Slender Man, a tall, pale figure with abnormally long limbs and a blank face who stalks children. The actual myth of Slender Man was created back in June 2009 as an admission to the Something Awful (SA) Forums.
The contest required participants to manipulate ordinary photos into authentic-looking evidence of the paranormal. A man named Viktor Surge submitted two black-and-white photos depicting the mysterious creature described above.
Soon after, the Slender Man began to take on a life of its own with the creation of scores of amateur artwork depicting the mythical creature and even a Youtube mini-series called the Marble Hornets Project.
However, it was not until a few months ago that the Slender Man reached the peak of its popularity with the introduction of its own underground game series. Produced by Mark J. Hadley, Slender puts players in the body of an anonymous woman in the middle of a desolate forest armed with nothing but a flashlight and video camera as she searches for eight notes scattered throughout the map. Sounds simple enough, no? The catch is, with each successive note collected, Slender Man pursues the player more and more aggressively until either all eight pages are collected or he kills the player.
What makes the game so terrifying is its use of a relentless ambient score and an expertly crafted sense of tension and urgency. Something as simple as turning around can make your heart skip a beat. Not since the similar horror survival game Amnesia has a game truly thrust the player into the essence of fear, stripped down to the bare bone.
Click over to YouTube and one can find a plethora of Slender game “playthroughs” and “reaction-cams,” all exhibiting the extent to which this craze has influenced the online community.
Even today, variations of the Slender game are being developed, the most recent of which are Slender Sanatorium, Slender Hospice, Slender Elementary and Slender Claustrophobia, which are all the same game, but on distinctively different maps.
Slender Man shows no signs of drifting from the spotlight and with rumors of a Slender Man film coming down the pike and an official re-imaging currently titled Slender: The Arrival to be released in the coming months, horror buffs may soon find themselves being stalked by a new fiend in their nightmares.
Courtesy of images.wikia.com