Issue 20 | August 13,2012 | critic.co.nz

Slender
Platforms: PC, Mac | Developer: Parsec Productions
Slender has you hunting down pages
scrawled in the dark, some pinned to
trees in a forest made of lots of other trees,
while being stalked by an unseen threat. Themes
are beginning to emerge in these horror games.
In this case the monster is the Slenderman, a
sort of modern mythical creature forged within
the short life of the Internet on message boards
and scary-story wikis.
Slenderman has a suit, tentacles, and no face.
And unlike the enemies in Hide, he has no
qualms about appearing to you with absolutely
no warning. The environment is cleverly
designed so that the monster can appear around
any corner, behind any tree, or simply pop into
existence out of the blackness. He doesn’t chase
SCP-087
Platforms: PC, Mac | Developer: Haversine
SCP-087 is a never-ending, descending
collection of thirteen flights of stairs on
which a number of scary “things” happen.
I say “things” because SCP-087 prides itself on
being procedurally generated. A scary “thing”
could happen on the second flight down, or
nothing could happen for a painfully long while.
The staircase is damp concrete with a corroded
banister. A claustrophobic, semicircular roof is
constantly above your head. A creepy, randomized
audio track changes as you descend. It’s
all very atmospheric even with nothing explicit
going on.
In my descent, for example, nothing at all
happened for 30 minutes. This was interesting
you. He stands perfectly still and black tendrils
spread circumferentially from his back.
The environments are dark, repetitive, and typical.
Acres of woods are punctuated with empty
bathrooms, sheds, and lots of identical pieces of
industrial equipment.
The game, truthfully, is scarier when the monster
isn’t around. Once you “work out” the game
and the Slenderman’s ways of forcing you to
look at him it becomes less intimidating. You
fail the game as a witness, your sanity draining
to, once again, a screen that looks like a VCR
being fast-forwarded. If you don’t look, the
Slenderman can’t hurt you. Good luck.
in and of itself. As I plodded down staircase
after staircase, watching the numbers on the
wall slowly increase, every miniscule shadow
started to become terrifying. I’m not sure
whether the black movements I saw were
deliberate, ridiculously subtle touches (if they
were, then the restraint in the design of the game
is remarkable), whether they emerged from my
jerky mouse movements, or whether they were
completely manufactured by my imagination.
I didn’t play the game a second time. It’s a bit
scary and stuff. So I can’t exactly remark on the
breadth of different outcomes, but the prospect
of new playthroughs (especially watching your
friends) is enticing.
Games Editor | Toby Hills | gaming@critic.co.nz
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