The most famous game on this list, and the game that started the Slenderman crave, for better or worse, Slender the Eight Pages has an effective creepy atmosphere, but looking past that, it is so dull. The biggest problem with this game is that navigation (AKA: where you are supposed to go) is hard.
Your objective is to locate eight pages around a small, but still sizable map with nothing but a flashlight, but the issue is that it is impossible to find the Eight Pages, it just relies on dumb luck to stumble across them. There are so many trees, and when you are not looking at Slenderman, you are just locating pages.
I lost my sanity trying to find these pieces of paper. It does not help that the game has a flashlight as one of your only means of seeing, and since you can barely see grass five meters ahead of you, it makes it hard to navigate – which is the whole point of the game.
However Slenderman himself is an effective threat. The jump-scare is effective the first couple of times and looking at him is a secret way of beating the game since he replenishes stamina, but he wears out his fear factor quickly.
I would have also liked more context of what we were doing in the forest because a follow-up explaining everything is no excuse. The game has less story than Doom in the 1990s. All we know is that the player character (a woman) is searching for eight pages and that Slenderman is chasing her.
Slender: Elementary
One of the many copycats that came after the Eight Pages, Slender Elementary puts the player in the role of a child in a school at night, also with no context other than that, but let me say, what a huge improvement over the last game. In Slender Elementary, you can see everything ahead of you and the school is also smaller, making the game more completable.
It also has an external jump scare technique in the form of a lightbulb that will drop at random points that will get the player. It was nice to have a scare that was not Slenderman. The game changes the pages as the objective and replaces them with teddy bears.
The game is pretty much like the Eight Pages other than that, but it is unclear how to evade Slenderman as he spawns closer and closer to you. The game has some issues. Technically, it is stable, but the main issue is that Slenderman can be seen teleporting in and away from the player, basically confirming that he can teleport.
Also, no context for what we are doing. We do not know why the kid is here, how he got there and why he needs the teddy bears. But at least this game has a proper ending. When you get the teddy bears, you need to find the escape door which does not reveal anything, but it is better than nothing.
SpongeBob Slendypants
SpongeBob Slendypants is the most ridiculous of the Slender games. The main antagonist is a mix between Slender Man and Spongebob Squarepants. The game puts you in the role of Patrick Star in a horror-comedy survival game in the middle of the woods (not in the ocean from what I can tell) while being chased by SpongeBob Slendypants while collecting krabby patties.
The game feels quite incomplete. It is perfectly playable, but I would rather Slendypants work like what Slenderman does in the Eight Pages, that being a teleporter who stalks the player behind trees and gets closer to you the more you play. Instead Slendypants chases you like any other game, and you must run away from him.
The game is funny, as it contains many references to SpongeBob, in earlier versions of the game, the collectible items were pages that had quotes from the show. Plus, staring at Slendypants, the player will hear Patrick’s famous gag quote “lee-loo-lee-loo-lee-loo-lee-loo”. A game to check out if normal Slender is too scary.
Slender Space
A game intended to be a hybrid of Dead Space and Slender Man, although the Dead Space elements are mostly in the setting, with this being Slender in space, thus the title. The game puts you in the role of an unnamed protagonist as she is on board a spaceship or station that loses power, and she must navigate the ship searching for six power nodes.
Slender Space has the usual problems of confusing navigation, because it takes place in an already dark area, space (the final frontier). You use a flashlight, which despite being in space in the future, still works like a modern-day flashlight. You would think the light would be more powerful by now?
Slender Man is programmed quite strangely. The strategy is just to NOT look at him. Just like gameplay I have seen for another Slender game (The Nine Pages) if you do not look at him, you will be fine. You can be an inch away, but he will not grab you, at least from what I have seen.
Slender Space is an interesting idea, but it is just like any other Slender Man game, as it does not utilize the setting. The game could be an origin story for Slender, as he came from another planet and snuck onto a spaceship where he eventually inhabited Earth, and given his ability to warp time, stalks people throughout the years on Earth, going back in time.
Most of the time, I forget I am even in SPACE. It is feels more like a bunker after the events of a nuclear war. This game could have had a lot more plot. An alternative idea to the one I expressed previously is Slender Man hitches a ride on a spaceship after humanity has doomed the planet and are evacuating, and the ship the player is on, is the unlucky one Slender decided to hitch on.
Haunt: The Real Slender Man Game
The most interesting of the Slender Man games, this technically is not even a Slender Man game, but the antagonist is an entity like Slender Man. This game has the most story in it out of all the entries. An unnamed male protagonist wakes up in a park in Poland and investigates the area at night and finds out where he is and what went on in the park.
This game takes liberties with the Slender Man mythos to make an original story. In this game, Slender is a mutated human that was originally a journalist captured by the Nazis during World War 2. He escaped captivity and hid in a bunker, which the Nazis decided to burn, turning the journalist into a mutated creature, as there were chemicals around the area.
The game is not real innovation from the Eight Pages. We may have some context, but it is not really an Eight Pages killer. It is an improvement for sure, but not in any creative ways. There is not much you can do with a Slender Man game unless there is a crazy overhaul I am not thinking of, because there was an attempt to combine slender and Five Nights at Freddy’s that failed miserably.
So these are the 5 Slender games I wanted to present. These 5 stood out to me the most out of the countless Slender games, and the ones I remember most from the early 2010s. Slender Man is so oversaturated now, that of course he got old. Slender was eventually replaced by Five Nights at Freddy’s which it itself was replaced by god knows what.
This is a great article!