Slender: The Arrival

One of the most terrifying games in recent memory.

The Arrival pushed me to the edge of sanity. With its clever combination of unsettling pictures and disturbing sounds this is one of the most intense horror experiences available today.

Slender: The Arrival Arrival continues on the road paved by its predecessor The Eight Pages, offering same horrors, featuring slender man with a hooded sidekick. If you like scaring yourself, you'll love Slender: The Arrival. [May 2013]

Simplistic, but terrifying and atmospheric. Survival horror in the truest sense. [June 2013, p.68]

Slender gets bigger and better. A great survival horror that only lacks some deeper gameplay mechanics, but still a game fans of the original Slender game will love.

It’s a deeper, much more beautiful take on what remains a brilliant and simple concept. The additions are good, but there could stand to be more of them.

A great example of what horror can bring to gaming- especially when not even a handgun is used. [May 2013]

Slender: The Arrival is a great horror experience although is far from perfect. Its level design could be better and is very short, but it is a fun game that will terrify us, and that's what matters.

The overall experience may be familiar, but hasn’t grown tiresome yet to affect its scare-factor. Grab some headphones, turn off the lights, and try not to wake up anyone living in the same household with your screams of terror.

Gameplay repetitiveness could be a nasty monster to deal with, but after playing Slender: The Arrival you will remember why, when you were a child, you used to sleep with the lights on.

While Slender: The Arrival is by no means a perfect game, it excels in inspiring the creeping sensation that danger is lurking around every corner, that something is out to get you. It succeeds in making me afraid to check what’s behind me, but also afraid not to check what’s behind me. That’s the mark of a good horror game.

A symphony of pure horror, Slender: The Arrival make its official entrance in the videogames world with an short experience very limited in the gameplay aspect, but truly scary as hell. Every single apparition of the Slender Man and its Proxy is completely unexpected, and always make us jump run trying to escape from them, but the level design is like a rollercoaster: a few really memorable moments and other very uninspired.

Slender: The Arrival is the most intense interactive horror I've had the opportunity to play recently. It's terrifying, extremely atmospheric and difficult enough to make encounters with Slenderman and his ally really satisfying. Unfortunately - the game is really, really short and a tiny bit of randomness doesn't fix that. I think it would be wise to play the still free Slender: Eight Pages and then decide if it's worth it to pay for a better, but equally short sequel.

Minimal game mechanics with no depth whatsoever, but a tense, well-made survival horror game just the same.

Slender: The Arrival manages to deliver some truly impressive scares, but you’ll have to wade through the muck of repetitive tasks and unfair enemies in order to experience them. I found more enjoyment in playing the free original installment, which delivers a powerful horror experience without the annoyances and filler.

Slender: The Arrival is an atmospheric package relying too much on one admittedly terrifying trick that overstays its welcome far too early in an already short series of events.

If you want to be scared out of your mind for an hour or so, feel free to get Slender: The Arrival. If you consider that the only prerequisite for a horror game, it gets top marks. Trouble is video games have to have more than that, and this is where The Arrival falls down.

Slender: The Arrival confirms the many doubts emerged during the preview, showing obvious limitations dictated by the lacks of a gameplay structure that deviates from what we saw in "Slender: The Eight Pages", its predecessor.

Like every previous Slender-game, this one succeeds in frightening you and making you very paranoid with intense scares. The atmospheric, detailed environments set the tone very well. Unfortunately, repetitive gameplay and frustrating artificial intelligence keep Slender: The Arrival from being anything above average.

The Arrival is worth experiencing if you're craving some really good scares. As a game, it falls a little flat with its repetitive nature and short length, but play it with the lights dimmed and you will have some memorable moments by the end.

The scares are still there but in gameplay terms the experience is far too… slender to justify the repetition and frustration of this sequel.

Slender: The Arrival is a repetitive game which lives on a single mechanic. Graphically well done, it's a longer version of Slender: The Eight Pages, with all its limits multiplied.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be done with Slender in less than an hour. The game does make you feel uneasy (which every decent horror title must do), but never goes above cheap scares. Don’t waste your money on this and play the original game for free.

Sadly, it devolves into a tedious, irritating scavenger hunt that fails to keep up the momentum and burdens the player with repetitious busy work that makes the short playtime seem merciful rather than miserly.

Heavy on parlour tricks but lacking any real substance. [Issue#136, p.112]

Even though Slender uses the most primitive horror elements, initially it works for him. However, after a lapse of time he's losing his breath, and at the end of the game instead of being thrilling he's just boring.

Slender: The Arrival wants to be seen as a serious entry into the horror genre, but it fails to put the effort into the gameplay mechanics and artificial intelligence that would merit the honor.

This is a frustrating game, not just because it can be occasionally unfair but because these guys clearly have an idea how to promote fear. Running around playing kiss chase with a trans-dimensional being doesn't really cut it.