Analyzing A Harmonious Video Game – Slender: The Arrival

If you watch YouTubers play games on their channels regularly, like me, you most likely have heard of a game by the name of Slender. Around the summer of 2012 is when it first was released and was an instant hit that spread like a wild fire across the internet. The original Slender game (Slender: The Eight Pages) was a very simple, cheaply designed game that still was able to ensue fear in the player’s mind. Developed with an earlier version of the Unity game design engine, Slender’s graphics were simple. The object of the game was to retrieve 8 pieces of paper tacked on to various landmarks in a dark wooded map area. The game officially starts when you find the first page, which is followed by a distant pounding of drums. This initiates a faceless, long-armed man in a suit to stalk you around while you race to collect the rest of the pages. Knowing he may be anywhere lurking in the darkness, this almost gut-wrenching experience makes you play on the edge of your seat the entire time and will surly make you jump once he catches you.

A little less than a year after the release of the original, Slender: The Arrival came out for Windows and X OS. Unlike Slender: The Eight Pages, the newer game goes more in depth in regards to the story and has a completely remastered graphic design to it. Compared to the original game, you are still rendered defenseless; only armed with a flashlight while in search for key items in the game. The game sequencing, in terms of where you start, is randomly generated leading to the more important locations that are fixed every time you play. The game is broken up into 5 “Chapters” that each have different maps and key items that need to be found in sequence to one another.

Chapter one starts with you parking at the end of your friend’s driveway. You proceed to walk towards the house and realize that the door is left wide open, giving you the instant sense that something has gone horribly wrong. You walk inside and after searching for a good amount of time, you find that no one is home. Although once you enter your friend’s room, you hear a terrifying scream from the window towards the back woods. All this happens while you find numerous pages with eerie writing on them saying things like, “Can you see it?” and “Go to the woods.” After seeing the back gate open up outside, you leave the house and proceed through the gate taking you into the next Chapter. This then begins the horrific and jump scare-filled journey you take throughout the game until you finally reach the surprising ending. While the initial conclusion of the game is quite an experience, there are also several various difficulties you can chose from, each with a different ending.

The point I am trying to get across is that, Slender: The Arrival, is a game that uses all of its elements in an amazingly harmonious way. Starting with the terrifying ambiance and the beauty of the environment, Slender: The Arrival stimulates the player’s senses, giving an almost real world experience. With the aesthetics working alongside the plot-line and the mechanics, this game pushes to utterly horrify the player and make them feel the sense that they are actually experiencing what the main character is in the game. Considering the somewhat inexpensive engine used by Blue Isle Studios, this game has become a great experience for any horror gamer, and ranks as one of my top PC thriller games to date.

 

One thought on “Analyzing A Harmonious Video Game – Slender: The Arrival”

  1. This is a GREAT example of a harmonious game. Now, I have to confess that I hadn’t paid any attention to Slender prior to reading this post. I still haven’t had a chance to play it–I’m hoping to clear away some time tonight–but I got to watch some gameplay videos over the weekend, and I agree with you that it’s a wonderful example of a harmonious game.

    I really like the point you make about the game’s technology. Finding an example of a harmonious game that uses its technology well is probably the trickiest part of this assignment–mostly because technology is usually invisible in digital games. Unless you’re a programmer, you’re not going to know about how the game’s using technology in most cases. I like that you pointed out how the game was originally made on an early version of Unity. To create such a successful game on this engine, given its limitations, is an amazing accomplishment.

    I’m also really impressed by the game’s use of aesthetics, particularly its use of environmental sounds. The tendency, I find, is to think of really beautiful, highly-detailed games when thinking about aesthetics, or games with really distinctive art styles. But I like this example because of how well something as minor as the sound of footsteps and ambient night sounds are used to instill feelings of dread in the player.

    So, yeah, great example. I’m looking forward to investigating this game more tonight.

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