Review: Haunt: The Real Slender Game

Haunt takes place in a park, where you must find notes and photos that have an interesting story behind them. The more photos and notes you find, the more ‘dark’ the park becomes. This is were the game shines from the very start. It encourages you to collect all photos and notes so can find out what actually happened in the park.
As stated, the game is based of the myth of the ‘Slender Man’ a mythical creature often depicted as a tall, thin figure wearing a black suit and a blank face and he will appear if you take too long in finding the photos and notes, however they improved the mechanics in comparison to other Slender man games. Even if you find 7 notes he won’t appear in-case you have done something ‘wrong’, what’s ‘wrong’?  That’s for you to find out!
The park is filled with 8 different locations. Varying from a facility to a bunker where terrible things have happened that you will later find out if you have collected enough of the notes. Some locations are also locked, in order to enter these locations you must find keys that are also located through-out the park. These strange locations within the park become more and more clear after finding more and more notes and pictures, the lore is really appealing to the Slender myth itself. One thing that is nice to have is there are maps placed around the park, but don’t just follow the road towards locations, taking shortcuts through the trees or grass often results in finding notes, photos and batteries, and batteries are used to keep your flashlight alive. This is slightly reminiscent of Alan Wake, where the flashlight is essential to your survival. The game has 3 difficulty settings:

Noob – Infinite Flashlight / Map Markers / Small Slender Agro / No Extra Photos To Find / Darkness Will Never come
Gamer – Batteries / No Markers(This is currently bugged) / Medium Slender Agro / Extra Photos To Find / Night Will Come
Paranormal – Batteries / No Markers / High Slender Agro / Extra Photos To Find / Game Starts At Night

So if you really want the full experience, play on Paranormal!

The aesthetics and environment of the game are outstandingly good for a Slender game. The way the flowers/grass flow with the wind, the rain and other environmental objects really made the game a piece of art. One of the things I didn’t enjoy regarding the graphics is that there are static lines in your screen, creating a some sort of blurry/displacement feeling into the game, but it’s something I just ignored through-out the game, but it didn’t really need to be in the game  to increase the scariness of the game.
Talking about scariness, I find that this game is probably the least scary Slender Man game I have played as Slender isn’t really appearing as much. It’s more of the jump scares created by other things, like woman screams, distortion in the screen or the sound effects. Slender himself isn’t what made the game scary which is a shame. As a survival-horror game, the object is to scare me as much as possible and that didn’t really happen that often. As for the sound effects in the game, some sound effects that were used for walking on different undergrounds could have been better, walking on wood didn’t sound natural to give one example, I’m not saying that every underground is horribly made, but some of the game could have been better.

A thing to note is that there are secrets to unlock in the game, I haven’t figured out exactly how to get all of the secrets, but the developer said that there is a secret that will replace your flashlight with a lantern to give you that Amnesia feeling.

Some people on the Steam Greenlight page of Haunt: The Real Slender Game said that this is just another Slender Man game and will down vote it because of it. I don’t see the reason why, it might be lack of inspiration by not picking another character that is hunting you, but it’s also a business model for them and a desire to create the best Slender Man game out there.

In short, this is a worthy Slender Man game and shouldn’t be overlooked if you’re a Slender Man fan. I just wished the game could have been a bit more scary, but maybe the scariness starts at the highest difficulty when you’re near the end of completing the game.

You can play the game for FREE by visiting the Haunt: The Real Slender Game home page and feel free to vote on Haunt: The Real Slender game on Steam Greenlight. Like Indie games? Check out our Indie games Section.

Now the question is, what do you think of Haunt: The Real Slender? Did it meet your expectations? Let us know in the comments and get involved in the discussion.

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