Haunt - The Real Slender Game

Haunt The Real Slender Game is a delightfully scary title with Slenderman as inspiration from ParanormalDev Team. What would you do if you woke up in a place you have never seen before?

Delightfully scary title with Slenderman as inspiration

If recent big budget horror games like The Evil Within and Alien: Isolation have left you hankering after something a bit more chilling and unsettling, then the indie circuit is the place for you. There are plenty of examples of really grim and genuinely terrifying games that are in the hands of small teams of dedicated developers but which require some investigation to track down. Haunt is one such game, a delightfully scary title that takes the notorious Slender Man story as its inspiration.

Impressive design work

Right from the outset, Haunt has a distinct feeling of early Silent Hill games. The player finds themselves mysteriously waking up in a unfamiliar gameworld that is permanently shrouded in mist and which is just littered with creepy old houses and similar locations to explore. Thanks to the impressive design work on display here, there’s an ever present sense of dread to the game which drives the player on to explore further, but which plays on their nerves at every second, turning them into a nervous wreck as their imagination fills the darkness with horrors both real and imagined.

Terrifying effects filling the darkness

Sound too plays a huge role in creating Haunt’s atmosphere, with plenty of absolutely terrifying effects filling the darkness and which have the player constantly turning around, looking over their shoulder in the expectation that something hideous is about to lurch out of the shadows and rip their face off. On the narrative side of things, Haunt is equally clever, building its story through the discovery of diaries and other such items which allow the player to piece things together for themselves, rather than having everything spelled out. The feeling that you’re uncovering an actual horror legend is palpable and it’s immensely satisfying to piece together everything that’s unfolding here. There’s a real sense of mystery to the story and it’s testament to the developers’ skills that they have managed to craft such a compelling experience without the use of overblown Hollywood-style cutscenes which is the usual approach to such things.

Wondering when the Slender Man is going to show up...

However, while the atmosphere is undeniably superb, in terms of gameplay, Haunt feels ever so slightly on the light side. There’s plenty of exploring to do, with items to gather and rundown shacks, creaky old watchtowers and other assorted places that are really best avoided to wander around but when you get down to it, there doesn’t actually seem to be that much to do. It’s clearly not an action game, with its notable lack of guns, and that is no bad thing, but it’s hard not to wish for something a little more involving than simply wandering around, gathering batteries and wondering when the Slender Man is going to show up and do his thing.

A well worth making horror trip

That’s not to say that Haunt is without its scares and indeed, it supplies them in ample measure, with a number of truly unsettling moments that will linger in your memory long after you’ve returned to the safety of the real world. The gameworld is perhaps one of the most lovingly developed in recent memory, certainly outside the realms of the mainstream, and there is a wonderful feeling to the game that reminds players of the first time they ventured into Silent Hill or the Spencer Mansion. It’s just the gameplay which doesn’t quite live up to the craftsmanship that has gone into the visual design but even so, this is a horror trip which is well worth making.

Haunt The Real Slenderman Trailer