Games worth discovering

Yet another uninspired Slender Man experience | Full Review - Slenderman RE: Light Edition

3K View2023-03-24

Slenderman RE: Light Edition is an adventure horror mobile game based on the Slender Man supernatural character. It is played in first person view and plays like an adventure game where you are to interact with the environment in order to progress.

🟩Pros

+scary atmosphere

🟥Cons

-non-existent story

-rudimentary map and game design

-terrible controls

-the camera while moving is disorienting

The premise is that our main character, the Dave Grohl-looking dude named Edward, is sort of a ghost-hunter. He stumbles upon an abandoned building in the woods and comes across a supernatural experience. With his trusty flashlight, he has to find a way out.

That’s the basic gist of the story, if there was even any. There is no voice acting, no comprehensible cinematics, nor any explanation provided to the player. In fact, I learned more about the story in the game’s store description than the actual game itself.

There is a totally separate version called Slenderman RE that plays and looks nothing like this game. It was also made by a different developer. At face value, Slenderman RE: Light Edition looks like a “toned down” port of the original Slenderman RE, but with seemingly the same premise and story.

Looks great, but looks bad at the same time

Despite being apparently toned down, the graphics still look impressive for a mobile game. Still, it does come with some glaring flaws, as the game doesn’t look very polished, some objects like trees and houses are even floating in the air.

Gameplay Analysis

The gameplay of Slenderman RE: Light Edition is about on par with the story. It’s very elementary and it’s almost like some young aspiring developer made it as a school demo or project. Players just move and look around in first person view and interact with objects by looking at them and touching the interact button. There is another button to toggle the flashlight, and that’s just it. No sprinting and stamina mechanics, battery, nor hard time limit like the original game from more than 10 years ago.

The camera shakes too much

The controls and the camera totally sucks to the point that it’s unplayable. The camera bobs around too much while moving that it's disorienting, the camera tries too much to be realistic but in fact it is the exact opposite. The movement controls on the other hand are too unreliable and the camera is too sensitive even at the lowest settings.

A classic Slender experience via the minigames

Slenderman RE: Light Edition features two game modes, the story, and the mini-games. The story follows Edward in his experience in that abandoned building, while the mini-games follow a classic Slender Man experience, where players are placed in a map of your choice (out of four) and they’d have to collect all the objects in order to win.

Browsing at the options, the game seemed like it supports controllers, however when I’ve tried it with a Razer Kishi controller, the right stick is inverted vertically with no way of changing it, rendering the controller support semi-unplayable.

The story is a mediocre experience with almost non-existent adventure game mechanics aside from basically moving around. The interactables like doors, pages, radios, etc are just there to exist and don't provide any valuable gameplay element to the system. The experience feels like a cheap haunted amusement ride where the sensation of being startled and scared is what matters the most over freedom and substance.

And it does scare the player, with its creepy surroundings and incessant abuse of screechy and chilling sound effects. However, there is no real danger to the player from a gameplay perspective. Most of the game is just walking around the environment trying to progress.

The mini-games are in the same boat as well, and the elementary game design is even more evident with its copy pasted and monotonous map design, uninspired placement of buildings and trees, and the game is just too easy to win, you can’t literally lose to Slender Man, I tried running towards him and he just disappears. Not to mention he constantly unceremoniously appears right in your view, in broad daylight. The only real difficulty is finding some of the last pages in the big maps. Ironically, this is more fun than the actual story mode, because at least it somewhat resembles the original Slender experience.

Conclusion:

Slenderman RE: Light Edition is yet another uninspired Slender Man experience that is somehow still inferior to the original 10 years ago. It is simple yet it still manages to pile up too many issues in both the gameplay and controls. If you’re a fan of Slender Man, or horror adventure games in general, there are way better experiences other than this one.

Mentioned games