Slender

The name Slenderman will be instantly recognisable to some and yet totally alien to others. An urban legend for the internet age, the eerie character has exploded in popularity over the last few years, resulting in dozens of mockumentaries, eyewitness accounts and at least one video game. Swap varsity jacket-clad teens for amateur filmmakers with camcorders and the hook-handed mental patient for a supernaturally tall figure with a ghostly pale featureless face: a premise that sounds a touch ridiculous until the paranoia sets in and you begin to imagine the Slenderman silently watching you from a window or maybe even the shadows in the corner of your room. That's how it starts. After all, according to the myth: when you become aware of Slenderman, he becomes aware of you.

I'll be the first to admit a macabre fascination with the eponymous otherworldly stalker. There is something deeply unsettling about him/it - although, personally, I blame the resemblance to arguably the most terrifying fictional monsters from my childhood, the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However you look at it, the Slenderman zeitgeist has never been stronger. Solo developer Mark Hadley ran with the concept and created one of the simplest and scariest games in recent memory.

Slender is a first-person adventure title in which the player explores an area of forest searching for clues in the form of notebook pages that allude to a mysterious being. The physical mechanics of the game are straightforward enough, right down to the torch beam that follows your gaze around the screen as you pace forward. But the cookie-cutter veneer of this game hides a truly dark heart.

Everything in the game world is designed and placed with such precision and purpose that it cannot fail to induce a sense of terror immediately upon starting and before any move has been made. The darkness around the player is palpable, the torchlight only illuminating the next tree in front and little more. It's only then that you realise the torch battery is limited and must be conserved, and without that meagre amount of light, it suddenly gets a whole lot darker.

Gathering notebook pages allows you to read archetypal scribblings like "can't run" and "don't look", but simultaneously brings the omniscient Slenderman closer to you. Catching fleeting glimpses of a lanky black body and white face in the distance is bad enough, but coming upon an abandoned car and seeing him there inside waiting for your arrival is the stuff nightmares are made of. With his increased proximity comes the deterioration of your character's sanity and the higher likelihood of sudden scares. The game achieves so much with so little: even simple camera tricks are applied to make apparitions vanish behind one tree only to reappear from behind another - much closer than before, naturally. The admittedly short game can end in one of two ways, neither of which I'll go into, but suffice it to say you will not be clamouring to play again. I say this not out of contempt for the game, but to applaud the atmosphere of total unease, insecurity and dread.

Perhaps most notable and most effective feature of the game - and I hesitate to ruin the surprise - is the distinct lack of a pause or menu button once gameplay has started. I myself particularly enjoyed this little touch immensely as I desperately tried to stop the horrors on the screen and return to the safety of my desktop only to discover this was literally impossible. Once you jump the fence and land in the woods, you're all in. Frenzied hammerings of the escape key will do nothing except bruise your finger and probably drive you over the edge into total insanity.

It's testament to the power and effect of Slender that countless fan videos have gone up capturing the reactions of unsuspecting new players. Indeed, this is a game that wholly deserves being entered with no expectations and no knowledge of what the hell it is hiding just out of range of your torch. Slender definitely warrants at least one playthrough's worth of your time. It's free for Mac and PC on the official site. Just remember: now you know, so does he.