Dead Room: The Dark One Copies Slender (But Does It Well) [Review]

Developer Parsec Productions’ PC horror title Slender: The Eight Pages was one of my favorite games of 2012. It packs an impressive amount of horror and suspense into a very simple idea — being lost in the woods while an unbeatable enemy relentlessly pursues you — and it was one of the few games I’ve ever played that really and truly terrified me.

It makes sense that others would want to get in on that action, and while you have plenty of Slender Man games to choose from in the App Store, Dead Room: The Dark One takes the same basic concept and puts its own creepy spin on it.

And as fairly overt copies go, it’s pretty good.

Here’s the idea: You’re trapped in a dark maze with nothing but a flashlight, and your task is to collect keys to escape. The more keys you collect, the more aggressively the mysterious Dark One pursues you. If you look at your foe for too long, the screen gets all distorted and weird, and then you lose.

It’s the same setup as Slender, but a Dead Room has a few tricks of its own that set it apart. Just the part where you’re indoors navigating a series of identical hallways adds more tension and panic. While the original game has landmarks like buildings, vehicles, and tunnels, your only landmarks in this game are blood stains and creepy graffiti on the walls.

The graffiti is also written in blood. It’s all blood, basically.

The Dark One itself is also a bit more harrowing than Slender Man because while Slender is just … kinda … there all the time, if you’re careful, you can actually see the thing coming toward you, and its jerky movements are fairly unsettling. You also never get a clear look at it because of the static that accompanies its arrival, so that’s no good, either.

The sound design is also pretty effective; you have all the requisite thrums and clangs and hisses, but every once in a while, a demon voice pops in to announce it will kill you, and while slightly cheesy, you can’t argue with results. The sound also has the added benefit of making your iPhone vibrate, and that’s a bit more unsettling than it should be.

Game Name: : Dead Room: The Dark One The Good: Great sound design, tension, and graphics. The Bad: It’s basically Slender with more blood. The Verdict: It’s not the most original title out there, but it has enough good stuff going on that it’s worth your time if you’re looking for something to creep you out on the bus. Buy from: App Store – Dead Room: The Dark One – Donovan Crewe

[rating=game4]