When the free horror game Slender came out, I joined countless other horror fans in searching the creepy woods for eight pages while avoiding Slenderman.

But by the time Slender: The Arrival came out, I was starting to get tired of the helpless protagonist style of horror, and I never played my copy. This year, I decided to change that.

Slender: The Arrival is partly a sequel to the first game, but it’s largely the original concept expanded into a full survival horror game.

Collecting eight pages in the forest is only one of the levels, and while the basic mechanics (running from Slenderman as fast as possible while your screen distorts) remain the same, it also has new enemies and gameplay.

Some sections still involve the basic structure of searching a large area for objects while enemies stalk you, but a few involve finding keys, opening new areas, etc.

You play a young woman named Lauren, who goes to visit her friend Kate. Kate is missing, and Lauren sets out to find her.

The story is all right. It’s nothing special, just taking the idea of Slenderman and expanding it into a little story about people who got mixed up with him. I appreciated how it included flashback chapters to flesh out the overall story, but nothing about the plot itself really grabbed my attention.

Still, it kept the thrill of being pursued by an entity you have no defense against. And while it’s a little thing, I always loved the way the drumbeat acts as an ominous signal that Slenderman is after you.

Slender: The Arrival didn’t stand out to me a lot in either gameplay or story, but maybe it’s just not quite my style of horror. What do you think?

Last week, I started up Lone Survivor: The Director’s Cut, intending to finally play this indie horror game I’ve heard so many positive things about.

Then I took one look at the resolution and realized it wasn’t going to work. Fortunately, Lone Survivor is a cross-buy game, so I also have it on the Vita. I switched to the smaller screen and started playing this weekend.

I have a tendency to compare survival horror games to Silent Hill too often, but in this case, it really applies.

Lone Survivor was clearly inspired by the Silent Hill series, from the sound effects to the aesthetic to the environments). While Silent Hill 2 feels like the biggest inspiration, the way your apartment functions as a safe haven where you go to save also reminded me of Silent Hill 4, which I appreciated.

Anyway, Lone Survivor begins with you in an apartment building in the midst of some sort of zombie-esque epidemic. You resolve to escape and begin searching for a way out.

Monsters, locked doors, and plenty of other obstacles are in your way. In true survival horror fashion, you’ll need to use a combination of stealth and your limited ammo to get past monsters, use items to solve puzzles, and find keys to unlock doors.

It also includes mechanics based around hunger and sleep, but not to the point where it will take you out of the gameplay. Food items satisfy your hunter and restore health (although there’s no visible health meter), and eventually you can take food back to your apartment to cook it for greater health benefits. I liked that. As for sleep, sleeping also saves your game, and there are pills that will affect your need for sleep.

Even though it’s 2D and navigation is a bit odd at times, the gameplay really feels like a traditional survival horror game.

Now, what about the story? That’s… hard to say. I think it’s going for a symbolic/psychological type of story like Silent Hill 2, and I enjoyed interacting with some of the characters, but I ended Lone Survivor without a good grasp on what happened. It’s that sort of vague, ambiguous storytelling that just leaves you going, “Huh.”

But despite my usual preferences for story-driven games, I’m not as concerned about it when it comes to games like this. Lone Survivor is only a few hours long, but I enjoyed it as a sort of bite-sized Silent Hill experience.