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?