Day 141 - Slide in the Woods
Horror, Short and Free, Immersive Sim ·
Skeeter’s Take:
A slide. I’m not sure why I’m here, standing in front of a slide. This strange disembodied slide attached to nothing.
Endless trees surround the clearing. A pleasant fog hangs in the air. Clearly, I was put here to slide. Everything in my environment is telling me to slide, so slide I must.
I slide. Wheeee!
After my descent, it appeared the time of day had changed. How long was that slide? Felt like a few seconds.
Nothing else appears to have changed. I can only see the slide beckoning me to slide it.
I slide again. Wheeeeeee!
Again, the sky changed. The day time had gone. It was now dark time. I could hardly make out anything other than this floating flashlight with a glowing blue ring around it.
I can’t help but wonder if whatever kind soul left this behind could have placed the light directly at the bottom of the slide where it would be impossible to miss and save my lard butt from having to waddle over there. But hey, at least it had this fancy magic ring that made it stand out. I’m not sure who put it there, but I’m glad they did.
Or I would be glad, if the flashlight didn’t reveal two of my worst fears… BLOODY STAIRS
AND A SLENDERMAN NOTE
This note strangely fails to have any mention of slender men in my local area but instead tells a story of missing persons in a small town.
Oh, hey. That’s new. I was so preoccupied with my immersive newspaper read that I missed the body bag in front of me.
Two scrawny black hands reach out and drag the body down the slide. A scream that sounds suspiciously like an Aztec Death Whistle (Perfect for being edgy at your local park!) bellows from the slide.
Well, I was sent here to slide. I stand at the dark maw of the tunnel:
I slide. WHEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! This slide was much longer than the first. I reach the bottom of the slide which doesn’t spit me back out in the woods. Instead, I’m looking down the barrel of the umbilical cord tunnel from Silent Hill 4:
My new function seems to be crawling. I crawl until I reach the end of the tunnel and find… Ruins?
And a sacrificial altar:
The Aztec death whistle being my clue, I correctly identify these ruins as Mayan.
Inside the small structure, there is a heap of a garbage bag full of bodies, chained up, and pulsating like a heart in the middle of the room. That’s when the revelation hit me - I wasn’t here to slide, or crawl. Clearly I was here to remove chains. I swiftly remove the chains surrounding the pit and holding the homicide-in-a-bag and spin the wheel to lower it into the pit. Another death whistle rings out and a door opens near the back of the room.
I am again met with the crawling tunnel. My heart sinks. Not only was I wrong about me removing the chains being my purpose here (as it’s clearly crawling), there is also something quickly approaching behind me, blowing on a death whistle like they were auditioning for the pit of Phantom of the Opera.
I quickly crawl through the tunnel, all the while being pursued by something I never saw, but made its presence known with its noise.
Eventually I reach the end of the tunnel. I no longer hear the pursuit of whatever was chasing me. Instead I am met with serenity:
Clearly, I was put here to slide.
I slide. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
And I am spat out on the bark chips surrounding the slide in the middle of the woods, back where I belong. The slide fades from the clearing, leaving it’s bark chips as a gravestone of what I once slid.
I ask you this - if a man yells in the woods “YES! There was no stupid jumpscare! THANK YOU GOD!” and no-one is around to hear it, then does God still make a sound???
Recommend: I guess
Replay Percentage Chance: 0%
Time Played: Played: 13 minutes
P.S. CALLED IT:
Sam’s Take:
Maybe I’m being mean, but I’m pretty done with PS1 throwback horror games. It’s hard to blame Slide in the Woods for this. Most people are not playing a game on Itch.io almost every day. What if we had picked Slide in the Woods before Toiletrooms, or M. Stain, or Courage: The Videogame, or Mourning Tide, or Holbrook Hotel, then maybe I’d feel more positively towards it. We didn’t play it first though, instead we played it on day 141, and you have to do something really interesting with this trend to wake me up.
Slide in the Woods is as bog-standard as it gets. Non-creepy thing gets more creepy, loud industrial sounds, local newspaper explaining the plot on the ground, extremely simple controls, it’s all there. The only unique thing about Slide in the Woods that I can come up with is the baffling crawl mechanic that is never meaningfully used and seems to just fling the character forward a random amount when you press space.
Looking back on that list of games, I don’t think Slide would have ever been good. I almost certainly would have been nicer. This game is better than Holbrook, and I started that review pointing out that it had some neat ideas and was better than anything I had ever made. This is all true for Slide, but I just didn’t realize how copy/paste this aesthetic was becoming. It’s not just the games we’ve listed, I’ve skipped at least 3 more of these games for our reviews because… what else is there to say?
So I would have been nicer to Slide, but it still would do nothing to stand out. I think back to M. Stain, and that had so many genuinely funny moments, and interesting use of lighting and cinematic camera angles. Mourning Tide’s ending let me down, but the slow pacing and true peacefulness of it all really contrasted with the horror in a way that I still remember. Slide unfortunately does not fit in with M. Stain and Mourning Tide, both flawed games, but ones that have a vision that is furthered by this aesthetic. Slide fits more with Holbrook and Courage: The Videogame, games who only use the PS1 graphics for a combination of nostalgia and creep-factor.
We’ve played games much worse than Slide in the Woods, but it does so little to stand out in a crowded field. It’s making me think I should replay Dread Delusion and see if I was duped into thinking the chonky 3D looked good in that game….
Nevermind, game still SLAPS.
Recommend: Nah
Replay Percentage Chance: 0%
Time Played: 15 Minutes
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