My Mythos interest started with these games, and I will continue to defend Slender: The Eight Pages and Slender: The Arrival probably until the day I die, but I am not blind to their flaws and their shortcomings and I am far from some fangirl slobbering over these games. There do exist good Slendergames, I fully believe that and I have seen it. But there’s too many shitty games, and too much over-saturation, as well as too much of this “Slenderman is just another meme” shit going around to make my viewpoint on these games a popular one anywhere, be it in the Slenderfandom or in the indie gamer community.
I think the more you are into the Mythos as a whole, the better you’ll receive games like the aforementioned games. From a Slenderman Mythos fan point of view, Slender: The Arrival does a wonderful job of working with the Mythos source material, reminding this particular player of series like Marble Hornets at some points. The story it tells could easily hold up with other Youtube series and stories of the same type. Actually, it not only gives a story to The Eight Pages, but it is a vast improvement on The Eight Pages, page-collecting aside. Looking at it that way, then, Slender: The Arrival is quite possibly the best Slenderman game created, and also the most attentive to Mythos detail.
However, from a gamer point of view, from your average person who views Slenderman as “just another meme” rather than as a Mythos with stories to tell, I understand and mirror your frustration. As a gamer, I am sick of the clones. And I as a Slenderman Mythos fan am frustrated with how the clones treat the Mythos itself. They rarely do more than blindly copy an ages-old concept in horror as a genre, they bring nothing new to the table to make up for it, they forget the sacred horror tenant of “less is more”, and as a result they end up making both survival horror and Slenderman fall flat. It’s insulting to survival horror fans, insulting to Slenderfans, and insulting to me as an indie gamer and Let’s Player because it makes everyone think I’m looking for dumb games like these Slenderclones and Creepypasta-based games to play to get a cheap “payoff” later down the line.
It’s because of Slenderclone games that these games are not and never will be taken seriously. They’re just not something that has substance to it for most gamers because as a concept, it’s so over-saturated as to become ridiculous and unimaginative, leaving nothing for the player’s mind to entertain, no deep thought, no powerful feelings of dread or sorrow or joy when they finally win, just cheap jump scares. These clones do nothing but reduce Slenderman to cheap jump scares, and that saddens me because I and other Mythos fans know, firsthand, that in the right hands he can be so much more than that - hell, I just brought up Marble Hornets, widely considered the first Slenderman video series and still considered one of the best. Then there’s TribeTwelve, KeratinGarden, DarkHarvest00, MLAnderson, EverymanHYBRID, CaughtNotSleeping, and a slew of other series that make this Mythos a great place for horror-lovers and deep-thinkers alike, especially if you’re of the Psychological Horror or Lovecraftian Horror fan persuasion. If a few kids in Alabama with a camera and an idea can actually intimidate me with a man in a suit, why the hell is it so hard for game-creators to do the same with the exact same concept? Yeah, at the core, Slenderman is just a faceless, tentacled guy in a suit, but that’s why creators need to do something with him to make him work. He can’t be relied on to just be a jump scare and that’s it, because that does not work with any monster that has ever been created in the history of ever.
I am well and fully convinced that these clones are why many laypeople say they “hate” Slenderman - because to them, the Slenderman Mythos isn’t something one can dig deep into and enjoy. To them, it’s “just a meme” with some terrible games that do nothing new or adventurous in Survival Horror. And that is very unfortunate, because the Mythos has some great stories to tell, if you’re willing to listen! People equate Slenderman and other Creepypastas with “meme” and “ghost story”, and never try to think about the concept any further beyond that. There’s no capturing of awe or interest there, people just make the game, add jump scares, slap Jeff the Killer or whatever on it and call it good. And that’s nice and all for Jeff the Killer, but it’s harmful when it comes to things with actual full Mythoii like Slenderman. Nobody in their right mind would make a Cthulhu Mythos game based around Dagon popping out of the ocean every five seconds (Except whoops they kinda did, it's called Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth), so why do people think it’s alright to do this with Slenderman?
The answer? Because people treat the Cthulhu Mythos as fine horror literature, and people treat the Slenderman Mythos as “Just another meme” that will fade out and die. It’s precisely because of ‘games’ like Slender: The Square Menace, Slender 2D, Slender: The Nine Pages, Be The Slender Man, and others of their ilk that people do not take Slenderman seriously in gaming. It’s an endless incestuous ourobouros of people copying the same exact bloody thing over and over, and ultimately nothing new is done with survival horror or the Slenderman Mythos as a result.
Ultimately, this “just a meme” mentality is hurting actually decent indie games based on urban legends and scary stories; or based on the idea of them. It all just needs to stop. Either treat the source material with respect as a concept with a story to tell, or don’t use it at all - and in the case of many of the games previously mentioned, Slenderman or otherwise, the best option is sadly just to not do it at all. And that, my friends, is a true tragedy if I’ve ever seen one.