It’s the middle of the night. The sky is overcast and the only source of light is from the flashlight in your shaking hand. As you tread through the dark forest, you hear the sound of footsteps crunching through the grass behind you. You spin around, heart beating rapidly, but whatever made the noise is gone. Sighing in relief, you turn back around to continue on your way. But there he is.

The Slender Man.

“Slender: The Arrival,” developed by Blue Isle Studios, was released Oct. 28, 2013 on Steam. Steam is an online video game marketplace, developed by Valve, that sells and distributes content digitally.

In “Slender: The Arrival,” players must traverse abandoned houses, eerie caves and gloomy forests in search for clues that will lead them to their character’s missing friend. The entire way, players are stalked by the faceless, abnormally tall and inhumanly skinny Slender Man. At one point, players also are stalked by Slender Man’s equally spine-chilling pawn, the child-like Proxy.

What makes “Slender: The Arrival” truly scary is its simplicity and subtlety. From beginning to end, there is no way for players to fight back. There are no guns, swords or other means provided to fight Slender Man and his Proxy. The only thing players can do is run.

There is hardly any music, and what is there is quiet and eerie. Right from the beginning, once the music started playing, I felt uneasy. Then, as I entered the house in search of my character’s friend, the music stopped.

This is where the game’s subtlety shines. The silence was far, far more unnerving to me than the eerie music. My character’s footsteps echoed through the house, and every door I opened creaked so loud I cringed. The footsteps I heard right outside the house caused me to stop in my tracks.

Other than seeing Slender Man, players can tell he’s coming by the character’s breathing. Rapid breathing and quick gasps are hints that Slender Man is near, and the player’s characters can sense his presence.

Another way players are alerted to his presence is through the video camera the character carries. The closer Slender Man is to the player, the more the camera is filled with static, until the screen is nearly all static.

With Slender Man’s proclivity for appearing just feet from players, going from no static and silence to a screen full of static and gasps from my character made me nearly fall out of my chair the first time it happened.

It can be easy to get lost in the game, as the character carries no maps. There is no way to tell where to go. This makes traversing the different areas while being pursued by Slender Man and his Proxy disorientating. I’m in the middle about this one. One the one hand, the disorientation can make the game scarier. On the other, this can become a source of frustration for players when they realize they’re running in circles.

For a game that costs only $9.99, the graphics, audio and gameplay are sharp. While there are only five levels-six including the secret level-the price is definitely worth it. The game’s only drawbacks are the lack of a map and there are so few levels.

4 stars out of 5.