Haunted Memories is a series of episodic Survival Horror games by polish indie developers MadMan Theory Games loosely based on The Slender Man Mythos.
The first installment in the series, Haunted Memories: Haunt, started life as an expansive, stand-alone remake of Slender.
In this game you play as an unidentified protagonist who finds themself in Greenwood Park at night. Soon after finding a running truck with some files nearby he hears a woman scream and ventures into the park to find out what happened and a way out. Everyone's favourite stalker soon shows up and the chase is on.
The second chapter, Haunted Memories: Welcome Home, has you playing as Jackson, a man whose car crashes near a darkened old mansion. Charlie, an attorney who witnessed the crash, brings Jackson to spend the night in the mansion. However, Charlie quickly turns up dead, and the statues scattered around the house are revealed to be more than simple decorations...
Now let's clear up some confusion concerning the game's name. The game was first released under the title Haunt: The Real Slender Game, probably in order to invoke an External Retcon effect towards the game's massive reinterpretation of the Slender Man mythos. However it was quickly changed to Haunt: Slender when the creators realized that the name could be (and was) misinterpreted as negative evaluation of Agent Parsec's game. In mid-2013 it was announced that the game would be remade from the bottom-up and be given five commercial follow-ups. With this announcement the project changed name again to avoid confusion and legal conflicts with the Xbox Live Arcade horror game Haunt, this time to the current Haunted Memories.
The game's first chapter was available for free on Steam and had a second chapter called "Welcome Home" released for it in the form of DLC on February 1st 2014. However, both the Steam page and the game's own website have since been taken down after the game was quietly cancelled. A remake of the game titled Haunted Memories: The Return was officially announced on May 29th 2023. You can find its Steam page here
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This game provides examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: Compared to the original Slender. Both in massively expanding and further detailing the environments and in giving the game an original story far removed from Slender's Marble Hornets inspired origins.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: There is a television playing an old Frankenstein movie out in the middle of nowhere. If, for some reason, you decide to sit down and watch it, while Slender Man is after you, you will die if you don't get moving. As masterfully demonstrated by Pewdiepie.
- Big Bad: Slender Man himself, naturally. Though this time, his origins are explored a bit more and not quite what you'd expect.
- Bladder of Steel: Opening your inventory does not pause the game and neither does opening the menu. Since Slender Man can show up at any time anywhere, if you want to take a break you'll have to find a Save Point and quit the game or risk losing all of your progress.
- The Cameo: While otherwise absent from the second chapter, Slender Man appears in several paintings. He also appears at the very end to capture the player, and is implied to control the mannequins.
- Fan Remake: Haunt is a loose one of Slender, taking the basic concept of travelling through a park while being stalked by the faceless menace and expanding upon it with more backstory and objectives beyond collecting crude notes.
- Freeware Games: Haunt and the first chapter of Haunted Memories. The latter's second chapter had to be purchased, as will likely be the case with the upcoming 2023 remake.
- Gainax Ending: The first chapter has the player enter an abandoned warehouse, kill some of Slender Man's minions, and pick up a note. At that point, soft rock music starts playing as a huge wall of light appears outside. The player walks into the light and has a hallucinatory sequence of walking toward a gigantic glowing cross, and then the credits roll.
- Haunted House: The second chapter takes place in one.
- Humanoid Abomination: The Slender Man may as well be the poster boy for this trope, but this particular incarnation puts special emphasis on the humanoid part.
- Living Statue: The creepy mansion is filled with them, and they serve as the main antagonists of the second chapter.
- Man Behind the Man: Slender Man is implied to be this to the mannequins in the haunted manor.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Even more so than Slender, as it puts even more focus on the Abandoned Area and the exploration thereof compared to the threat of Slender Man. Especially true of the earliest version where the Slender Man was significantly less aggressive.
- Offscreen Teleportation: The mannequins only move when you're not looking at them.
There are a lot of them in the house, along with a lot of blind corners and shadow spaces. - Save Point: Similar to many Resident Evil games, there are typewriters at which you have to save manually that can be found at key locations around the map. The game does not have Auto-Save, so if you die at any point you will lose all of your progress up until your last save.
- Scrapbook Story: Even more so than the original game as the Apocalyptic Logs the player collects now includes an actual backstory rather than subtle allusions to one as in Slender. In this way it's more like the later Slender: The Arrival.
- Survival Horror: Unlike many other games based on the Slender Man, this game features a full inventory system, weapons, resource management and puzzles that need to be completed to progress.
- Ten-Second Flashlight: The flashlight you are given in Chapter One has very poor battery life, which drains even if you turn the light intensity all the way to off. If you want to conserve your battery you need to unequip it entirely.
- Was Once a Man: The Slender Man was a reporter called Mark Slender, who was killed/mutated by a chemical fire meant to kill him.
