SlenderScam the 8 pagers

Slenderscam is a Parody game based on the popular cult classic Slender the 8 pages. This game was made for a game jam so is not really 100% finished or polished but it was a bit of fun.

The idea

Horror or a parody of horror was the theme for the jam and the idea was pretty much instantaneous. Way back when slender the 8 pages was first released it was one of the most fun yet terrifying games that I had played. When the game jam theme dropped so many ideas rolled through my head but all of them were very story heavy or just simply too feature rich to complete a convincing parody in a short amount of time.

Slender scam was born

From that point development was pretty simple. I wrote a script that would randomly spawn pagers in up to 5 different places, by doing this the thought was that there would be a certain level of replay-ability

I then adapted the slender spawning script to use the same random spawn algorithm.

This way not only were you needing to locate the pagers every time you played but you would never be sure where the slender scammer would spawn.

To add a degree of difficulty each pager found would slightly slow the player and spawn an additional slenderscammer.

This would leave the player running from up to 6 enemies increasing the urgency to find the final pager.

Finally once all pagers were found it would move you to a completely blank level packed full of slenderscammers because, well, you can’t escape the slenderscammer!

So that was the idea in total.

What I would do differently

When writing the scripts for the slenderscammer I limited the spawn points to a set 5 areas because that was the only way I knew how to spawn entities at that point.

My scripting knowledge has increased since then and I would re do the entire spawning system to create true randomness within the level.

This goes for the pagers too, a more random spawning algorithm for the pagers would really improve the games replay-ability. Moving on from there, tweaking the speed effect of the player and the slenderscammer would be a high priority to increase the fear factor as well as introducing a health system that will allow you to take at least one hit.

Other additions would include additional levels where you would find a pager per map. The point of this would be to break up the repetitive nature of the level and also increase the over all difficulty.

Finally a true ending for the game would be crafted. It would help to take the player on a roller coaster of emotions and allow the player to escape!

The spawning script

The script for the pagers and the slenderscammer spawn was a bit well “over engineered”.

first off I loaded all of my sounds and images because I would be checking to see if all of the right globals had reached the correct value.

and if they had it would initiate the final stage.

image P1 Sprites/Pagers/P10.png
sound AngryHorn Sounds/AngryHorn.wav
sound HorrorHit Sounds/HorrorHit.wav
image run Sprites/Effects/run.png

After that it would show the pager that was found and play the correct sound. for the pager to show that it had been collected and then it would add a value of one to the pager counter to show how many pagers that you had found.

show P1 500 250
play sound HorrorHit
timeout 3 
global.PagerCount++

Pagers

Now that the basics were in place it was time for the next step in the script.

I needed to check if the pagers number had reached 8 to initiate the final level.

If it was not at the 8 pagers it would simply skip over to the next section and start spawning the slenderscammers.

this part was quite drawn out and could be done much more efficiently

if $global.PagerCount == 1 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 2 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 3 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 4 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 5 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 6 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 7 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 8 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 0 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam 9 51 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 1 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam2 10 10 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 2 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam3 53 8 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 3 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam4 30 23 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 4 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam5 56 53 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 5 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam6 48 24 0
}
if $global.SlenderSpawn == 6 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam7 44 37 0
}

essentially the code above would check the value of the pager count and based on its value it would spawn the slenderscammer at the coordinates listed.

Each time the script was run it would add an extra slenderscammer to the map and one of the pre-defined locations but at random.

Finally, to make it that much more dificult.

As each pager was found I would systematically slow down the player making it harder and harder to outrun the slenderscammer the more pagers that were found

if $global.PagerCount == 1 {
player speed 80
}

if $global.PagerCount == 2 {
player speed 75
}

if $global.PagerCount == 3 {
player speed 70
}

if $global.PagerCount == 5 {
player speed 65
}

if $global.PagerCount == 6 {
player speed 63
}

if $global.PagerCount == 7 {
player speed 60
}

if $global.PagerCount == 8 {
player speed 140
}

the last step of course was to add the good old map return so that I was not stuck in a frozen script loop. Trust me, I have done that a few times.

Entire Script

Here below is the entire script as it was when I wrote it.

image P1 Sprites/Pagers/P10.png
sound AngryHorn Sounds/AngryHorn.wav
sound HorrorHit Sounds/HorrorHit.wav
image run Sprites/Effects/run.png
entity delete me
show P1 500 250
play sound HorrorHit
timeout 3 
global.PagerCount++

if $global.PagerCount == 8 {
play sound AngryHorn
bg run 0 0
timeout 3 
map goto 2
}

if $global.PagerCount == 1 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 2 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 3 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 4 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 5 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 6 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 7 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}
if $global.PagerCount == 8 {
global.SlenderSpawn=RANDOM(0,5)
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 0 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam 9 51 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 1 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam2 10 10 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 2 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam3 53 8 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 3 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam4 30 23 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 4 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam5 56 53 0
}

if $global.SlenderSpawn == 5 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam6 48 24 0
}
if $global.SlenderSpawn == 6 {
entity spawnat SlenderScam7 44 37 0
}

if $global.PagerCount == 1 {
player speed 80
}

if $global.PagerCount == 2 {
player speed 75
}

if $global.PagerCount == 3 {
player speed 70
}

if $global.PagerCount == 5 {
player speed 65
}

if $global.PagerCount == 6 {
player speed 63
}

if $global.PagerCount == 7 {
player speed 60
}

if $global.PagerCount == 8 {
player speed 140
}
map return

As I said before, if I were to do it again, I would completely re-write the script from scratch.

For the purpose of this game jam though, it may have been rough as guts but it worked!

If you want to try out slenderscammer for yourself you can find it on my itch.io page