There's something special about watching someone else play a horror game. Particularly one you've already played. It's the mark of a truly scary game—once it catches on, there follows a growing number of videos of people playing, and being freaked out by, the game. It became popular with Amnesia: Dark Descent—I certainly lost a couple hours of my life watching videos of people screaming and wetting themselves as they entered that infamous flooded basement.
The terrifying-ass video game Slender, a free PC/Mac game based on the slender man mythos, now has a good number of these sorts of videos available.
If you've played the game, you know that the whole thing is basically a setup for one major scare, but man… it doesn't make the scare any less scary when it finally happens. And in the case of the video above, it almost makes it more scary to see someone else experience it.
These three are more highlights—the first two are goofy, the third one is another legitimately freaky one.
This kid talks a lot of smack about the game until it finally actually gets scary. Aw.
This "become a bro" continues his obsession and makes his girlfriend play with him, then proceeds to freak out so hard he makes her freak out. Silly.
This one is my other current favorite—a mellow-voiced guy makes his way through the game, gradually becoming more freaked out, until he completely loses it.
I think maybe we watch these videos because it's nice to know we weren't the only ones who reacted that way.
Slender is currently in beta version 0.9.4, and can be downloaded free for both PC and Mac here.