The Slowers are the most common and early enemies Simon encounters throughout the game.
Appearance
Slowers come in three purely aesthetic color variants: red sweater, navy jumper, and green-striped shirt wearers. The red sweater and navy jumper variants have red, almost ovine eyes, while the green-striped shirt wearers have blank, white eyes.
About the monster
Despite being named Slowers, they are not particularly slow; they vary between an erratic limping shuffle and a maddened, flailing dash with their head raised at the player from motion to motion, sometimes catching against objects in the environment to shuffle wildly, seemingly oblivious. When they do close the distance to the player, they will swing their hammer out from right to left or upward several times and while they are not the strongest foes, they are the most often encountered early, while Simon is armed with only a knife, making them particularly threatening in harder difficulty modes.
The Slowers are notable for their spasmodically moving heads, which makes aiming for headshots difficult. It's advisable for players to dispatch them with body shots, or melee, while keeping mindful of their surroundings to avoid being backed into a corner. Early on, knife-fighting is the only option.
When Simon initially deals damage to a Slower, it will be stunned. This only seems to ever occur once per Slower. This offers the player the opportunity to make between three to four 'safe' knife stabs, while the creature recoils. Players on Hard and Nightmare difficulties should learn to exploit this behaviour early, in order to reduce the damage they take from the first few encounters with these foes.
Slowers exhibit a behaviour where they will enter an attack stance. When approached in this stance, they can very quickly retort with additional attacks, and get in hits even if you dodge backwards. Their animation will change to them holding out their hammer or 'ducking' (entirely cosmetic) when they do so. Avoid knifing them in the few seconds after you've provoked them to attack, or Simon will likely take a hit or two.
Variants
- Slower 1
This is the regular type of Slower found in earlier parts of the game. They have lower attack rate and slower move speed. They also appear in later parts as a jumpscare.
- Slower 2
- Main article: Crawler
This is actually the crawler known in the game files as Krypande which mainly appears in duct areas.
- Slower 3
This type of Slower is the one wearing a grey boiler suit and a mask. It appears mainly in the middle and latter parts of the game. They are noticeably tougher than the previous Slowers as they move faster and attack faster.
- Slower No
This is a special 3-headed variant of Slower appears only once in the entire main campaign, just like the Upper. It appears inside the TL Trading AB building after the player picks up a Glock 19 magazine and comes with a loud screaming voice, though they are not very tough to defeat. It appears more often in the Co-op Campaign.
- Slower 10-1
They are Slowers entangled in red tendrils, similar in appearance to the material encasing the Human Flower. This was most likely intended to further the misdirection near the beginning of the game that the creatures were the result of some sort of biological outbreak.
- Slower 10-2
Unlike the other Slowers these Slowers cannot move as they're pinned to a wall by the red tendrils, they can only hit the player if the player gets close to it.
Tactics
- Slower 3
It is easy to kill this Slower by whipping it with a pistol and then shooting it's head.
- Slower 10-2
It is reccomended to kill this type of slower from sideways as it cannot attack that way.
Relevance to Simon
The Slowers symbolizes Simon's struggle with his own physical limitations and the paralysis he experiences, both emotionally and physically, due to his traumatic experiences. Specifically, the Slowers is seen a representation of Simon's feelings of helplessness and frustration stemming from his accident and subsequent wheelchair confinement.
The creature's slow and impaired moviments reflects Simon's own restricted mobility and mental burden he carries as he tries to navigate his world with these challenges. Other Slowers being trapped red tendrils represents Simon stuck in a wheelchair, and never being able to move again because of the car that ran him over.
Gallery
Trivia
- There are 3 sound files in the slower3 folder which are never used on the Slower3 in-game. They are called slower_alert10 up to slower_alert30. Although these alerts are heard in the beta of Cry of Fear also in the 11 minute co-op video.
- The Slower and the Suicider both have a head texture that says "E.T."
- Slowers are the equivalent to Twitchers from Afraid of Monsters.
- Slower 10-2 is modeled after the original slower design from the Beta-stage of Cry of Fear, with only a few subtle changes, such being the model's head having no eyes, the clothes on the 10-2 variant are bloodier, and its skin is more of a apricot tan than a zombie pale.
| Monsters | |
|---|---|
| Enemies | Baby • Children • Citalopram • Crawler • Crazyrunner • Croucher • Dreamer • Drowned • Faceless • Faster • Flygare • Hanger • Hangman • Human Flower • Psycho • Sawcrazy • Sawrunner • Sewmo • Slower • Spitter • Stranger • Suicider • Taller • The Face • Upper • Watros |
| Bosses | Sawer • Mace • Doctor Purnell • Carcass • Sick Simon • Book Simon • Craig |