Android App Review: The SCP Foundation Online
The SCP Foundation is a fictional organisation that looks after all the weird, spooky, unexplained things in the world. The SCP wiki is a collection of stories and articles that catalogs these horrors, and now it's handily set up for you to peruse on your phone.
The SCP website's FAQ describes itself this way: "We are the last bastion of security in a world where natural laws rapidly break down. We are here to protect humanity from the things that go bump in the night, from people who wield power beyond mortal understanding. We are here to make the world a safer place. We are the holders of wonders, and the crafters of dreams. We are why the world continues. In the short form, we're a creative writing site, devoted towards horror.
Fans of The X-Files or Slender Man will enjoy browsing through their archives, written in the style of scientific reports about the bizarre creatures and phenomena the foundation finds and their attempts to contain, destroy or protect the world from them. These entries have mysterious titles like 'SCP-009 – Red Ice', 'SCP-027 – The Vermin God', 'SCP-072 – The Foot of the Bed', or 'SCP-267 – Tumorvore', and range from intriguing and novel to outright terrifying.
It's a mix of conspiracy theory, fan-fiction, creepypasta and crowd-sourcing. It's basically the internet summed up in a single app, if you're willing to pretend the internet isn't also full of porn.
The app is this archive in an easily accessible format. There's nothing flashy to it, it's just text and menus, but it's the content that is the focus. (Note: there are other versions of the app that will download the archive onto your device so you can read it offline. This is easier on your data usage, but obviously takes up more space. It's up to you which is better, I guess). You can of course access the website itself from your device, but the app is much easier to deal with on a smaller screen. It has advertising along the bottom of the screen but this is easy to ignore.
The SCP Foundation is a great diversion (seriously, I've lost hours to the website) but possibly not recommended while you're alone at night or waiting for a bus on a dark, deserted road or somewhere similar. You've been warned
