Shivers

About Shivers

Shivers was released by Sierra On-Line in November 1995, the studio's first first-person adventure. It was designed by Marcia Bales and Willie Eide, with Roberta Williams, then at work on Phantasmagoria, as creative consultant and co-writer, and music and sound by Guy Whitmore. Players and critics of the time compared it with Myst and The 7th Guest. Activision now owns it, and GOG sells it for Windows, DRM-free, with cloud saves.

Your friends dare you to spend the night in Professor Windlenot's Museum of the Strange and Unusual, a building in Ohio that its eccentric founder never finished before he vanished. Inside, the halls are empty, but not quiet. You learn that years ago two students broke in and set free the Ixupi, spirits once sealed in ancient clay vessels, and that the spirits are still there, hiding in the materials of the museum and waiting for anyone who wanders past.

You explore by clicking from view to view through rooms each built around one of Windlenot's fascinations: an Egyptian lake with a sun boat, a planetarium, an underground maze, a theatre, a library and more. Most doors and cases open only after a puzzle. Each Ixupi can be caught only with its own vessel and matching lid, both hidden somewhere in the museum, and you can carry just one piece at a time, so you plan routes and remember where you left things. A bar at the bottom of the screen shows how much life essence you have left; every attack by a spirit takes some of it.

The fear comes from being alone in a large dark building where any pot, fountain or fireplace may hold something that drains you, set to Whitmore's dark ambient score and sudden shrieks. Live-action scenes of ghosts, filmed against a blue screen, fill in what happened to the museum's earlier visitors. The museum is open to explore almost from the start, and where the vessels and lids lie changes between games, so a second play is not the same as the first.

GOG lists about nine and a half hours for the main story. A tip from players: the cursor doesn't light up over things you can use, so you'll have to click around rooms to find what's there.

It suits players who like the puzzle-box haunted houses of the 90s, such as The 7th Guest, and a slow, atmospheric ghost story over action.

How to play Shivers

1. Click the edges and paths of the screen to move from view to view through the museum.
2. Click objects, plaques and books to examine them; read everything, since the museum's texts and the victims' notes hold puzzle clues.
3. Solve the puzzles on doors, cases and machines to open new rooms.
4. Pick up a vessel or a lid; you can carry only one piece, or a vessel joined with its own lid.
5. Carry a completed vessel to the spirit whose sign it bears and use it there to trap that spirit.
6. Watch your life bar at the bottom of the screen and trap all the spirits before it runs out.

Tips

• Keep notes, or a map, of where you found or left each vessel and lid; you will cross the museum many times.
• The cursor doesn't change over things you can use, so click around each view, including walls, floors and shelves.
• Match the symbol on a vessel to the element a spirit lives in: water, wax, sand, electricity and so on.
• Use the Flashback feature to re-read texts and re-watch scenes you have found; many hold hints.
• Save often in different slots before trying to trap a spirit.
• Item locations change between games, so a walkthrough from another playthrough may not match yours.

Questions