Get Pot, Catch Ghost... Let's Play Shivers!

What Darkness Conceals, Terror Reveals.



Shivers is a point and click adventure game in the style of Myst that was released by Sierra in 1995. The game is set in the town of Mt. Pleasant, and more specifically takes place on the grounds of Professor Windlenot's Museum of the Strange and Unusual.

Construction on this museum started in 1961, but sometime in 1980, some teenagers went missing, and later on the Professor himself also vanished. No one ever seemed to figure out what happened.

This leads to us! Our character is locked in the museum by his friends (Sounds like a wonderful group of people to me!) and it seems we're going to try to figure out what happened here. But it gets more complicated than that, because the place is filled with g-g-g-g-g-ghosts!



Now we're trapped in a place with evil spirits trying to kill us, odd puzzles blocking our way around and stopping us from catching the ghosts, and there's even a creepy skull theme going on. Sounds like a perfect game to play during the Halloween season.



With 10 pots and 10 lids to find, located in random locations, can we catch all the Ixupi and get out alive? Or will we be robbed of all our life essence? And more importantly... are our friends going to still be jerks? Come along and explore the mysteries of the ancient world, the myths and truths of our planet and beyond, as we play Shivers. Just remember... They are evil...

Table of Contents (WIP)
Video Playlist
1. Ambient Atmosphere
2. Books and Beth
3. Cursed Collecting
4. Dashing Dangerously
5. Enigmatic Exploration
6. Freaky Finale?
7. Gacha Game


Flashback Items
1. Intro Movie
2. Beth's Ghost
3. Merrick's Ghost
4. Windlenot's Ghost
5. Ancient Astrology
6. Scrapbook
7. Museum Brochure
8. In Search of the Unexplained
9. Egyptian Hieroglyphs Explained
10. South America Pictographs
11. Mythology of the Stars
12. Black Book
13. Theater Movie
14. Museum Blueprints
15. Beth's Address Book
16. Merrick's Notebook
17. Professor Windlenot's Diary
18. Ending Movie

So, what do you do when your friends are complete jerks and lock you in the grounds of an old abandoned museum? Well, if you don't want to sleep outside, I suppose you'll have to figure out a way inside. On the way, perhaps you'll figure out why no one has heard anything from the mysterious Professor who built the place!


#1: Ambient Atmosphere
Wherein Red has jerks for friends, pauses to listen to the music, and forgot his way around the museum.


Please let me know what you think of the audio levels in this one. I really want the atmosphere of the game to shine through.

Well, we're in the museum and have a few ideas what to do... so now what? The scariest thing of all... reading!

Okay, okay. Actually, squaring away a few bits on the lower floors first. The random nature of the game means you never know what you'll find.

Oh yeah, there's more ghosts too.


#2: Books and Beth
Wherein Red forgets which books are the special books, underestimates his elevator needs, and also can't read music.

Now that we've investigated the lower floors, let's head up the stairs and go investigate the second floor, while avoiding several Ixupi such as Crystal, Water, Wood, and Wax!

The second floor includes such exhibits as Tombs and Curses, Burial Rites, the Shaman, and Gods and Myths. It also is home to a couple of frustrating puzzles. One of which I opted to skip for this video.

There's a 1/17 chance that the puzzle I skipped contains an item we can't even use until the end of the game, but what's more likely is that it will contain an item needed to bypass an Ixupi in a critical place to obtain another item.

But instead of doing the incredibly hard without a guide puzzle... we instead spent a lot of time on a tedious timesink puzzle. Such is life.

One other thing I've done with the thread... I've made the Flashback Menu interactive for you all! There were a few books I skipped over (I felt silly reading them all out loud in the first video so since then I've skimmed over the important parts) so I've put image links and links to the cutscene videos we've seen in the Table of Contents, so you can peruse at your leisure.


#3: Cursed Collecting
Wherein Red learns how to tell time, avoids one of the hardest puzzles, and doesn't know how to play Simon.

So, real talk for a second here. I really love the music in this game. One of my all time favorites shows up in this video when we head into the Planetarium... But there's actually a lot of the music in this game that gets stuck in my head. The main lobby of the museum, for example, or the drumbeat of Tombs and Curses. The Anansi spider song or the Song of the Sirens are required to solve puzzles but are also catchy in their own right. Even the elevator tune is this cheery little ditty that is catchy and sweet, but with a dark undertone hidden in there.

And of course, there's the audible hint you're in danger, the many, many variants of the dreaded Ixupi theme. This theme is the reason why I wanted the game to be done in video format, not a screenshot one. The music does a good job of fitting the mood, most of the time.

Why did I feel like ranting about music? No real reason, other than playing Shivers always gets these songs stuck in my head. It's clear that Sierra loved the tunes, they included a medley of the game's soundtrack as a bonus CD track in the sequel, Shivers 2: Harvest of Souls.

Most of this doesn't really come into play in this video, so lets move our discussion. There are a handful of puzzles in this game that I tend to dread. The Chinese Checkers puzzle is one that I have still saved notes for because of what a hard time I had with it back in the day. The lyre puzzle isn't hard, just tedious (and the bane of the speedrunners, apparently.) And the pinball puzzle is a brain scratcher without notes. Some of the other puzzles are just tricky because they have a random nature, like the mastermind puzzle. I came into this prepared, though! I had notes for the puzzles I expected to have issue with, or even the ones that might be simple but I wanted to be sure I showed the solution to in a video.

But there was one puzzle I forgot about...


#4: Dashing Dangerously
Wherein Red tackles one of the harder puzzles, fails another, and gets his fortune told.

I wish I had more time to watch these! Shivers is one of those games I wanted to get but never got around to because I was a poor teen and this was around the time a lot of not great games started coming out of Sierra.

Hopefully, I can find some time to sit down and watch this. Thank you Silvers!

Alrighty, caught up with both this and the Warcraft LP.

Pretty interesting, this one, the museum looks even somewhat believable (although go figure how the puzzles would work when open to the general public...). And it does kinda make you wish there was a building such as that that you could explore at leisure and solve puzzles to gain access to new areas, like a mansion-sized escape room, I guess, but without time limit.
Not the killer evil spirits though, those can stay in the game.

The one object inventory limit is quite bullshit though, way to force pointless backtracking.

And can I request sth? Beth's "chat" notes with her best friend (in the basement with her other stuff) had at least one more page that you skipped. Can you show the document in full when you go through the area again?

Yeah, I can show that off when we head that way.

There's been a couple moments in playing this game where something I took for granted turned out not to be the case! Maybe I could have researched some of that in advance, but it's been a fun ride nonetheless.

So, what happens after you explore and solve most of the puzzles...? You turn into a Pokemon Master and catch em all! (Well, we did start with Ash 'Ketchum').


#5: Enigmatic Exploration
Wherein Red goes back for a puzzle he missed, goes on a catching spree, and forgets where he left that one item.

So this last part could be really quick. At the start of the video I've got knowledge of where everything else we need to complete the game is. Pretty breezy, right? We could knock that out real quick if we wanted (and if I played smart with inventory), right?

But to make things a little more interesting I decide to show off a couple things we didn't see, and even hunt down some Easter eggs. There's stuff I've never seen previously that shows up here!

But ultimately, we need to follow in Beth's footsteps, and solve the puzzle that she didn't. What will happen when we do?


#6: Freaky Finale?
Wherein Red goes on a music listening spree, likes Chinese food, and takes a "Super Fun Happy Slide"

Well, that finale was a bit anticlimactic... just capture one more ixupi, nothing special or different about it? Also arbitrarily locking one event (completely unrelated to the pots you may have) behind a given number of ixupi's? That's a big design no-no... Then again it's Sierra we're talking about.

Anyway, thanks for the LP, I was pretty curious about this game. And thanks for checking Beth's notes too.

Do you have a link by any chance to that project you mentioned of building the museum in 3D?

Oh, and what happens with the escaped Ixupi? Can they still kill people, or having had their fill of life energy will they just go about their business? Is this dealt with in the sequel? Will you LP it? Sorry for the battery of questions.

So the sequel is unconnected to the first game other than in name, I believe, and deals with a native american ghost style thing instead? I've never actually played it, but I do have a copy and it should be able to run, so it's something I am considering.

Youtuber Metal Jesus appeared in the sequel, so that's interesting.

He worked at Sierra at one point didn't he? Is that why he shoes up in it?

Yeah, he worked there, and my understanding is he played a band member in the sequel, one of the people you need to save.

So Sensenic asked if I was playing to play the sequel. It's not a direct sequel or anything, but I did get some help from the Shivers discord to get an installer for a modern system, so it's a possibility!

Did you think I was done with Shivers? I thought I was done with Shivers. But I decided to try out the Super Randomizer which works using Cheat Engine. This has a few effects: Ash pot, Ash lid, and Thunder lid are added into the random shuffle, placing their locations into the random pool, and three new locations are added that don't contain items in the base game. And Beth's body is available at the start so you can do the full gypsy puzzle and Super Fun Slide.

So, how did I enjoy it?


#7: Gacha Game
Wherein Red again doesn't know where everything is, kinda makes a tune, and has an aha! moment.

And with this bonus episode done I think that's it for the Shiver's Let's Play! Thank you everyone for watching!

Thank you for showing us all around!