Review by: Pete Hines
Published: May 15, 1997

Shivers II: Harvest of Souls, is the sequel to the highly acclaimed adventure game from Sierra On-Line, called Shivers. The story takes place in a small, distant town, named Cyclone, where your friends have disappeared. Members of a rock band, they were in town writing music and making rock videos when they vanished without a trace. What happened to them, and who is this Darkcloud character that keeps taunting you? It is up to you to solve the puzzles, piece together the clues, and find out where your friends have disappeared to. Shivers II is very much a non-linear and relatively unstructured game. Once play begins, you will need to start looking around for clues and information. It is a lot like doing a big puzzle . . . it doesn’t matter where you start, but you have to start somewhere. Like any good investigator, you discover information about a lot of other things during your adventure (i.e., fraud, love affairs, etc.). Piecing together these tidbits and deciding what is important and how it fits into this mystery will take lots of skill and patience. It was a long while before I really felt like I had a clue what I was doing and what was going on.

As soon as the game begins, you become very aware that strange things are happening. For one thing, traffic in and out of town has been cut off by a rock slide. Also, the town is largely deserted, and the residents who are around seem pretty weirded-out, or maybe they are just weird (or both). As a result, you pretty much have free reign to inspect any part of the town you wish, but some of the buildings in town have puzzles that must be solved before their doors can be opened.

The game centers around an American-Indian theme, which is reflected in every facet of the game. For example, in order to find your friends, you must gather 12 prayer sticks, or bahos, and take them to an altar in a nearby canyon. Finding these sticks is pretty tricky business and will require good puzzle-solving and sleuthing ability. Almost everything in the game is a clue to finding your friends or one of the prayer sticks, but the meaning and usefulness of items is not always obvious. Some items can be picked up and added to your inventory while others must be used on the spot.

Your cursor is a small Indian arrowhead that has a small circle in it. The circle turns bright green whenever you move the cursor over an object that can be manipulated. Drawers, pieces of paper, and doors can all be opened and inspected with the click of the mouse. This feature is very helpful when trying to use an object for a specific purpose. For example, once you find a prayer stick, you must find the appropriate symbol in the canyon where you then take any discovered prayer sticks. While you can click on any of the many symbols on the canyon walls, your cursor will appear with the green circle when you have found the proper symbol. For a real challenge, try playing without the indicator light in the cursor. The arrowhead will also change into a directional arrow to indicate when movement into another part of a room or a different location is possible.

Shivers II comes with a map, which players can use to instantly jump back to places they have already visited. This makes it easy to retrace steps, go back to areas where clues might have been missed, and get to hot spots quickly. Also, a ‘flashback’ feature allows players to replay important sequences, like music videos, at later points in the game. In addition, it helps you refer to important notes and clues that you have read along the way, sort of like having a photographic memory. Another nice feature of the game is that the interactive nature allows for three different endings. The game can be replayed several times until all three endings are found. Sierra estimates that Shivers II should take about 40 hours to complete.