You have been dared by your friends to spend one night in professor Windlenot's "Museum of the Strange and Unusual". Professor Windlenot mysteriously disappeared 15 years earlier, as did 2 students, Beth and Merrick, who are suspected to be associated with Windlenot's disappearance. Soon you discover that there is more to the museum than meets the eye. Among Windlenot's vast collection of mysterious items, there was a collection of South American vessels, believed to hold evil spirits, known as "Ixupi". The vessels have been opened and are scattered around the entire museum, with the freed Ixupi freely roaming around and threatening to suck your life essence.
As the player, you need to retrieve all the vessels and capture the Ixupi, while discovering what happened 15 years ago. Each Ixupi belongs to a particular vessel and each vessel consists of 2 parts: the pot and its talisman. Windlenot, by many declared a crazy man, was also very fond of puzzles which, in the current circumstances, only make it harder to find all the vessel pieces around the museum. The player can also only carry one item at the time, making it harder to find matching vessel parts, and to catch the Ixupi which continuously change their hiding places.
Main menu
In the main menu, the player can choose to start a new game, restore an old game (if existing), watch a slideshow of the various rooms in the museum, see the game credits or quit the game.
Starting a new game
When starting a new game, the player needs to insert his name in the museum guestbook. This can be done by typing it or by clicking the characters on the screen. The name of each guestbook entry must be unique, so you cannot enter an already existing guestbook entry. You can also enable or disable the auto-save of the game here. After the player enters his name in the guestbook, the game starts and opening movie is shown.
The main game screen
Shivers uses all static screens in which the player can move around by pointing and clicking the cursor in various places. Many objects, such as doors, puzzles, closets and drawers are animated and activated by clicking the cursor on it.
Below the main window is the game's toolbar. The round plate on the left is where your current vessel part or complete vessel is located. That is the part you have on you, your only inventory item. Selecting another part in the museum will swap both parts (unless both parts match to become one complete vessel) as the player can only hold one part or one complete vessel at a time. The player can therefore place other vessel parts on various locations throughout the museum and pick them up later when needed. Make sure to write down which vessel parts you leave where, so you don't need to walk through the entire museum looking where you left it.
The green filling inside the bar is your life essence. An attack by an Ixupi will reduce it, while capturing an Ixupi (which has previously stolen your life essence) will fill it up again. The same Ixupi can attack you multiple times. When this bar is emptied, you die.
The complete vessels on the bar are the Ixupi you already caught. Once caught, you don't have to worry about them any more. They are there to stay. Once you have all ten of them, you have won the game.
The eyeball on the right is to examine the part you are currently holding. Closer examination may give clues to which talisman fits to which pot to complete a vessel. If no vessel piece is currently held, then the eye ball is not available.
The button on the far right is to access the game options.
Game options
Score: the current game score can be seen on the left side of this screen. Shivers uses a rather unorthodox scoring system, providing a few hundred points for finding simple clues to thousands of points for solving puzzles and catching Ixupi. Shivers does not have a perfect score, as puzzles can be replayed over and over with different variations, continuously adding more points. Point deductions are awarded when being attacked by an Ixupi or when using a wrong complete vessel to try to capture an Ixupi.
Volume: Change the game volume with the slider bar.
Brightness: Change the game brightness with the slider bar.
Play: continue the game where youleft off.
Save: the guestbook appears and allows the player to save his current position. The player can also enable or disable auto-save there. When auto-save is enabled, the game will auto-save each time an Ixupi has been captured.
Restore: shows all the entries in the guestbook and allows to restore one of the available positions. The player can also delete saved positions in this menu.
Flashback: opens a window with the possibility to see items of interest again, such as books and movie clips. This is most useful to solve puzzles as these items contain many clues. Only the items you have already encountered in the museum itself are listed in the flashback menu. If certain flashback items are not listed yet, then you will first have to discover them in the museum itself, so explore everything. A full list of flashback items and their locations is shown here.
Fullscreen: select to show the live action movies in full or half size.
Text on/off: Select whether or not to display subtitles
Exit: after confirmation, you return to the main menu.
