So in my last post, I mentioned how much I loved video games, and how long I’ve been wanting to make some.
Games made by LucasArts were favorites of mine. Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, Night Shift, and zombies Ate My Neighbors kept me busy for hours.
Do you remember Sierra Entertainment? They’re still around in the form of Sierra Games. Some of their more popular games was the Ultima series, King’s Quest, You Don’t Know Jack, Leisure Suit Larry, and even had a hand in the first Half-life game.
But one of my favorite games from them was a game called Shivers.
Shivers was a horror point and click. You played as a friend who was dared to enter this old, abandoned Museum. You hop the gate and realize you can’t get back out, so you have to not only spend all night there for the dare, but also need to get out before the security in the morning catches you. Unfortunately, the place is filled with rampant evil spirits from the cultures whose artifacts were stolen from their homes and placed in the museum. You find dead bodies scattered about, entrapped souls of the employees, and the strange recorded ramblings of the owner. It was freaky. Great atmosphere, goofy jump scares. But I would say the game I played as a kid that changed my life was its sequel: Shivers II.
You play as a friend of a band. That band, going through a canyon town, has stopped calling. So, as a good friend would do, you drive to the town to find out what happened. However, a landslide traps you within the canyon, alone with a town that is seeped in evil. You make your way through, again fending off spirits, but discovering that everyone in the town is gone, basically killed by a strange man running about. Your goal is to end whatever ritual is happening and free the entrapped souls of your friends.
It was so violently colorful, eerie, lonesome, and created in a way that every screen made you look for something. Whether the movement of a shadow, or the sudden sound of whispering.
Shivers II was probably the most influential game in terms of motivating me to write novels and scripts, to delve into horror, to sink into the horror games I loved even deeper, like Silent Hill, Phantasmagoria, Outlast, etc.
So there’s a bit of my background. Between LucasArts and Sierra Entertainment, I was set to get into games!
(And the cover image for this post is me looking insane, in case you were wondering.)
