Adventure Gamers - Forums

Casual Friday

Shiver - The Vanishing Hitchhiker is a truly creepy game. You pick up a young girl hitchhiking by the side of the road. After you drop her off at a lane leading to her home you realize that she left a teddy bear in the back seat. Obviously you must return it to her. However, you also realize that this isn’t Just any teddy bear. It’s the bear you played with when you were a child.

Is the girl real? Is she a ghost? Is she a figment of your imagination? Is she in any way related to something in your past? As you attempt to answer the questions, you will investigate the town of Garden Creek.

The colors in the game are muted. The only time there is a splash of color is when you are visited by an apparition of the young girl.

This comes from the same company that brought us Shiver - Poltergeist, Artogon.

As with many games of this era, there are a few too many HO scenes for my taste. But the HO scenes in this game are as creepy as the game itself, and in that way actually contribute to the game’s atmosphere. Just try to get into the house, and then find a way to escape (for the first time). If you aren’t feeling a Shiver, your blood isn’t running as cold as it should be.

Side note: Thanks to Becky for covering for me the last two weeks. I lost IE’s ability to connect. No big deal, because, of course, you have Firefox and/or Chrome loaded as backup. Well, because of some other maintenance issues, no! They weren’t installed. Which, because IE can’t be reinstalled as a program unto itself, required starting from scratch with a clean install of everything. That did not go well.

If you don’t have a back-up browser, or two, installed….do it now!

We had this discussion on the Poltergeist AGSotD thread. I think your definition of intense horror differs from mine. To me, a continual, overriding sense of fear and dread fits the bill. I don’t need a profusion of blood and gore, nor jump scares. They might very well add to the horrific atmosphere, but they don’t define it.