Shivers II: Harvest of Souls

this game is really good and i love the puzzles

Thanks GOG for the opportunity to relive a great classic!!

It's neat for it's time, bu Sierra was already dead

I originally played this game not long after it came out in the late 90's and finished it again just yesterday, over 20 years later. Going back to it, I mainly had nostalgia for the atmosphere of the game, especially the soundtrack/music videos and the stylized, prerendered graphics. I'm glad to say that that those elements are still quite enjoyable, though extremely of their time. There are a few parts that don't hold up for me today, however, one being the puzzles. They're of the "solve this Rubik's cube to advance" variety and mostly detached from the environment and story. Some of them are pretty enjoyable on their own, but they're more like complicated door locks (often literally) than environment or story obstacles. Here again it was a product of its time, with 7th Guest having a similar design (play weird chess in a spooky house!). This may be a matter of personal preference, but I prefer the more environment-based puzzles of Myst and, notably, Riven, which came out the same year as this game. One thing I found constantly irritating is having a life bar and being randomly attacked when returning the Bahos sticks through the canyon, which you have to do A LOT and it is possible to die from this. Also, the very last puzzle is timed and restarting the sequence takes several minutes because you can't save just before the puzzle. I should also mention that making a game today that appropriates Native American culture to this level (especially with such an extremely...non-diverse...cast) would be a very hard sell. So, should you play this game? If you want some atmosphere and don't mind some of its dated design choices, definitely. If you want another spooky (but not scary other than 2-3 minor jump scares) game to play after 7th Guest, sure! However, if anything I've said sounds more like a chore than fun but you still want some puzzles, maybe play Riven instead.

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