Being the first Sierra first-person adventure game, Shivers was compared to contemporary Myst and The 7th Guest, gaining praise mostly for its atmosphere.

His interest in controversial fringe topics such as ancient astronauts, hollow earth, Atlantis and cryptozoology earned him the reputation of a mad scientist.

Renouncing his life as a noble, he moved to America, where he attempted to open "Professor Windlenot's Museum of the Strange and Unusual" in Mt.

The ixupi are each associated with various materials, elements and natural forces, such as sand, cloth, wax, and electricity, which they can inhabit and lie in wait for unsuspecting humans.

In order to find all these items, the player has to explore the museum by completing puzzles of varying difficulty, navigating mazes, and making use of secret passages.

Along the way, the player can find documents chronicling the exploits of Windlenot and the belongings of the two students, expanding their backstory, with elements hinting at their lives, relationships and motivations.

Throughout the game, players will gather information, complete minigames/puzzles, as well as collect and piece together vessel fragments, with the ultimate goal of trapping all of the ixupi and escaping the museum.

It also serves as the game's inventory, with the active Ixupi vessel or cover the player is currently holding, with the option to examine it in close-up.

[3][4] A "Flashback" feature allows the player to review game cutscenes and re-read most of the in-game text that has been found, such as books from the museum library or the victims' notebooks.

[5] Upon completion of the game's main story, the player may then continue to roam freely through the museum, with all ten captured Ixupi appearing along the health bar.

The way the museum was designed, with each room assigned to a different artist, reflected the Professor's deductive fallacies of connecting otherwise unconnected facts to draw his conclusions.

[4] The concept of the Ixupi is a retelling of an almost universal motif of vampiric spirits sucking the life out of humans, often coming out of the elements.

[4] Shivers was the first first-person adventure game by Sierra On-Line to feature a nameless and unseen silent protagonist, instead of a visible player character.

Each shot required proper camera angles and lensing before filming to ensure matching quality with the digital background.

The interactive nature of the game demanded for a repetitive motif which would provide the background and foreboding mood of suspension for the player, while being unnoticed in the same time.

Presenting a deviation from earlier Sierra titles, the game was both praised and criticized for the same reasons, while it also drew comparisons with Myst and The 7th Guest.

[5] All Game Guide described it as "lacking"[13] while Finnish magazine Pelit considered it an example of Sierra's downward spiral, criticizing the puzzles and the storyline.