STEPHEN KING'S F13: CTRL, ALT, ...SHIVER

The master of horror up close!

You thought you were safe! You thought you only had this small hob to get done on your computer! And you thought you had your life under control! But there was this one out-of-the-way key, remote, menacing, but somehow magically attractive ... and your hand began to move Ouija-like toward it, closer, finally touching this mysterious F13 key!

Horror lurks behind STEPHEN KING'S F13! "Harmless" screensavers awaken the hidden side within you and easily installed system sounds send series of shivers down your spine!

With Frightware Trivia, find out how well you really know Stephen King's world, or follow the master of horror into the depths of Dink Earnshaw's soul. Word for word and sentence for sentence, your doubts quicken - "Could it be that I am the conjurer of these cryptic signs?"

Discover the shadowy realms of F13!

Features

• Story: Enjoy Stephen King's novella, "Everything's Eventual", previously unpublished in book form. Let yourself sink deep into the psyche of Dink Earnshaw. Enjoy impressive illustrations and haunting background music!
• Mini-games: Have macabre interactive time-killers drive you to the brink of madness - with bloodthirsty piranhas or horsed of roaches streaming across your monitor or zombies awaiting a proper whacking!
• Screensavers: Let 6 spine-tingling eyesnatchers lend your screen a deathly pallor. Watch the master of horror at work; see how an old villa becomes the scene of a horrible crime or allow a mysterious creature creep through your bedroom!
• Frightware Trivia: Are you well-versed in blue-blooded horror? Test your knowledge of the corpus of Stephen King's work!
• Deathtop Backgrounds and System Sounds: Give your computer a ghastly overhaul with 10 nightmarish "Deathtop Backgrounds" and bloodcurling system sounds that make each round at the computer a ghoulish delight. Abandon all hope, ye who enter!
• Use your computer as if by magic: All F13 features are, "unnaturally", intuitive ... that is, if you are not afraid to use them!

~ from the back of the box

 
Considering the huge array of Stephen King based media scaring the general public, it does come as a surprise how few games out there license his works. Outside of an old text adventure based on The Mist novel and a take on the movie adaptations of The Dark Half and The Lawnmower Man, I can't think of much more (The Running Man written by King pseudonym Richard Bachman kinda-sorta counts too). In comes Stephen King's F13, a desktop timewaster notable only for a rarely-read Stephen King short called Everything's Eventual.

This bit of bite-sized King follows Richard "Dinky" Earnshaw as he lives a wealthy lifestyle thanks to a strange side hustle. He is to periodically email a list of people telling them to kill themselves and how they should do it and in return a weekly donation of cash is sent to him in the post. He has to spend it too, as he's forced to throw away anything that's left over by the end of the week. Then, one day, he picks up a newspaper and learns about the death of one of those email recipients. A death by suicide...

A lot of effort has gone into the screensavers, which you can preview within the game's menu.
You can see them in their full glory by clicking their icon on the virtual Windows 98 desktop.

The story bears all of the hallmarks of a Stephen King short; a concept that could easily buckle under its own convolution were it not for a focus on character and psyche. This one ranks quite highly in his pantheon of petite prose, with a mystery that keeps you gripped until the inevitable twist at the end. It was originally written for the October/November issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction in 1997, a long-running and revered periodical sold in the United States. This CD-ROM would be the first us Brits would get a chance to read it although it would feature in a short story collection of the same name three years later.

F13 also boasts a selection of means to customise your desktop, though I'd say most are either defunct or incompatible for anyone running an operating system newer than Windows XP. There are a few bitmap images for wallpapers, a selection of wave audio files to customise system sounds and a slew of nicely conceived screensavers. While modern Windows users can get some use out of the background images and sound files should they so desire, the screensavers are entirely incompatible and pointless on today's PCs. But they are fun. Witnessing a serial killer stalk his prey through the lit windows of a gothic mansion is menacingly addictive, as is watching a demonic clown doll torment a homeowner in a dark basement or spying on monsters tormenting a child in his bedroom. Others, such as a bunch of glistening, blinking eyeballs aren't so interesting but either way a lot of time has been spent thinking about these. They almost make me wish screensavers would make a comeback.

All the mini-games are about whacking and splatting.
If only they gave the gameplay as much attention as the graphics and sound design.

Saying the actual game side of the package is underwhelming is an understatement. There are three mini-games and none of them have more depth than your average Whac-A-Mole. No Swimming isn't really a game at all. It allows you to feed a school of piranha fish a variety of animals until there's nothing left but bones. You cannot do anything more than this, and the outcome is exactly the same whether you fed them a dog, a cow or a rhinoceros. A virtual fish tank would be more fun. Bug Splat has you squishing cockroaches and other insects with whatever is in your hand. You start with a fly swatter, but you're weapon will get smaller as you progress. In truth, the game never really changes much, regardless of whether you're sporting a hammer of a rolled up newspaper. Whack-A-Zombie plays exactly the same, except you're swinging a shovel at living skeletons escaping from a graveyard. These ghouls can fight back by throwing femurs or balls of magic ooze at you with shocking accuracy but that's about it. The undead pop up at random with no regard as to whether you can actually defeat the all before you yourself get hit. Disappointing.

To my knowledge, Stephen King's F13 is the last piece of interactive entertainment based on the prolific horror-writer's work. It hit shelves in the US and Europe at the turn of the millennium (October 1999 for us lot, January 2000 for the US lot) and I vividly remember seeing it selling for £5 at my local Staples store around that time (it's telling I saw it at a stationary store and not a games store). I held off buying it, despite my love for the author, and now that I've played it I'm glad I did. A 5-minute curio at best.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses PCem running Windows '98. Press Ctrl-Alt-PgDown to toggle fullscreen. Press Ctrl-End or middle mouse button to release the mouse. Desktop extra bits and pieces included as a separate download. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

IMPORTANT - Remember to shut down the emulated version of Windows before exiting PCem. This could potentially result in errors, lost saves and corrupt data. Close the program only when it is safe to do so.

File Size: 961 Mb.  Install Size: 1.38 Gb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

Download


Stephen King's F13: Ctrl, Alt, ...Shiver! is © Blue Byte Software
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me

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