The story commences with a rock band by the name of Trip Cyclone that stops in the small town of Cyclone, Arizona while scouting out locations for music videos. The town seems to have gotten stuck in time decades ago, people are strange and not welcoming to outsiders. When two hikers disappear in the wake an ancient Indian curse, members of the town set out for a search expedition, only to lose one of them in the process. The town's population slowly begins to dwindle, tourists stop coming in, and the only way out of Cyclone is blocked by a rockslide, preventing the band (and the rest of the town) from leaving. Things only get worse when they are approached by a strange man wearing a traditional Indian Kachina mask, who calls himself Darkcloud. As a personal friend of the band, you are tasked with finding ancient prayer sticks called "Bahos" in order to lift the curse from the town and also figuring out where Trip Cyclone and the rest of the town have disappeared to.
Like the original Shivers, Shivers Two is heavy on puzzle gameplay ranging from Enter Solution Here to Guide Dang It!. The "flashback" feature also returns, where the game stores any code or a solution to a puzzle you come across as a "memory" to help avoid backtracking and note taking. In addition to this, Shivers Two adds instant teleportation to any area you've been to before. A key difference occurs in the method of sealing the evil. Where Shivers made it fairly easy to avoid taking anything but scripted damage, Shivers Two is not so kind because the sealing occurs during a Death Course. You want to survive? You better be quick.
Shivers Two: Harvest of Souls has examples of:
- Abandoned Area: The town of Cyclone. Once a quaint little town, it isn't until Trip Cyclone's arrival that things begin to change. Townsfolk are disappearing left and right, those who remain begin quarreling with each other, and they begin to blame the band for the disappearances. Too bad they don't realize the town was built on an ancient burial ground.
- Alien Sky: The sky in Cyclone is a odd shade of green (at least during the events of the game).
- Always Night: Justified, as the whole game takes place in one night.
- Apocalyptic Log: You can find a journal from one of the band members detailing their first impressions of the town to their meetup with Darkcloud and the disappearing townsfolk. Various answering machines can also be found scattered around town which reveals the various quarrels the townsfolk have regarding the events that are unfolding.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Darkcloud is one, obviously. The other is the spirit who watches over the ritual that the player performs as the game's objective. It is far from neutral and has its own plans, as seen in the worst ending.
- The Cameo: The photograph of the corrupt sheriff found in his office is actually a photograph of Al Lowe. Al doesn't voice the sheriff, however.
- Curiosity Killed the Cast: By the time you arrive, only two people are left, the motel owner and Max. Everyone else has been turned into petroglyphs.
- Death Course: As soon as you pick up a Bahos, it starts draining your life force. To stop it from doing that, you have to go to Devil's Mouth Canyon and use it on one of the many petroglyphs there. The only way to know which petroglyph is the right one is to pay attention to the area you pick up the Bahos in, because an image of it will be around. So the most efficient course of action is to go to Devil's Mouth Canyon before picking up the first Bahos so that it becomes a teleportation option from the get-go and then to inspect a room thoroughly before bothering with the Bahos. Oh, and did we mention that the other petroglyphs on the walls start attacking you if you hang out in an area too long without finding the right petroglyph (assuming that it's in that area)?
- Enter Solution Here: As with its predecessor, quite a few puzzles involve hints from around the town.
- Fake Band: Trip Cyclone, complete with full versions of their songs from the game's soundtrack as CD-Audio tracks.
- Failed a Spot Check: Max, as Darkcloud demands that you recover the second half of Ianyi multiple times throughout the game, thinking that either you have it or your friends in Trip Cyclone told you where it was; In truth, the other half of the stone was in the Stalker Shrine that he dedicated to Norah in his basement. The case it's in is open, leaving the stone in plain sight.
- Ghostly Goals: Type A shows up: Norah Wharton, Darkcloud's murdered wife. He wants to avenge her, she disagrees with killing and/or cursing people.
- Hearing Voices: Many tracks in the game use various vocal tracks from the five Trip Cyclone songs featured on the second disk that doubles as an audio CD. This is evident in the church, which is simply the backing vocals to the song "Spell it Out".
- Human Resources: Implied. After a landslide blocked the only road leading out of town, the local grocery store stopped receiving shipments and as a result, started running out of supplies...and then mysteriously started selling meat again (note the generic wording). It's not spelled out exactly where Phil got the meat from, but the human skeleton in one of his freezers might be a clue to his source...
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: "Devil's Mouth Canyon" certainly has an intimidating ring to it.
- Knowledge Broker: Burt is the local version of this in Cyclone; He focuses on Blackmail, something which doesn't make him very popular with some of the town's residents...
- Last-Second Ending Choice: There are four endings and which one you get depends on a choice so late that with one exception it'll be your last action in the game. Give the Macguffin to either Darkcloud or Norah and you get the bad and mediocre endings; do it right by placing the fake half of the Ianyi stone onto the altar, then joining the two halves while Darkcloud is trying to complete the ritual and you have to solve one last puzzle. Fail to solve said puzzle, or go along with Darkcloud's plans and place your half of the Ianyi stone on the altar right away, and you get the worst ending. See World of Silence for details.
- Live-Action Cutscene: The final confrontation features a big sequence — which can end in four different ways — that uses live actors.
- Macguffin: The Ianyi stone. Darkcloud has half of it and besides collecting all of the Bahos, Darkcloud expects the player to find the other half for him. It turns out, it was in his own house all along.
- Mass Hypnosis: If you watch TV without taking precautions, you will be hypnotized and reawaken in Devil's Mouth Canyon. This is how so many of Cyclone have disappeared. The only way to stop this from happening and get access to the clues on TV is to block off the red light next to the screen with gum.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: A central part of the background story. The townspeople aren't happy about Norah marrying the outsider Max Wharton and when she dies due to their carelessness they look forward to making Max's life hell now that she's out of the way.
- Mythology Gag
- You can find one of Windlenot's books in Cyclone's library.
- One of the Trip Cyclone members can be seen wearing a Shivers shirt.
- Phantom-Zone Picture: Darkcloud has been trapping everyone in Cyclone in a petroglyph version of this trope. Interestingly, the Player Character's bandmates are the only ones who can be found in petroglyph form in-game; Presumably, this is so the player doesn't figure out who Darkcloud is just by noting who is and who isn't on the walls in Devil's Mouth.
- Point-and-Click Map: The in-game map allows you to instantly visit any place you've already been to once before. This is especially useful to cut down on the time you have a Bahos with you.
- Police Are Useless: After the disappearances of the locals become more common, the sheriff doesn't even bother with filling out missing-person forms. He also doesn't do anything about the landslide that blocks the only exit from the town, something the general store and gas station owner Phil doesn't like as the lack of new inventory is hurting his business.
- Portrait Painting Peephole: There's one in the library to spy on the conference room. While you're inside, you can walk up to the painting to see another's eyes dart around before settling on you without so much as blinking. By the time you're at the door to apprehend your stalker, he's already gone.
- Schmuck Bait: In a few places around town, you'll find papers indicating that a satellite TV company called Desert Satellite made an unusually good introductory offer to residents of Cyclone- Not only were they offering free installation and the first six months free, they also give new customers a free television set; It's implied that the TVs offered as part of this package are the hypnotic televisions you find all over town, which urged those who watched them to go to Devil's Mouth Canyon where they could be turned into petroglyphs.
- Sinister Minister: Cyclone's stereotypical fire-and-brimstone Southern preacher, George Bellairs. He isn't the Big Bad, but he is guilty of Blackmail, theft, drunk driving, vehicular manslaughter and cheating at Bingo. Someone even hanged a picture of him and his family in the gas station and taped a drawing of him to it over his face that refers to him by this trope's name.
- Token Good Teammate: Pearl Larsen and Ivan Spencer are the only adults in Cyclone who aren't up to anything shady.
- World of Silence: This is what the spirit overseeing the ritual turns the world into if the player places their half of the Ianyi stone onto the altar without tricking Darkcloud first or taking to long to solve the final puzzle. Specifically, a world where the spirit has turned everyone into a petroglyph.
