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The SHIVER series from Parable Games takes a broad approach to horror. Each expansion looks at a different subgenre, such as slasher movies or Gothic horror. Their upcoming crowdfunder for SHIVER: Corporate takes on a popular new genre that combines the dread of hunting monsters with knowing you have to get up to go to the office in the morning.
“SHIVER: Corporate was born of two things: a fear of late stage capitalism, and (somewhat ironically) production deadlines” said Adam Holloway, Creative Lead on SHIVER: Corporate. “We were working on releases for our Patreon and Charlie (Creative Director of Parable Games) was so busy with the layout for instalments of our Classified and CREEPS series that he didn’t have time to oversee a new creative angle for SHIVER. I’d always been a big fan of our own little nightmare corporation ‘Cornwell Consolidated’, so I wrote up the first Casefile (a sort of adventure blueprint for GMs) for them: ‘Alien Autopsy Gone Wrong’. It was about some hapless unpaid interns in an underground research facility where there’s all these weird and wonderful scientific breakthroughs, but they only really get to deal with the worst stuff. There’s just no joy in it for them as a job. Even the aliens they get are ones the company can’t be bothered with. They’re still super deadly though, as the title of the adventure might suggest. From there things just kind of snowballed, and suddenly I was pitching not just an entire book of stories, but also new mechanics, a tie in novel [and more]. Essentially a whole little self contained world within SHIVER. Honestly, it’s been a hell of a journey.”
Corporate horror can be seen in media like Severance and The Belko Experiment. It also figures heavily into games like Triangle Agency and Corp Borg. It can also be seen in classic sci-fi such as the Alien films where the company doesn’t care if the cost of doing business includes human lives. Satires like Office Space and Paranoia run through the genre though the line between absurd concept and horrifying reality can shift very quickly these days.
“I think after that great big global sickness (sorry if that triggers any flashbacks),” said Holloway, “people had to go back to the office in droves having had a taste of what work could (and really, to me, should) be. Working from home was life changing for a lot of people, and not just young people. People who’ve been walking through their careers with blinders on to all the weird and horrible stuff employers can and do get away with were suddenly unable to keep sleepwalking. With any kind of shared societal experience like that, you’re going to see two things: creative expression, and a need to vent. That’s one reason why we’re seeing so much now, I think. The dams have just burst on corporate hellscapes. The second answer is one I tell people in person a lot: we were ahead of the curve! It’s just taken us a while to get it to publish, but I promise you we had some weird sense of foresight with this one. I was pitching stories and writing them up years ago, and as I would finish a plain text draft some news story would break that was just too close to the bone to be funny. Like, companies trying to rebrand and redefine the word ‘Nutritional’, or releasing a PC cooled by human blood. Even our in-universe head of Health and Safety at Cornwell, the Safety Squirrel AI, was just before the real uptick in artificial intelligence software. Real world stuff like that really turned the book from science fiction to satire.”
Cornwell Consolidated gives groups a lot of space to run. It’s a shadowy corporation with a lot of dirty fingers in a lot of dirty pies. Campaigns can be centered around revealing its nefarious schemes to the public or being clean-up crews sent in to erase mistakes before they go public.
“Rather than weigh the book down with tons of new mechanics that drown out the experience, what SHIVER: Corporate does is let the GM and players explore this world and all its new features one space at a time. Cornwell research facilities are like theme parks – just the worst theme parks, with next to no safety regulations. Each ride has to be different, right? Each research department you explore has some new weird and terrible scientific breakthrough that changes the playing field. It could be a dead-end mad science project, or something absolutely mundane related to office uses that’s just been dialled up to eleven. The HR department has become a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Here’s an easy crafting system that lets you turn office supplies into deadly weapons. An endless energy source accidentally letting demons possess the bodies of your co-workers? Here’s the Severance mechanic – it’s all about decapitations. I’m from the school of writing for film, and playing video games, so that pace of narrative and experiential progression is important for me. It’s about keeping everything moving fast, surprising for your players, and ultimately just fun.”
SHIVER: Corporate begins crowdfunding on July 28th, 2025. The SHIVER core book and other expansions can be found directly from Parable Games.
