Stephen King’s F13: Voila, Macabre!
As always, make sure your computer system’s requirement adheres to the minimum standards to play the game, and maximum to enjoy the interactive features of all three sets of mini-games, with enough attention-span to deal with the extra reading material. A must-know, especially if you excelled his "Insomnia" novel in 24 hours or less.
All in the set of a collection of three games and short novella called Everything’s Eventual, the Stephen King’s F13 entered the game stage in 2000. King’s set of stories was later published by Scribner in March, about two years after the release of F13.
The computer key function reference F13 is practically nonexistent on standard personal computers. In Macintosh, the function of the key is as a screen capture button.
No Swimming, Bug Splat and Whack-a-Zombie, the three mini-games in the DC format, is said to be “an interactive time-killer and exceptional desktop companion filled with bone-chilling realism… in distinct ‘Stephen King’ style” on e-Bay.
Quite close to how the mini-games fully explain themselves on my computer in 2003, Gamespot’s review of the mini-games put two out of the three games as a variation of the whack-a-mole.
The difference is in the sounds and the very detailed illustration that kept me on my feet all through out Bug Splat, which was especially responsible for waking me up in the morning.
With a thickly folded newspaper to whack the bugs on the computer screen, followed by encounters with roaches and other types of slimy bugs that gradually increases in appearance, I get to move on. Rackets and hammers till I finish all levels in the first of the three mini-games, in F13.
No Swimming deals with piranhas and even more eerie sounds; Whack-a-Zombie provides a center stage for dealing with zombies. All I hear are outstanding background sounds.
But there are some extra screen savers and other features that could be used to decorate the screen with a little horror touch. The F13’s Digital Bookmark, which is included into the pages and pages of Everything’s Eventual introduced me to the idea of reading books in a different format, kind of a moral boost.
Note that this was when Kindle was not yet introduced, and down-loadable applications for document viewing was not around. No game consoles either, just plain horror adventure.
King of Greece & family (LOC) (Photo credit: The Library of Congress)
