Phantasmagoria is a point-and-click adventure horror video game designed by Roberta Williams for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows and released by Sierra On-Line on August 24, 1995. It tells the story of Adrienne Delaney (Victoria Morsell), a writer who moves into a remote mansion and finds herself terrorized by supernatural forces. It was made at the peak of popularity for interactive movie games and features live-action actors and footage, both during cinematic scenes and within the three-dimensionally rendered environments of the game itself. It was noted for its violence and sexual content.
Williams had long planned to design a horror game, but she waited eight years for software technology to improve before doing so. More than 200 people were involved in making Phantasmagoria, which was based on Williams's 550-page script, about four times the length of an average Hollywood screenplay. It took more than two years to develop and four months to film. The game was originally budgeted for $800,000, but it ultimately cost $4.5 million to develop and was filmed in a $1.5 million studio that Sierra built specifically for the game.
The game was directed by Peter Maris and features a cast of twenty-five actors, all performing in front of a blue screen. Most games at the time featured 80 to 100 backgrounds, while Phantasmagoria includes more than 1,000. A professional Hollywood special effects house worked on the game, and the musical score includes a neo-Gregorian chant performed by a 135-voice choir. Sierra stressed that it was intended for adult audiences, and the company willingly submitted it to a ratings system and included a password-protected censoring option within the game to tone down the graphic content.
Phantasmagoria was released on seven discs after multiple delays, but it was a financial success, grossing $12 million in its opening weekend and becoming one of the bestselling games of 1995. Sierra strongly promoted the game. It received mixed reviews, earning praise for its graphics and suspenseful tone while being criticized for its slow pacing and easy puzzles. The game also drew controversy, particularly due to a rape scene. CompUSA and other retailers declined to carry it, religious organizations and politicians condemned it, and it was refused classification altogether in Australia. The sequel Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh was released in 1996, although Williams was not involved.
Gameplay
Phantasmagoria is a point-and-click adventure game that features live-action actors and cinematic footage, both during scenes between the gameplay and within the three-dimensionally rendered environments of the game itself. The game was made when interactive movie games were at the peak of their popularity, with the release of such popular computer games as Wing Commander III and Under a Killing Moon. In this single-player game, the player controls protagonist Adrienne Delaney, who is always on the screen. The player can click certain areas of the screen to control her movements or make her explore specific places and objects. The camera angles and rooms change depending on where the player moves Adrienne. The game includes only four mouse commands: look (which changes to "talk to" when selecting a person), pick up item, use item, and walk. The mouse cursor is always an arrow, unlike in most earlier Sierra On-Line games, in which the cursor could be changed to represent different functions (like walk, hand, and eye) by right-clicking. The cursor turns red when it passes over an area where the user can click to perform an action.Dembo, p. 64 Once the action has been completed, the cursor will not turn red again. Objects in the game can be picked up by clicking on them or interacting with them in a film sequence, after which the item automatically goes into the inventory. If an object is small enough that it can be easily missed, a pulsing glow occasionally surrounds it to draw attention to it.
The user interface is a screen surrounded by a stone border, with buttons and eight inventory slots along the bottom. Adrienne can only hold eight items at once, and each black slot can contain an image of an item that the user can click on to retrieve or use within the game. In the middle of the inventory slots is a "P" button that brings up an options screen, allowing the player to save or restore games, change the game screen to full- or half-size, control the volume, or switch between a censored version of the game and uncensored one, with more graphic content. A chapter gauge on this screen conveys how much progress remains in a given chapter. A fast-forward button, located above the options button, allows the user to skip past cinematic scenes. On the left side of the interface is a red skull button, which the user can click to receive hints. On the right side is a red button with a picture of a closed eye, which displays any inventory item that the user drags to the button. The display shows a close-up image that can be turned in multiple directions.
Game designer Roberta Williams, co-founder of Sierra On-Line, deliberately made the Phantasmagoria gameplay and interface simple, unobtrusive, and intuitive so it would be more accessible and less frustrating for casual gamers. According to Arinn Dembo from Computer Gaming World, the game is focused more around the story and the frightening atmosphere, rather than on a difficult gaming experience, and therefore the puzzles are relatively easy, logical, and straightforward.
Plot Successful mystery novelist Adrienne Delaney (Victoria Morsell) and her photographer husband Don Gordon (David Homb) along with her pet cat Spaz have just purchased a remote mansion off the coast of a small New England island previously owned by a famous 19th-century magician, Zoltan "Carno" Carnovasch (Robert Miano), whose five wives all died mysteriously. Adrienne hopes to find an inspiration for her next novel in her new home, but starts having nightmares immediately upon moving in. She is comforted by the loving and supportive Don. Adrienne explores the estate, making mysterious discoveries like strange music, warnings written on her computer, and ominous messages from a fortune-teller automaton. Unbeknownst to the happy couple, Carno had practiced black magic when he lived in the mansion and had summoned an evil demon that possessed him and caused him to murder his wives.
During her exploration of the grounds, Adrienne finds a secret chapel hidden behind a bricked off fireplace. After opening a locked box atop an altar, Adrienne unknowingly releases the demon that possessed Carno, which then possesses Don. Don starts acting menacingly towards Adrienne and drinking heavily, culminating in him assaulting her later on. Adrienne meets Harriet Hockaday (V. Joy Lee), a superstitious vagrant, and her strong but dim-witted son, Cyrus (Steven W. Bailey), who are secretly living in a barn on the estate. After Adrienne agrees to let them stay, they volunteer to help around the mansion, though Don disapproves. When a technician named Mike (Carl Neimic) visits the mansion to install the phone-line, Don screams at him in a jealous rage, warning him to stay away from his wife. Spaz also goes missing with Adrienne later discovering Spaz's collar where Don had been sitting by the fireplace earlier.
While the local townspeople believe all Carno's wives died of natural causes or accidentally, Adrienne learns through a series of visions that he murdered them in grotesque ways. Hortencia (Christine Armond), who avoided Zoltan's abuse by secluding herself in her greenhouse, (especially after the death of their daughter, Sofia, who drowned in the castle pond, suspecting Carno himself to have been responsible), was stabbed with gardening tools and then suffocated with mulch. Victoria (Holley Chant), an alcoholic, was killed when Zoltan impales her eye with a wine bottle during an argument. An overly talkative third wife, Leonora (Dana Moody), has her mouth gagged and then her neck contorted in a torture device. Finally, the food-loving Regina (Wanda Smith) was force-fed animal entrails through a funnel until she choked to death.
Harriet performs a séance for Adrienne, in which she vomits a green ectoplasm that takes the form of Carno. A repentant Carno tells her that he was possessed by the demon when he tried to learn black magic to use in his performances. He reveals that the previously trapped demon must be stopped and only she can contain it once again. Adrienne is later horrified to discover Spaz's dead body in the garden.
Adrienne visits the nearly 110-year-old Malcolm Wyrmshadow (Douglas Seale), who is being cared for by Ethel (Lilyan Chauvin); Malcolm had been Carno's apprentice as a young boy and reveals that Carno met his demise after his last wife, Marie (Traci Clauson), who was tired of being abused by him, discovered he was a murderer. Marie conspired with her secret lover, Gaston (Jeff Rector), Carno's prop master, to kill Carno by sabotaging the equipment for his most dangerous escapology trick; "The Throne Of Terror", in which Carno donned a burning hood and escaped from bonds on a throne underneath a swinging axe. The sabotage left Carno horribly burned/disfigured and falling into a coma, assumed dead, but he astonishingly survived and then attacked Marie and Gaston, mutilating them both. After killing Marie by beheading her with the throne, Carno was then impaled by Gaston, before succumbing to his own wounds.
Malcolm that reveals that it was he who had originally sealed the demon in the estate's chapel and also tells Adrienne about a ritual that can eradicate the demon. Later that night, Mike leaves the mansion, finally having completed installing the phone-line, but is then murdered by Don with an axe. Harriet, fearing for her safety, decides to leave with Cyrus as Don becomes more abusive and erratic.
The next day Adrienne discovers she cannot leave the mansion and later finds a collection of photos of her in Don's darkroom which have her head cut off. She is confronted by Don, who is now completely insane and dressed like Carno. Adrienne scars Don's face with acid from his darkroom when he tries to kill her and flees, discovering the corpses of Mike, Harriet and Cyrus hidden throughout the mansion. Don captures Adrienne and straps her into the throne, but she distracts him long enough to free herself and trigger the swinging axe, which impales and kills Don. His death unleashes the demon, which pursues Adrienne throughout the mansion. She escapes long enough to perform the ritual to trap the demon once again. The game then ends with Adrienne walking out of the mansion with a vacant stare, almost catatonic.
Development
Conception Phantasmagoria was a radically different game for Williams, who was best known for designing the family-friendly King's Quest fantasy adventure game series."The Ultimate", p. 30 Williams said she did not want to get typecast in a particular genre, adding: "I felt I had more to offer than fairy stories. I wanted to explore games with a lot of substance and deep emotions.""The Ultimate", p. 32 Although Phantasmagoria was her first horror game, Williams had created murder and crime stories in her earlier mystery games, Mystery House and the Laura Bow series. Williams was a fan of the horror genre, although she did not watch many horror films as a child after a traumatic experience watching Horrors of the Black Museum (1959) at a very young age. She began watching them again as a teen, and particularly enjoyed such films as Halloween (1978),Shannon, p. 8 and movies based on Stephen King novels, like Carrie and The Shining (1980). Williams cited the works of King and Edgar Allan Poe as the inspirations behind Phantasmagoria.