![phantasmagoria game intro phantasmagoria game intro](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-u8dTSGpl-E/hqdefault.jpg)
It's not as smooth and forgiving as the rest of the game, but the difficulty is at least somewhat earned. Killing the player for not instantly finding the right answer to each puzzle is cheap and artificial, but after six chapters, anyone would know that there's a bottle of acidic drain cleaner resting on the counter. There was nothing to indicate that the black thing in chapter one might be a secret letter opener, and relying on such hidden information creates cheap, artificial difficulty. The majority of Phantasmagoria takes place in one house, and players have spent six chapters getting familiar with its layout. The introduction of death and real-time action so late in the game feels abrupt and a little gimmicky, but it is a fitting end in some ways. Every action demands fast thinking and fast reactions. Hesitate, though, and the main character will be dead in seconds. Grab the drain cleaner from the counter, and you'll temporarily lose the assailant after you throw it in his face. One puzzle involves a crazed murderer's attack in the room with the clogged sink. Once again, drain cleaner serves as a good example. Contrarily, the seventh chapter takes place in real time. Nothing happens until the player acts, and the player is never under any pressure to act quickly. That is to say, the real estate office doesn't open at a particular time of day it opens after the player discovers the locked door. To this point, time has only passed according to the player's actions.
![phantasmagoria game intro phantasmagoria game intro](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rIiS3oij08w/maxresdefault.jpg)
Phantasmagoria game intro zip#
And then the next five chapters zip by with nary a hiccup.Ĭhapter seven goes a little off the rails, but it's less a case of sloppy, careless design, and more a result of an abrupt shift in play style. With this inscrutable puzzle out of the way, chapter one draws to a close, and chapter two opens with a clear objective: Buy some drain cleaner. On the contrary, Williams' tremendous skill and experience makes the obvious missteps that much worse. Given Phantasmagoria's pedigree, it's no wonder that smart design decisions abound. Today, only a handful of other adventure gameĭesigners - Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Jane Jensen, and Al Lowe, perhaps -Ĭan approach her legacy, and that's being generous. Saw release, Williams had already long since established herself as a She had practically invented the graphic adventureįifteen years earlier with Mystery House, and perfected the genre in 1984 with King's Quest. These are smart systems for easing in new players.īeginners may have been the target audience, but designer Roberta Williams Additionally, there's a one-click hint system that offers a nudge in the right direction without giving away the solution. Some adventure games offer several options per hot spot (i.e., "Look," "Take," "Kiss," etc.), but Phantasmagoria sticks to generic "interaction," eliminating much potential guesswork. Furthermore, interactive hot spots are easy to find: simply mouse over the screen and watch for the cursor to turn from yellow to red. This reduces the number of red herrings on hand in any given situation, and even if a stumped player falls back on the old "try every item on every hot spot technique," it doesn't take too long to cycle through three or four nicknacks. The inventory has space for eight items, and throughout the adventure, it's rarely even halfway full. These lock-and-key puzzles drive Phantasmagoria, but several smart choices reduce the maddening tedium that plagued the genre's worst output, and make the game more accessible to first-time players. Getting stuck in one of these games meant blindly slapping twenty or thirty doodads against every pixel on every screen until finding the one magical combination the designer had in mind. For a time, it seemed like adventure games were locked in an arms race to see which could have the greatest number of inventory items, the biggest worlds, and the most obtuse puzzles. Phantasmagoria is tremendously ambitious in its presentation, but the interactivity and puzzle design is downright restrained. Viewing Phantasmagoria through this lens still won't make it appealing to the detractors, but it is key to understanding and appreciating the game, as well as identifying its most egregious flaws.
![phantasmagoria game intro phantasmagoria game intro](https://www.old-games.com/screenshot/5990-4-phantasmagoria.jpg)
This was a game not just for computer game enthusiasts, but for novices and outsiders, also primarily, even. Amidst all the talk of cheesy acting, sexual violence, and extreme gore, there's a crucial distinction that's often forgotten in most discussions of Phantasmagoria.