GAME CLEAR No. 196 -- Phantasmagoria

Phantasmagoria (1995, PC/Saturn)

Developer: Sierra On-Line
Publisher: Sierra On-Line
Clear Version: MS-DOS
Clear Platform: PC (ScummVM)
Clear Date: 11/1/24

---

Why should I care?
This goofy live-action horror adventure sure is something.

---

A doom house?

Every year, I attempt to play at least one horror-adjacent game in the month of October (inspired mostly by this thread in a little forum community I’m in). This year, that game was Phantasmagoria. My continued interest in plumbing the depths of games with full-motion video (FMV) elements drove me to this selection as well.

Phantasmagoria is a point-and-click adventure game written and designed by Roberta Williams, one of the pioneers of the genre. Its plot concerns novelist Adrienne Delaney and her husband Don Gordon, who have just unknowingly bought and moved into a haunted house. Horrors follow.

The most striking thing about the game, though, is its visual presentation. It takes the typical adventure game interface and filmifies it. Adrienne is the player character, and all of her actions are filmed and superimposed over pre-rendered 3D backgrounds. It’s an incredible, singular aesthetic that screams “I came out in 1995!” in a way I really enjoy.

The fun mostly stops there, though. As much as I love the aesthetic vibe of the game, the writing is pretty atrocious. I could (and often do) forgive that in other types of games where gameplay or strategy or mechanics make up for it, but in a game like this, the plot is very much of the draw. Phantasmagoria is a bit of interactive fiction at the end of the day, so if the narrative isn’t very good, there’s not much left to give it a boost.

And yes, the game does feature puzzles to a certain extent, but I don’t find them particularly compelling either — and indeed oftentimes confounding. This isn’t a big deal since the game will offer you hints to keep you moving on demand (the little skull fella at the bottom left of the screen is your personal advisor), but if these puzzles had ever felt rewardingly clever, that could’ve been a saving grace as well.

Instead, what you’re left with is a pretty awful and uncompelling horror movie with uninteresting and unlikable characters and the requirement that you drive its plot forward manually. Not something I’d recommend for any but the most ardent fans of video game history.