Phantasmagoria is a point and click horror adventure designed by Roberta Williams for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows and published by Sierra On-Line in 1995.
It tells the story of Adrienne Delaney, a writer who moves to a remote and left villa and finds herself having to fight supernatural forces.
It presents live-action actors and film clips, both during the scenes between the gameplay and within the three-dimensional environments of the game.
It was realized when interactive video games were at the height of their popularity, with the release of famous computer games like Wing Commander III and Under to Killing Moon.
The player controls the protagonist Adrienne Delaney and can click on some areas of the screen to check her movements or let her explore specific places and objects.
The camera angles and rooms change depending on where Adrienne moves.
The game includes only four mouse commands: watch (which changes to “talk to” when selecting a person), collect objects, use objects and walk. The mouse cursor is always an arrow and turns red when it passes over an area where the user can click to perform an action.
Objects in the game can be collected by clicking on them or interacting with them in a cinematic sequence, then it is acquired in the inventory.
If an object is small enough to be easily lost, a glow surrounds it occasionally to draw attention to it.
The game designer Roberta Williams has deliberately created the gameplay and the interface in a simple, discreet and intuitive way, in order to make it more accessible and less frustrating for occasional players.
The game focuses more on the horror story and atmosphere rather than on a complicated gaming experience and so the puzzles are relatively easy, logical and simple
