Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh
Description official descriptions
Curtis Craig is a thirty-year-old man whose distorted childhood is filled with horrors. His father was involved in an illegal, top-secret experiment for a company called WynTech Industries. Nearly nothing is known about the true nature of this experiment; but something in it affected the sanity of Curtis' mother, eventually driving her to suicide. Curtis' father was later shot, leaving the poor little boy with serious behavioural disturbances, and eventually in therapy.
Now, a year after having been released from the mental institution, Curtis is employed at WynTech Industries, whose manager, Paul Warner, has seemingly taken it upon himself to take care of Curtis. He tries to find the cause of his psychotic episodes and the mysterious murders that break out all around him, all the while discovering more and more about his past life and his father's fate.
Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh is not an actual sequel to the original Phantasmagoria, but rather a follow-up that has similar themes and visual concept. The game is more heavy on puzzles and traditional adventure gameplay than its predecessor. The gameplay involves standard activities found in adventure games, including extended conversations with the characters featuring selectable dialogue topics, collecting and manipulating inventory items with the environment, etc. It is possible (and often necessary) to call characters on the phone, as well as check and answer e-mails accessed by Curtis' computer at his workplace.
Like its predecessor, the game has a simple point-and-click interface and employs video sequences with live actors as cutscenes. Short movies are usually shown after each action performed by the protagonist.
Spellings
- å¹½é 2 - Taiwanese spelling
Groups +
Screenshots
Promos
Videos
Add Trailer or Gameplay Video +1 point
See any errors or missing info for this game?
You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.
Credits (DOS version)
164 People (105 developers, 59 thanks) · View all
Executive Producer | |
Line Producers | |
Director | |
Producer | |
Game Designer and Screenwriter | |
Director of Photography | |
Art Director | |
Composer | |
Editor | |
Second Unit Director of Photography | |
Principal Cast |
|
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 65% (based on 27 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 78 ratings with 10 reviews)
The Good
While the original Phantasmagoria was a horrible game, its somewhat dubiously titled "seqeul", A Puzzle of Flesh, is a surprisingly good game:
- The acting in Phantasmagoria II is surprisingly good - far better than that of the original Phantasmagoria and better than
The 7th Guest without a doubt, although the actors occasionally tend to overact and spoil the overall atmosphere of the game. - A surprisingly good plot; while it is not the most original story, I still appreciate Sierra for managing to come up with several original ideas. The plot is either way implemented with excellence, and the game has amongst the most enveloping atmospheres experienced in a computer game to date. Regardless of gameplay, the atmosphere is so heavy that I find it comparable to that of the amazing Amiga game Alien Breed.
- Good video sequences and reasonable degree of CGI. The videos are professionally directed and are actually of very high quality.
- Great background music and sound -- 'nuff said.
- Some plot elements add more to the game than can be possibly imagined - especially the computer workstation and without a doubt the coolest element is the changing file and directory names, which become more obvious as the game progresses.
In short, Phantasmagoria II is a really great game, but not without its flaws:
The Bad
Three points really annoyed me about Phantasmagoria II:
- The plot takes a turn for the cheezy at some point. While you can hardly expect a masterpiece of a plot from a computer game, still I would have expected Sierra to come up with a better plot element than "a portal to Dimension-X"... however, I must stress that up until the fifth CD, the game is surprisingly good and deep.
- The video engine could've been much better - with the programming genius of
The 11th Hour only a couple of years earlier I would have expected Sierra to upgrade their engine properly. The window cannot be scaled - only maximized so that the background doesn't annoy you, and the 8 bit engine (which I was at one time forced to use) is terribly slow and hideously ugly. - A really terrible ending. No excuses, Sierra did a really crappy job with this one.
The Bottom Line
A great game which has nothing to do with its so-called prequel. Too bad that due to the fact that it's an adventure game, it has almost null replay value.
Windows · by Tomer Gabel (4536) · 2000
When office romances take a ride on the wild side
The Good
As a common practice, when game companies like Sierra and LucasArts create sequels to their popular titles, those titles would feature the same protagonist from the previous games. You would think the same rule applies when Sierra developed a sequel to Phantasmagoria. Nope. A Puzzle of Flesh was spearheaded by Lorelei Shannon, who also was in charge of Pepperās Adventures in Time and helped co-wrote Kingās Quest VII with Roberta Williams. In addition, the protagonist is male; and the making of this game involved filming on location near the companyās headquarters, and not actors being plonked in front of a blue screen, along with some props. However, A Puzzle of Flesh shares one thing in common with its predecessor ā its themes.
After spending some time in a mental institution, 26-year-old Curtis Craig returns to work where he gets to associate with his interesting co-workers. While working at WynTech, he has hallucinations, flashes of gore, or receives odd e-mails. His co-workers are found brutally murdered, and he finds out this may be connected to the āThresholdā project, a top-secret project that his father was also involved in. During the gameās five chapters, you will do some other interesting things like going to daily sessions with a therapist, discussing life growing up, work, and the Threshold; snoop through your superiorās office; deal with an aggressive cop; and experience the joys of S&M.
Curtis's co-workers are likeable, and I was sad to see what happened to them. I could tell that Trevor was gay through his behavior, dialogue, and fondness of Curtis. Jocilyn has an on-again-off-again relationship with Curtis, and this ends on a sour note as soon as she finds out that he is cheating on her. Bob is a classic example of the one guy at work that gets on your nerves, but what happens to him afterwards you don't wish that on your enemies. Therese is your wild co-worker who doesn't care if Curtis is taken, and she is prepared to let him share her fetishes. The actors who portrayed their characters did an amazing job, and I could see that the actor who played Therese enjoyed herself filming her scenes.
The game utilizes Sierraās Creative Interpreter version 3, the final revision of Sierraās SCI engine before they got into trouble later, and people who have already played KQ7 and Phantasmagoria should be familiar with it. The game is presented in a letterbox format, and you have the one cursor which can be used to interact with objects and move to different areas. Dragging the mouse to the bottom of the screen allows you to access the inventory, and the icon next to your items allows you to examine one of them. In A Puzzle of Flesh, the interface also allows you to review video clips spread over the individual chapters, access the āall-in-oneā control panel, and the map (which is useful if you donāt feel like walking all the way to the exit).
In A Puzzle of Flesh, there are a lot of minor video clips of Curtis doing something that range from opening and closing drawers, walking from room to room, opening and closing doors, and sitting down to work. The major ones are reserved in the beginning, middle, and end of each chapter. The clips are stored as DuckMotion (DUK) files, which can be played in VLC media player. (Iām not kidding. Go try it!). Since the clips feature 16-bit colors, but the SCI engine only had 8-bit colors, Sierra programmed the game to have the engine shut down every time the player triggers a clip. This is why you donāt see the interface when a clip is played.
A Puzzle of Flesh is right up there with the first game when it comes to violence. Four chapters in the game ends with a gruesome murder taking place, and there are occasional flashes of gore present in some movie clips. There are quite a few sex scenes added as well, with the first in chapter one. In addition, one of the characters you meet near the final stages of the game ā the Hecatomb ā is enough to give anyone nightmares. All of this is why some countries have a problem with games that are controversial. The Australian version of the game had the censored mode permanently turned on.
Wes Plate was responsible for the editing, which was done on a Macintosh Quadra 950. This is because the program Sierra wanted him to use was only available on a Mac. It is ironic, then, that the final game did not see a release on the machine. I find it amusing that there are slight pauses at the end, but I donāt know whether this has anything to do with the engine starting back up. I feel a bit sorry for Plate, having to make special cuts for countries that believed in game censorship.
The music in A Puzzle of Flesh is brilliant, and Gary Spinrad did a wonderful job making sure that it blends well with the gameās theme. The early clips, showing Curtisās hallucinations, have that beat to them, while the music when Curtis is making love to his girlfriend has an easy-listening feel to it. Other pieces I like include the creepy music you hear as you walk around WynTech, as well as those near the end of the game. Spinrad also did the vocals for the ending theme music, which happens to be just as bad as the one in the first game!
The Bad
I found some of the controversial scenes uncomfortable. There is one scene in which Curtis and Therese are having passionate sex in the Borderlineās bathroom after Curtis volunteers to have his navel pierced. I thought that this was a bit extreme. As for the murders, I didnāt have a problem with most of them, but Bobās murder was too much.
I have to agree with some reviewers that some of the puzzles are illogical. Within the first five minutes into the game, you have to retrieve your wallet from underneath the couch, and you would think to move the couch to get it, right? Wrong. You must involve your pet rat, Blob. Another one is at the end of the game. You are offered no clues as to how to solve it, and it is a matter of clicking everywhere until something happens.
It would have been useful if you could easily play the FMV clips that are not located on the CD that is in the drive, and that a CD request screen appears. Unfortunately, this doesnāt seem to do anything and all I ended up getting was a āBlue Screen of Deathā.
The Bottom Line
A Puzzle of Flesh is a horror game in the same vein as its predecessor, and explores themes that were considered taboo at the time of its release. It is not for the faint-hearted and certainly not one for kids; it has its fair share of violence and sex. This led to some countries either banning or censoring it. It is an interesting game and definitely worth a playthrough.
Windows · by Katakis | ć«ćæćć¹ (43087) · 2019
The Good
For those people to young to remember, it was not too long ago that computer games were made on floppy disks and video games were made on cartridges.
The CD-ROM revolution slowly, and with plenty of goofs and pitfalls, forever changed both industries because CDs and DVDs can store much more programming then a disk or cartridge and still be profitable for the software developer or published.
One of the first major differences was that CD based games could now have full motion video or even CGI animated sequences.
It did not take long before a slew of games attempted to bring the, mostly, computer world of adventure gaming into this new age.
Characters would be brought to life with voice actors, in environments that reflected the CD storage capacity.
Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of the Flesh was one of the more daring and ambitious projects to combine full video and CGI graphics with the traditional 'point n' click' graphic adventure games. Technically, the game is a masterpiece with the game environment brought to life with B-minus actors, full motion video, digital images and even some CGI animation.
The story itself is also groundbreaking for a computer game. It beautifully weaves together dark horror and science fiction elements with something taken out of āThe Officeā and tosses in a soap opera love triangle, kinky S&M nightlife and an identity crisis to boot.
The Bad
Yup, this computer game was taking us to a more āadultā and ārealisticā environment then had been possible prior to the CD-ROM revolution. However, it was not without its minor and rather huge faults.
The difficulty level involved with the puzzles was uneven. Most were pretty easy except for illogical limitations, i.e. you can only open mail in your apartmentās living room. Other puzzles were nothing more engaging in a series of conversations with your co-workers.
Yes, the co-workers are certainly an interesting bunch of people. You have your two girl friends, the overweight office bully, the gay best friend, the friendly supervisor and the totally insane and corrupt boss. There are plenty more characters to interact with, but it can get a bit tedious talking to the same people all over and over just to get little bits of information or to help move the story along.
On the flip side, some of the puzzles are too hard. I am thinking of two in particular; one involving a seemingly simply tool chest and the other, near the end of the game, can only be solved by sheer dumb luck or reading a walkthrough online.
The Bottom Line
Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh demonstrates a tremendous amount of ambition and it shows.
The graphics and sound are amazing, the storyline is, for the most part, engaging and the game shows a real desire to appeal to an older demographic with its graphic violence, blood and gore, workplace puzzles, soap opera love affairs, mental illness, gender identity, gay best friends and a wild techno S&M nightclub.
It would have been nicer if some of the puzzles were a better developed, if some of the lines were a bit less corny and if their was more exploration possible.
DOS · by ETJB (428) · 2010
Trivia
Australian version
The Australian version of Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh suffered the same fate as Duke Nukem 3D: The censorship feature is turned on permanently.
German index
On March 31, 1998, Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.
German version
In the German version, one video with Therese at the water tank is missing. The game shows the scene in which Curtis drinks water twice instead. There is also a slight difference during another scene in Therese's cubicle.
Phantasmagoria
The only connection between Phantasmagoria and this game is that at the beginning of Act 3, Curtis receives a letter about a book signing by Adrienne Delaney, the main character in Phantasmagoria. It is impossible to meet Adrienne, however.
UK version
In the UK version, the videos of Bob's and Therese's deaths are based on the "low violence" game setting by default. They are also some additional cuts during the scenes.
Video
The Windows version of Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh displays 16-bit videos, while the DOS-edition can show only 256-colors.
Sexual content
If you are able to play an uncensored edition of the game, be prepared for a fair share of sexual content, which, at least at the time, was pretty taboo for the gaming industry:
Curtis has sex with both of his female coworkers, one of which is into S&M and invites Curtis to a S&M techno-nightclub. In therapy, Curtis confronts his gender identity issues, his mother forcing him to wear a dress, and his romantic feelings for his gay best friend.
Information also contributed by Ajan, B14ck W01f, Virgil and Xoleras
Analytics
Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!
Related Sites +
-
Puzzle of Flesh Hints
These Phantasmagoria 2 Hints will help you finish the game
Identifiers +
Contribute
Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.
Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Derrick 'Knight' Steele.
DOS added by MAT.
Additional contributors: Tomer Gabel, MAT, Jeanne, chirinea, Daniel Albu, Sciere, Xoleras, Paulus18950, ETJB, Patrick Bregger, Maner76, Shamal Jifan.
Game added March 28, 2000. Last modified April 3, 2024.