Phantasmagoria 2 : A Puzzle Of Flesh Chapter 1-2
11This, in a nutshell, is the appalling opening sequence of Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh, the follow-up to Roberta Williams’ adult thriller which in 1995 shocked gamers around the world, raising nothing less than a moralistic crusade against it from parents’ associations and concerned publishers. All the media coverage about its explicit graphic content and its (in)famous rape scene helped make the game a huge hit, so obviously Sierra ordered a sequel at once, hoping to repeat the success. This time, Roberta Williams stepped out of the project and passed it to Lorelei Shannon, who in 1995 co-designed King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride. Citing Edgar Allan Poe and Clive Barker as her major influences during the writing of the game, Shannon choose to start from scratch; not comfortable with the more subtle and elegant kind of horror of the first Phantasmagoria, she created a whole new storyline (except for a little in-joke suggesting a continuity), with a new full contemporary mood and an original character, far away from Adrienne Delaney and her desperate quest to save her husband’s soul from the horrors of Carnovash’s mansion.
In this pseudo-sequel, the player acts as Curtis Craig, an employee of the computer company Wyntech Corporation. Curtis has a history of mental illness, hinted in the introduction, but presently is quite content with his job, except for his boss and his nerdy colleague Bob, and his life in general. He has a relationship with a co-worker of his, the lovely Jocilyn, and his best friend Trevor adds a bit of sarcastic relief to this quite charming picture. Nevertheless, Curtis starts to hear strange voices inside his head and to see things even more unusual: suddenly, his past comes back to haunt him, with memories of his unfortunate childhood – his mother tortured him and eventually hung herself – and disturbing nightmares of flesh and madness. When one of his colleagues is brutally murdered in his own cubicle, Curtis starts to see visions of a twisted doppelgänger that revels in fleshy and gory pleasures. Fearing that he might be the culprit and sifting through his boss’ office in search of clues to the murder, he stumbles upon a Wyntech document about a secret project that may hold the key to his whole troubled life.