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xandromedovna) wrote2018-12-14 12:45 am
xandromedovna) wrote2018-12-14 12:45 am
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Review: Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh
So I've been working my way through as many queer games as I can on Steam, and I figured I might as well give my unsolicited queer opinion as I go. I'm too lazy to go back and start from the beginning of my journey (maybe someday), so I'll just begin where the muse strikes me, AKA with the game I've just finished, Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (Sierra On-Line, 1996). Now, while I identify as a gamer in the sense that I play games and I recognize that many girls and enbies devalue their gameplay because it's deemed not as rigorous or 'serious' as when guys do it because patriarchy, I don't really consider myself a gamer because, well, I'm not very good at it and don't really see it a central part of my artistic or leisurely practice. But that's another post altogether. The point is, I'm very much an amateur in several senses of the word when it comes to games, so I don't approach the topic with much understanding of video game history or game theory. I am, however, a media studies person, and lemme tell you I have media studies feelings! The three things I want to talk about most are queer representation, intermediality, and fandom lineage. (Spoilers, obvi)
Quick summary: Curtis Craig, recently de-institutionalized, works for WynTech, a tech company that predictably has a mysterious secret in the basement directly related to Curtis's life. He has a poorly-developed girlfriend named Jocilyn (which he misspells as Jocelyn in his notepad if that tells you how unnecessarily shoehorned in this relationship is), a gay best friend named Trevor, an admirer named Therese who's into S&M, and an office nemesis named Bob; their department is rounded out by his supervisor Tom and their boss Warner, who worked with Curtis's dad Jonas. The game is painfully 90s, both in its aesthetics/special effects/dialogue/humour and in its thematic content. I think part of the reason I want to talk about this piece is that it's highly related to notions of the cyborg, which has unintentionally become my research area, and the game seems emblematic of 90s ideas of the cyborg. Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" appeared most prominently in 1991 and is concerned, among other things, with mythologies outside of the heterosexual reproductive matrix (e.g. 162). A lot has changed in the almost 30 years since then in cybernetics and in feminist science, but the same interest in the queer possibilities of the cyborg seems to animate both Haraway's theory and Phantasmagoria 2's mythology. 90s discussions of intermediality are similarly interested in the interface between digital technology, human embodiment/presence, and media ontologies (see Chapple and Kattenbelt 13-15).
For me, Phantasmagoria 2 both exemplifies this excitement and points out its historical specificity. The game "is an interactive movie point-and-click adventure game" (Wikipedia), genres that work very well for me because I have awful hand-eye coordination and I'm more interested in narrative and puzzles anyway. Thus structurally Phantasmagoria 2, like other interactive movies and adventure games, is richly intermedial through its fragmentation of and immersion into the narrative, interactivity, and hypermediation of remediated technologies such as email/intranets, landlines, and books, among others. (Side note, having started as a temp receptionist the anxiety of using the phone constantly feels right at home in this game.) Then again, these are representations of these media, instead of true interactions between them (the game does not, for example, require literal email access or landline use, but mimics these technologies). Between this and advances in both the genres and in VR/ER technologies, the game is not nearly as immersive as a late-2010s audience might expect (in fact, Dulin finds that it even "takes giant steps back [...] as an interactive experience" compared to its predecessor). I'm also intrigued by how notions of horror have changed since the game was released, although some reviewers at the time also found the horror aspect as advertised to be underwhelming (e.g. Schlunk; Strasberg).
I think both the horror genre and the immersive intent behind this game are what underpin the impenetrability of its mechanics. Like many reviewers and the let's play I consulted to make it through (see below), I found the larger puzzles unintuitive and clunky (e.g. Antwiler; Olafson; Schluck), though I don't see this necessarily as a failure of the game but an aspect of its aesthetic. Choose-your-own-adventure novels and interactive movies allow for multiple simultaneous narrative possibilities instead of one teleologic outcome, which I think can be frustrating for gamers conditioned to expect a game to be beatable (which is how I tend to play games like this). While there is a central 'canonical' story or two, the story can be accomplished several ways and several alternate endings are possible. In both genres death tends to be the alternate outcome, as it is here, and I think that these unforeseeable death outcomes are what carry most of the suspense in this game, because for many reviewers the game was slow, boring, and not particularly difficult (e.g. Dolin; Jong; Strasberg). I beg to differ on that last point, but more because it's opaque than because it requires skill; the difficulty lies in trying to figure out how the puzzle and its pieces relate to each other and the story. Now, clearly a lot of point-and-click adventure game puzzles I've encountered (AKA this, My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant, and its sequel Escape from Pleasure Planet) have this as the entire point of the game; it's not a puzzle if it's easy to figure out what to do. And I agree that many of the tasks are almost monotonously straightforward given the lack of options. But because Phantasmagoria 2 has several locations, few hints, and sometimes complex task ordering, the situations where there isn't a clear, linear path to follow are annoyingly obtuse.
Part of this is because some mechanics are only utilized once or twice. For example, there is one puzzle near the end that requires you to right click, a function that is never used elsewhere in the game. Some inventory items need to be combined, but can only be combined in a specific order. The screwdriver is almost always a red herring. In attempting to embrace the affordances of the genre, the game often goes where the player can only follow with a hint, which we've established there aren't any (there are a few general hints in the manual which I'm glad I read before I played, but nothing specific). I think this goes back to genre. The lack of hints builds suspense (not necessarily in a good way), and parallels Curtis's confusion as he's thrown into a disorienting world in which he is hallucinating and delusional. Things that should work don't and shouldn't work do. The ritual visitation of the mirror, rat, and bookshelf that Spoony identifies emphasizes Curtis's comparatively destabilized life (Antwiler, "Hour 2" 45:00). In real life, not having all the information or making split-second decisions in these scenarios could indeed be life and death, as the copious death-paths in the final chapters illustrate, and the lack of hints makes these uncomfortably difficult, and frustrating if you end up exhausting what you think are all the options in replaying the scene over and over. And of course, most of the interactive elements are just clicking on people to talk to a billion times, which feels accurate (the true horror: interacting with your coworkers ad infinitum, well and your sketchy boss on whom you have to whistleblow for trying to sell alien drugs to the military). Again, as far as game genre goes, interactive video and point-and-click are more my speed, and thematically I understand why it was structured the way it is, I just would have liked a little more hand-holding.
The element that most clearly distills this tension between intermedial cyborg theory/aesthetics and actual game practice is the final puzzle. The mouse changes from the WynTech logo to a standard arrow as you attempt to reassemble an alien circuit-board to reactivate the Threshold. The circuitry is cyborg, showcasing an even admixture of electronics and organic material. Prior to this interface, you patch up a pipe with alien goo and plug an organism into a lightbulb socket, literalizing the theme of technology interfacing with biology. The lack of instruction is most palpable here. There are actually subtle hints here and elsewhere in the game, but the hints are more reference material for specific colour orders rather than conceptual hints. Of course, the circuitry set-up is counter-intuitive; one would expect to match coloured wires to same-coloured ports, but these are not correlated according to what turns out to be a diagram. The blue, red, and yellow lights on the spinny triangle are only coincidentally the same colours as the three valves like 6 inches away. Not explaining this mirrors the alien nature of this schema, but the difficulty of this puzzle is severely out of place considering the nature of earlier puzzles. Critically interesting, for me, but frustrating to play, especially because mine kept crashing when I oriented the one element a certain way.
It's certainly a B movie and I had to lean into the camp (including the many fourth-wall-breaking Easter eggs), but some elements were way too product-of-its-time for me (the ableist stereotypes about mental health, the tired jokes about BDSM that make it seem like some edgy new thing, the slut shaming, etc.). As always, I was way more interested in the queer content. Most noticeably, we have Trevor, who has some stereotypical characteristics but is less flamboyant than I expected. There are a couple gay jokes at his expense but for the most part he's just another coworker and an important friend to Curtis, and the game doesn't shy away from discussing his relationships with men as a normal part of his life. As the game progresses, more queers emerge to be killed. Therese is shown flirting with another woman and implies she'd be down for a threesome. She's also portrayed as extremely kinky (well, extreme for '96) and insatiably slutty, and gets murdered in the S&M club bathroom. Curtis, for his part, reveals in his sessions with his therapist that he's attracted to Trevor, and the moment he acts on this attraction by trying to kiss him, Trevor is killed by the Hecatomb (the monster plaguing him). Curtis, it turns out, was raised as a girl at certain points in his life by his abusive mother (can we be done with this trope yet?), and is actually a non-human clone of the 'real' Curtis AKA the Hecatomb, whom he also kills. All the major queer characters die violently on-screen, hmmm, if only there were a name for that... (to the game's credit, Clone-Curtis's deaths are all off-screen, but still) There are some anti-trans elements and in general the kinksters are Othered pretty heavily, but we do have a canonically bisexual main character which is pretty great, except he's 'crazy' and a cheater and all his queer potential partners are murdered so he ends up with the undeveloped straight female love interest who out of nowhere just 'knows' that he's an alien and shows up super suspiciously in the basement??? I honestly don't know what I expected, but I want my queer children to be happy and healthy. (Also Jocilyn, sweaty, he's not that into you you're just trauma-bonded because four of y'all's coworkers were murdered, love yourself please you can do so much better.)
It's of course not a coincidence that Curtis is bi and has a trans-adjacent narrative. Cyborg aesthetics are all about destabilizing binaries such as male/female, human/alien, fleshly/synthetic, gay/straight, sane/'crazy', etc. (e.g. Haraway 174). Curtis is not reproduced sexually but is cloned using non-standard materials from a 'real boy' who rages in an alternate dimension. Curtis, however, excels in traversing dimensions once he learns who he is, whereas the Hecatomb can only project visions into Curtis's mind. Furthermore, horror in general is a patently queer genre, where the majority of monsters end up being unintegrated, queer-coded elements of the protagonist's life. What's ... interesting is that every time he tries to integrate these queer elements through Therese or Trevor, he becomes their undoing, and he must kill off the part of himself that occasions this exploration in order to be a happy heterosexual. There is a solid chunk of the game where it appears he will break up with Jocilyn to be with Therese or that he'll ask Jocilyn to let him be with her and Trevor at the same time, but Jocilyn is literally the only love interest left alive at the end of the game, and surely we can't have him end up alone! I'd be much more okay with them ending up happy together if Jocilyn was given any characterization whatsoever, but why would we invest in giving our female characters anything to do that isn't directly in service of a man's storyline?
In other news, the waiter Max is probably my favourite character (after Blob the rat, who IS JUST LIVING HER BEST LIFE LEAVE HER ALONE). He and Curtis are besties because Curtis is always just chilling at the Dreaming Tree taking up a table even when there are no clues to be found, and he talks out some of his issues with Max yet never seems to pay a tab?? Anyway, Max is also the one who brings Curtis his drink at Borderline (the S&M bar), so either he's a server everywhere or he just really wanted an excuse to wear a tight shirt and an earring in his right ear while lowering his sunglasses and winking at Curtis, who we've established is at least curious about men. WHERE'S THE FIC?! I gotta do everything myself around here...
One thing that interests me in media archaeology is how certain obscure texts or what-have-you resurface in various eras to create a jagged yet important pathway for current fans. What I mean is that the only reason I know about and played this game is because there's a Wikipedia article listing queer characters in games and it was available on Steam. The let's play I used to navigate it (Antwiler) dates to 2008 and was mentioned in the Steam discussion forum as a landmark element in popularizing the game. Of course, this is kind of one of the points Foucault makes when he articulates his conception of archaeology and genealogy; uncovering a text or technology or discourse in its sociohistorical location also requires unearthing the texts and technologies and ideologies etc. surrounding it, allowing us to trace these histories (passim). That is, my very access to and interaction with this game is shaped by the fan culture that allows/-ed it to be preserved and that functions in communication with it. Contemporaneous fan labour generated the reviews that led to its obscurity but also documented the elements necessary to enjoy it comprehensively (e.g. the extensive Easter egg list; see Larme). The forums on Steam allow for both affective and collaborative interaction with the game and the sharing of these historical knowledges. The Spoony videos keep the game in fan memory and create new intertexts with it that have their own queer history. At the end of Hour 5, Antwiler completes the two endings, separated by the intertitles from Clue (1985, dir. Jonathan Lynn), a camp classic with a gay character (depending on the ending). After "But Here's What Really Happened," he recreates iconic elements of the game, such as Curtis looking around the room between cut scenes, visits to the mirror, and the phone list. Gayness surfaces as a punchline, such as when the voice of Dr. Phil says "I want you to start living as a gay woman"(55:38). A lengthy mirror scene features Benzaie dancing to The Village People's "YMCA" in his underwear. (Benzaie himself has also recently done a let's play for this game.) I can't tell if this was created specifically for this video or is a memetic reference to another video, but it relies on the homoerotic excess of the dance to communicate the horrors of this queer game. Thus abjected queerness is an integral part of the transmission, performance, and preservation of this game. Isn't that fantastic...
Overall, not my favourite game, but while I didn't personally enjoy it, I do find it critically fascinating. Also I love my queer children, who all deserved better.
Quick summary: Curtis Craig, recently de-institutionalized, works for WynTech, a tech company that predictably has a mysterious secret in the basement directly related to Curtis's life. He has a poorly-developed girlfriend named Jocilyn (which he misspells as Jocelyn in his notepad if that tells you how unnecessarily shoehorned in this relationship is), a gay best friend named Trevor, an admirer named Therese who's into S&M, and an office nemesis named Bob; their department is rounded out by his supervisor Tom and their boss Warner, who worked with Curtis's dad Jonas. The game is painfully 90s, both in its aesthetics/special effects/dialogue/humour and in its thematic content. I think part of the reason I want to talk about this piece is that it's highly related to notions of the cyborg, which has unintentionally become my research area, and the game seems emblematic of 90s ideas of the cyborg. Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" appeared most prominently in 1991 and is concerned, among other things, with mythologies outside of the heterosexual reproductive matrix (e.g. 162). A lot has changed in the almost 30 years since then in cybernetics and in feminist science, but the same interest in the queer possibilities of the cyborg seems to animate both Haraway's theory and Phantasmagoria 2's mythology. 90s discussions of intermediality are similarly interested in the interface between digital technology, human embodiment/presence, and media ontologies (see Chapple and Kattenbelt 13-15).
For me, Phantasmagoria 2 both exemplifies this excitement and points out its historical specificity. The game "is an interactive movie point-and-click adventure game" (Wikipedia), genres that work very well for me because I have awful hand-eye coordination and I'm more interested in narrative and puzzles anyway. Thus structurally Phantasmagoria 2, like other interactive movies and adventure games, is richly intermedial through its fragmentation of and immersion into the narrative, interactivity, and hypermediation of remediated technologies such as email/intranets, landlines, and books, among others. (Side note, having started as a temp receptionist the anxiety of using the phone constantly feels right at home in this game.) Then again, these are representations of these media, instead of true interactions between them (the game does not, for example, require literal email access or landline use, but mimics these technologies). Between this and advances in both the genres and in VR/ER technologies, the game is not nearly as immersive as a late-2010s audience might expect (in fact, Dulin finds that it even "takes giant steps back [...] as an interactive experience" compared to its predecessor). I'm also intrigued by how notions of horror have changed since the game was released, although some reviewers at the time also found the horror aspect as advertised to be underwhelming (e.g. Schlunk; Strasberg).
I think both the horror genre and the immersive intent behind this game are what underpin the impenetrability of its mechanics. Like many reviewers and the let's play I consulted to make it through (see below), I found the larger puzzles unintuitive and clunky (e.g. Antwiler; Olafson; Schluck), though I don't see this necessarily as a failure of the game but an aspect of its aesthetic. Choose-your-own-adventure novels and interactive movies allow for multiple simultaneous narrative possibilities instead of one teleologic outcome, which I think can be frustrating for gamers conditioned to expect a game to be beatable (which is how I tend to play games like this). While there is a central 'canonical' story or two, the story can be accomplished several ways and several alternate endings are possible. In both genres death tends to be the alternate outcome, as it is here, and I think that these unforeseeable death outcomes are what carry most of the suspense in this game, because for many reviewers the game was slow, boring, and not particularly difficult (e.g. Dolin; Jong; Strasberg). I beg to differ on that last point, but more because it's opaque than because it requires skill; the difficulty lies in trying to figure out how the puzzle and its pieces relate to each other and the story. Now, clearly a lot of point-and-click adventure game puzzles I've encountered (AKA this, My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant, and its sequel Escape from Pleasure Planet) have this as the entire point of the game; it's not a puzzle if it's easy to figure out what to do. And I agree that many of the tasks are almost monotonously straightforward given the lack of options. But because Phantasmagoria 2 has several locations, few hints, and sometimes complex task ordering, the situations where there isn't a clear, linear path to follow are annoyingly obtuse.
Part of this is because some mechanics are only utilized once or twice. For example, there is one puzzle near the end that requires you to right click, a function that is never used elsewhere in the game. Some inventory items need to be combined, but can only be combined in a specific order. The screwdriver is almost always a red herring. In attempting to embrace the affordances of the genre, the game often goes where the player can only follow with a hint, which we've established there aren't any (there are a few general hints in the manual which I'm glad I read before I played, but nothing specific). I think this goes back to genre. The lack of hints builds suspense (not necessarily in a good way), and parallels Curtis's confusion as he's thrown into a disorienting world in which he is hallucinating and delusional. Things that should work don't and shouldn't work do. The ritual visitation of the mirror, rat, and bookshelf that Spoony identifies emphasizes Curtis's comparatively destabilized life (Antwiler, "Hour 2" 45:00). In real life, not having all the information or making split-second decisions in these scenarios could indeed be life and death, as the copious death-paths in the final chapters illustrate, and the lack of hints makes these uncomfortably difficult, and frustrating if you end up exhausting what you think are all the options in replaying the scene over and over. And of course, most of the interactive elements are just clicking on people to talk to a billion times, which feels accurate (the true horror: interacting with your coworkers ad infinitum, well and your sketchy boss on whom you have to whistleblow for trying to sell alien drugs to the military). Again, as far as game genre goes, interactive video and point-and-click are more my speed, and thematically I understand why it was structured the way it is, I just would have liked a little more hand-holding.
The element that most clearly distills this tension between intermedial cyborg theory/aesthetics and actual game practice is the final puzzle. The mouse changes from the WynTech logo to a standard arrow as you attempt to reassemble an alien circuit-board to reactivate the Threshold. The circuitry is cyborg, showcasing an even admixture of electronics and organic material. Prior to this interface, you patch up a pipe with alien goo and plug an organism into a lightbulb socket, literalizing the theme of technology interfacing with biology. The lack of instruction is most palpable here. There are actually subtle hints here and elsewhere in the game, but the hints are more reference material for specific colour orders rather than conceptual hints. Of course, the circuitry set-up is counter-intuitive; one would expect to match coloured wires to same-coloured ports, but these are not correlated according to what turns out to be a diagram. The blue, red, and yellow lights on the spinny triangle are only coincidentally the same colours as the three valves like 6 inches away. Not explaining this mirrors the alien nature of this schema, but the difficulty of this puzzle is severely out of place considering the nature of earlier puzzles. Critically interesting, for me, but frustrating to play, especially because mine kept crashing when I oriented the one element a certain way.
It's certainly a B movie and I had to lean into the camp (including the many fourth-wall-breaking Easter eggs), but some elements were way too product-of-its-time for me (the ableist stereotypes about mental health, the tired jokes about BDSM that make it seem like some edgy new thing, the slut shaming, etc.). As always, I was way more interested in the queer content. Most noticeably, we have Trevor, who has some stereotypical characteristics but is less flamboyant than I expected. There are a couple gay jokes at his expense but for the most part he's just another coworker and an important friend to Curtis, and the game doesn't shy away from discussing his relationships with men as a normal part of his life. As the game progresses, more queers emerge to be killed. Therese is shown flirting with another woman and implies she'd be down for a threesome. She's also portrayed as extremely kinky (well, extreme for '96) and insatiably slutty, and gets murdered in the S&M club bathroom. Curtis, for his part, reveals in his sessions with his therapist that he's attracted to Trevor, and the moment he acts on this attraction by trying to kiss him, Trevor is killed by the Hecatomb (the monster plaguing him). Curtis, it turns out, was raised as a girl at certain points in his life by his abusive mother (can we be done with this trope yet?), and is actually a non-human clone of the 'real' Curtis AKA the Hecatomb, whom he also kills. All the major queer characters die violently on-screen, hmmm, if only there were a name for that... (to the game's credit, Clone-Curtis's deaths are all off-screen, but still) There are some anti-trans elements and in general the kinksters are Othered pretty heavily, but we do have a canonically bisexual main character which is pretty great, except he's 'crazy' and a cheater and all his queer potential partners are murdered so he ends up with the undeveloped straight female love interest who out of nowhere just 'knows' that he's an alien and shows up super suspiciously in the basement??? I honestly don't know what I expected, but I want my queer children to be happy and healthy. (Also Jocilyn, sweaty, he's not that into you you're just trauma-bonded because four of y'all's coworkers were murdered, love yourself please you can do so much better.)
It's of course not a coincidence that Curtis is bi and has a trans-adjacent narrative. Cyborg aesthetics are all about destabilizing binaries such as male/female, human/alien, fleshly/synthetic, gay/straight, sane/'crazy', etc. (e.g. Haraway 174). Curtis is not reproduced sexually but is cloned using non-standard materials from a 'real boy' who rages in an alternate dimension. Curtis, however, excels in traversing dimensions once he learns who he is, whereas the Hecatomb can only project visions into Curtis's mind. Furthermore, horror in general is a patently queer genre, where the majority of monsters end up being unintegrated, queer-coded elements of the protagonist's life. What's ... interesting is that every time he tries to integrate these queer elements through Therese or Trevor, he becomes their undoing, and he must kill off the part of himself that occasions this exploration in order to be a happy heterosexual. There is a solid chunk of the game where it appears he will break up with Jocilyn to be with Therese or that he'll ask Jocilyn to let him be with her and Trevor at the same time, but Jocilyn is literally the only love interest left alive at the end of the game, and surely we can't have him end up alone! I'd be much more okay with them ending up happy together if Jocilyn was given any characterization whatsoever, but why would we invest in giving our female characters anything to do that isn't directly in service of a man's storyline?
In other news, the waiter Max is probably my favourite character (after Blob the rat, who IS JUST LIVING HER BEST LIFE LEAVE HER ALONE). He and Curtis are besties because Curtis is always just chilling at the Dreaming Tree taking up a table even when there are no clues to be found, and he talks out some of his issues with Max yet never seems to pay a tab?? Anyway, Max is also the one who brings Curtis his drink at Borderline (the S&M bar), so either he's a server everywhere or he just really wanted an excuse to wear a tight shirt and an earring in his right ear while lowering his sunglasses and winking at Curtis, who we've established is at least curious about men. WHERE'S THE FIC?! I gotta do everything myself around here...
One thing that interests me in media archaeology is how certain obscure texts or what-have-you resurface in various eras to create a jagged yet important pathway for current fans. What I mean is that the only reason I know about and played this game is because there's a Wikipedia article listing queer characters in games and it was available on Steam. The let's play I used to navigate it (Antwiler) dates to 2008 and was mentioned in the Steam discussion forum as a landmark element in popularizing the game. Of course, this is kind of one of the points Foucault makes when he articulates his conception of archaeology and genealogy; uncovering a text or technology or discourse in its sociohistorical location also requires unearthing the texts and technologies and ideologies etc. surrounding it, allowing us to trace these histories (passim). That is, my very access to and interaction with this game is shaped by the fan culture that allows/-ed it to be preserved and that functions in communication with it. Contemporaneous fan labour generated the reviews that led to its obscurity but also documented the elements necessary to enjoy it comprehensively (e.g. the extensive Easter egg list; see Larme). The forums on Steam allow for both affective and collaborative interaction with the game and the sharing of these historical knowledges. The Spoony videos keep the game in fan memory and create new intertexts with it that have their own queer history. At the end of Hour 5, Antwiler completes the two endings, separated by the intertitles from Clue (1985, dir. Jonathan Lynn), a camp classic with a gay character (depending on the ending). After "But Here's What Really Happened," he recreates iconic elements of the game, such as Curtis looking around the room between cut scenes, visits to the mirror, and the phone list. Gayness surfaces as a punchline, such as when the voice of Dr. Phil says "I want you to start living as a gay woman"(55:38). A lengthy mirror scene features Benzaie dancing to The Village People's "YMCA" in his underwear. (Benzaie himself has also recently done a let's play for this game.) I can't tell if this was created specifically for this video or is a memetic reference to another video, but it relies on the homoerotic excess of the dance to communicate the horrors of this queer game. Thus abjected queerness is an integral part of the transmission, performance, and preservation of this game. Isn't that fantastic...
Overall, not my favourite game, but while I didn't personally enjoy it, I do find it critically fascinating. Also I love my queer children, who all deserved better.
Antwiler, Noah. "Let's Play Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh." 5 vols., The Spoony Experiment, 2008.
Chapple, Freda and Chiel Kattenbelt, eds. Intermediality in Theatre and Performance. Rodopi, 2006.
Clue. Directed by Jonathan Lynn, performed by Tim Curry, Leslie Ann Warren, Martin Mull, Madeline Kahn, et al., Paramount, 1985, all endings.
Dulin, Ron. "Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh Review." GameSpot, 2 May 2000.
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith, Routledge, 2002.
Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Free Association Books, 1991.
Jong, Philip. "Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh." Adventure Classic Gaming, 1 Dec. 1996.
Larme, Anthony. "Easter Eggs." Phantasmagoria 2 Overview Memorial, 1998.
Morstabilini, Andrea. "Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh." Adventure Gamers, 15 Aug. 2008.
Olafson, Peter. "Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh." PC Games, accessed 11 July 1997. Wayback Machine, accessed 26 Jan. 2019.
Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (AKA Phantasmagoria 2). Performed by Paul Morgan Stetler, Monique Parent, Ragna Sigrunardottir, Paul Mitri, et al., Sierra On-Line, 1996. Steam, accessed 14 Dec. 2018.
"Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh." Wikipedia, Wikimedia, access 14 Dec. 2018.
Redblaze27 et al. "You Know Why You are Here." Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh, discussion board, Steam, first post 29 Aug. 2016.
Schlunk, Petra. "The Horror, The Horror." Computer Gaming World, iss. 152, Mar. 1997, pp. 86-88.
Strasberg, Julie. "Sex and Gore But It's Still a Bore." Game Zone, 1 Apr. 1997. Factiva, accessed 27 Jan. 2019.