 Phantasmagoria was a radically different game for Williams , who was best known for designing the family @-@ friendly King 's Quest fantasy adventure game series . Williams said she did not want to get " typecast " to a particular genre and wanted to " stretch my creative muscle , " adding : " I felt I had more to offer than fairy stories . I wanted to explore games with a lot of substance and deep emotions . " Although Phantasmagoria was her first horror game , Williams had previously created suspenseful murder and crimes stories in her earlier mystery games , Mystery House and the Laura Bow series . Williams was a fan of the horror genre , although she did not watch many horror films as a child due to a traumatic experience watching Horrors of the Black Museum ( 1959 ) at age four . She began watching them again as a teen , and particularly enjoyed such films as Halloween ( 1978 ) , and movies based on Stephen King novels , like Carrie and The Shining ( 1980 ) . Williams cited the works of King and Edgar Allan Poe as inspirations behind Phantasmagoria . She felt the horror genre had not yet been properly explored in computer games yet , and that most attempts were just " a lot of hack and slash ( where ) the whole point seems to be to kill everyone and blow them away " . 
