Visual Novel / Penthos

"I'm becoming something I'm not."^note Clockwise: Agnes, Byrne, Axel, Guro, Helena, and Yumi. Background: Mrs. Flores. Not pictured: creepy disembodied voice.

In the light I worked so long to fill the vacancy
now in darkness, I began to lose myself.

— A.P. Walpole

Penthos (often stylized as "PENTHOS") is a 2021 Ren'Py indie thriller Linear Visual Novel — with some dashes of coming-of-age drama, slasher horror, and postmodern metafiction — created by Cruelhouse.

In the sleepy mountain town of Walpole, ordinary teenager Agnes is pulled into a conspiracy by her best friend Byrne, involving a serial killer who is supposedly terrorizing the local populace. Though they face plenty of ridicule from their other friends, including fashionista Yumi, stoner Guro, and hyper-aggressive Axel – along with their rival, gothic Helena – the two continue to pursue the mystery.

That's when things get weird.

A short but sweet and memorable experience, Penthos is currently available for free on Itch.io.

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Penthos contains examples of the following tropes:

• Abusive Parents: In his Echo Story, Amadeus Geoff describes the abuse he and his brother suffered at the hands of their father, including only beating them on their legs and arms so they could hide the bruises under their clothing.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Penthos realizing the irony of naming his daughter after her grandmother, after spending the entire game sending everyone into a dark spiral just to be remembered.
  Penthos: That was her name. Elizabeth. Named after Maggie's mother. Her own way of living forever, I guess. Ha... hahaha. I haven't laughed in so long. Feels good.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Downplayed. The spirit of Adam Walpole is not actively malicious, but is definitely aware of the adverse effect his Emotion Eater tendencies have on the town's population. By the end, he comes to recognize this, but only after it is already too late.
  • Played straight with Amadeus Geoff, whose Freudian Excuse is the abuse he endured from his father, as well as the death of his brother.
• And I Must Scream: All over the place in the second part in the game:
  • Adam Walpole's spirit has been tethered to the town he founded ever since he passed, unwilling to move on to the afterlife and instead resigning himself to feasting on the townspeople's feelings of loss and grief.
  • Guro, having grown increasingly isolated over the past few days, is ironically transformed into Siren Head, unable to do anything else but scream.
  • When Agnes finds him in the woods outside of town, Byrne has been transformed into Ben Drowned, stuck as a lifeless statue. It's implied the Mind Crush headache Agnes begins to suffer from is a proximity effect he's emanating, though seemingly not on purpose.
• Art Shift: The first half of the game is presented in an angular art style with thick lines and jagged edges comparable to the works of Jhonen Vasquez. The second half of the game however transitions into a darker cerebral style with heavy use of garish reds, closer to the experimental art of someone like Dave McKean. There's also the short live-action segment of concept art and storyboards shown during the Gainax Ending.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: While the ghost of Adam Walpole (or Penthos, as he renamed himself posthumously) is the origin of the town's curse, it's the serial killing spree of Amadeus Geoff that actually kicks off the game's story.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: More like slowly picking at it till it crumbles. Once the nature of the game becomes clear, more and more instances of Fourth Wall breaks occur, most prominently the "Dispatch from Elsewhere" cutscene that plays during the finale. By the end, you'll begin to suspect Penthos isn't talking to Agnes, but to you.
• Break Them by Talking: Throughout the story, you'll have to endure monologues from a disembodied voice that speaks to you directly. It's revealed in the end that this is how Penthos came to power, by speaking to the bereaved in their dreams and promising them solace in exchange for letting him feast on their emotions. It only appeared as a monologue to the player due to Agnes being unable to answer him, as she didn't even hear it in the first place.
• Body Horror: Several instances:
  • When Agnes encounters Amadeus Geoff in his home, he has not only grown pale and emaciated but appears to have been elongated somehow, with spindly limbs and a long neck.
  • Yumi's transformation into Kuchisake-onna, though less extreme than the others, is still pretty horrific due to her mouth being cut open, complete with Gross-Up Close-Up.
• Central Theme: Grief, obviously — It is his inability to move on from his grief that turns Adam Walpole into the spirit Penthos, haunting the town and infecting anyone with similar feelings — but more specifically, empathy towards grief. Agnes has never really suffered any loss in her life, and while it's made clear by the story that it doesn't make her any less of a good person, it does mean she lacks a frame of reference when it comes to supporting her friends.
  • This also ties into the game's Meta narrative. Though never stated out loud, the story seems to draw comparisons between these feelings of grief and the origins of horror stories; after all, only those suffering from loss are turned into monsters borrowed from decades of horror films, games, and literature. The intent seems to be less about making a direct comparison, and more to make the audience consider the origins of this beloved genre.
• Cool Big Sis: Yumi acts as this towards the rest of the group.
• Disguised Horror Story: An interesting example of this. From the beginning, it's very clear that Penthos is a horror visual novel. The twist comes in what kind of horror story this is, as it turns from a deceivingly simple Slasher Story to something that combines Cosmic Horror Story with metafiction.
• Eating Lunch Alone: Some backstory about the main gang reveals that this is how they met; all five of them ate lunch alone in middle school, till they eventually decided to start sitting together. They've remained best friends ever since.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Inherently so, due to the game's nature as a Linear Visual Novel. Neither Agnes nor the player can do anything about the demise of her friends, except remember and honor their memory.
• Fictional Social Network: The Oracle is presented as an online forum similar to Something Awful or Newgrounds where users can discuss their supernatural experiences. Their posts are presented as dialogue that provides some light Comic Relief.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Agnes is Phlegmatic, Yumi is Sanguine, Axel is Choleric, and Byrne & Guro both embody Melancholic in their own way.
• Gainax Ending: Oh yeah. After the second half of the game seems to be one big Crossover with just about piece of horror fiction ever made, Agnes eventually wakes up in an abandoned SCP facility, repeats her tour through the Geoff house as the disembodied voice describes his backstory, steps into an elevator as the voice monologues about his regrets, and eventually finds herself on the side of a road in the mountains. It's one of those visual novels.
• Genre Shift: From Slasher Movie to Cosmic Horror Story.
• Go-Getter Girl: Agnes is hellbent on attending a real university instead of the local community college like many others in town are expected to do.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Agnes' bed is decorated with various stuffed animals, including one of Gir.
• Gone Horribly Right: Penthos' Emotion Eater scheme. He wanted misery to feed on, he certainly got it, though he certainly couldn't have predicted it would turn everyone into monsters.
• Heel Realization: Penthos, by the end; his entire monologue in the finale is spent apologizing to Agnes and expressing his regrets.
  Penthos: They became their pain. Just like I did. I wasn't helping them. And they weren't helping me.
• Interface Screw: A brief one occurs that transitions Agnes' talk with the radio DJ's into her visit to Byrne's house.
• Jump Scare: Amadeus Geoff stands in the doorway just a little too long before he suddenly pounces on Agnes, and by extension, the player.
• Kinetic Novel: The only type of menu used within the game is the Oracle, and even then you'll inevitably have to move on to the next day; otherwise, the story is entirely linear.
• Limited Animation: Besides minor animation loops like Agnes' side profile during Oracle segments and the elevator during the climax, Amadeus Geoff's entry and attack is the only fully animated segment in the game, making it all the more terrifying.
• Nightmare Fetishist: When Helena is first introduced, she's hanging around a graveyard. Though the cavalcade of monsters that infest the town during the third act is a bit too much even for her.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The climactic investigation of Geoff's house is slow-paced and features no music, only the soft sound of the wind blowing outside. Fridge Brilliance sets in when you realize this is mostly done to ape P.T. and functions as short-term Foreshadowing towards the Meta twist.
• Parental Abandonment: A personal fear of Guro's; that his parents didn't just die, but killed themselves on purpose so they could get away from him. Axel using this to bully him is their Moral Event Horizon.
• Precision F-Strike: Axel is the master of these. Become more prevalent among the rest of the group when attitudes begin to sour.
• Production Throwback: The Hooligans, three boys who have starred in several cartoons from character designer Noah Segura, make a cameo on a "Missing" poster.
• Psychological Horror: While the horror in the First Act comes from the threat of a serial killer, the Second Act is much more focused on cerebral fears such as a fear of death and being unable to save your friends.
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: It's somewhat implied (though never confirmed) that Agnes surviving Geoff's attack is what causes everything to go apeshit; in a normal horror game, a Jump Scare like that would normally be the part where we cut to the credits.
• Red Herring: A rare case in which a character is both the killer AND a red herring. The killer isn't anyone from the main cast, but rather Amadeus Geoff, father of the Geoff family who are only mentioned in passing as victims. However, he still has nothing to do with the disembodied voice that haunts you and the town.
• Rewatch Bonus: The Voice's dialogue will read very differently once you've become aware of its identity as Adam Walpole, and the backstory that turned him into this.
• Rule of Empathy: What ultimately motivates Adam Walpole to give up his identity as Penthos and move on into the the afterlife, once he sees what his curse has done to the town and Agnes' life.
• Sanity Slippage: Almost everyone begins to suffer from this in the Second Act, but Yumi might be the most prominent example. Her insecurity not only returns to the surface but transforms into full-blown paranoia and constant self-hatred.
• Self-Harm: Amadeus Geoff describes, in disturbing detail, how he adopted this habit from his older brother.
• Serious Business: Byrne takes conspiracy theories very seriously, from semi-plausible ones like the Grassy Knoll theory right down to goofy and long-debunked ones like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.
• Shout-Out: Besides the obvious ones:
  • Axel's T-shirts reference various other media and memes, including Kojima Productions, Garfield and David Bowie.
  • Medfield High School is named after Medfield College from The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.
  • Various visual shout-outs can be spotted in the school hallway, including the aforementioned Hooligans reference, flags and emblems from games like Papers, Please, Death Stranding and Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and a Cicada 3301 poster.
  • Kenneth's usernames on the Oracle are all references to R.E.M. songs.
• Shrinking Violet: A rare male example in Guro, who is very quiet and withdrawn.
• Stylistic Suck: The Oracle is full of this, but Kenneth is the most prominent example.
  daysleeperkenneth: oar hero kenet walkin to skool
  daysleeperkenneth: wen he see…
  daysleeperkenneth: pumpin patsj
  daysleeperkenneth: pumpekin pach
  daysleeperkenneth: pupmpin pak
  daysleeperkenneth: genshin impact
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Agnes and Byrne's vigilante investigation ends as well as you'd expect. Amadeus Geoff only ends up captured when a neighbor calls the police on Agnes for breaking into a crime scene, and she barely survives the encounter.
• Unknown Character: Several characters in Amadeus Geoff's life, like his abusive father and his loving brother are only mentioned without being shown.
  • None of the posters from the Oracle ever physically appear in the story.
• Villain's Dying Grace: Penthos is implied to be behind Agnes' torn-open cell, as well as the absence of any staff in the SCP facility. He guides her to the surface and offers one final apology before continuing into the afterlife.
• Walking Spoiler: Amadeus Geoff. Adam Walpole too, to a lesser extent.