VN - Ren'Py - Penlight [v0.1602.1] [Angela DeMille]

Tons of routes with interesting situations, and great writing. Characters are interesting, and lots of exciting scenarios to explore. This is not eroge but art. The author continues to update regularly and further flesh out the different routes available.

Many mind control games use the concept as a convenient device to establish other fetishes, leaving the the many facets of mind control unexplored.

I like this game because it explorers and examines mind control from many perspectives trough the many routes it provides (There is a lot see the chart).

If you just are looking for tits and pussy, this ain't the game for you. If you instead are a fan of mind control, so much so you are fine with the lack of nudity, then i believe you will grow to love this game like i have.

> Lets make a game that revolves around a porn fetish... but make it so that the game has no porn at all
> Also lets make the game preach to the player how the fetish is wrongbad and you shouldn't do it.

what an utter waste of time.

If you like being lectured by the game why you should not like mind control fetish this is the game for you. It barely even qualifies as a porn game.
This sad as I liked that you can influence the girls using hypnosis slowly instead of simply fucking. It could have opened so many possibilities for the game. Too bad the dev chose the most shitty one

Penlight is a hypnosis dedicated visual novel about a high school student who is graduating next year, who follows the typical VN format for characters like these. Ie, a friendless, virgin gets or obtains a power/item/etc. That allows him to get what they desire. In this case, dating a girl they’ve had their eye on for years, using their interest in the subject as a starting point.

However aside from the good writing and the alright art, things begin to fall apart for it. Firstly it quickly becomes apparent that it’s a preachy visual novel discussing the real-life implications of such a fetish. This boils down to three primary things in a majority of the routes, Mind control is inherently evil and you can’t change that. You should go back to the status quo if you do that and not talk about it, and it ruins relationships.

For a Visual novel dedicated to the hypnosis fetish, this boggles my mind, that it seems to take this black and white approach. We see in a few of the consensual routes that there’s discussion, that Kyou takes the time to actually talk about what each person wants from this relationship.

Then it decides to smack the player in the face as it forces morality into a fetishistic game, requiring the player to undo everything that has happened for the potential of a good ending. Something which makes little sense from my perspective as most people already understand that doing mind control related play without consent, much like any other sexual activity is wrong. A game or other media inherently is made to get away from the real world and enact your wants and desires at a basic level.

This is what ruins the game, discussions of morality, and why it’s bad in the real world being forced into a game where the audience would already know these themes, and shouldn’t need them discussed with them.

I decided to replay this game, and came back feeling completely dissatisfied. Clearly, I was being too nice in my previous review.

As other reviews have stated, yes, there is a lack of porn. This in and of itself doesn't have to be a deal breaker, as the author clearly knows how to write an erotic scene. What *does* bother me especially with the newer endings is that the space is there for hotter scenes, but the author leaves them at the ending of each route and cuts away before any interesting action. What this leaves us with is having to sit through tons of high school melodrama with very little payoff. Yes, it can occasionally get the tiniest bit spicy at times but nowhere near enough to feel rewarding. But it's just enough to lure you in into thinking there might be something hotter if you dig hard enough, and there's just nothing there. Even when you get to the few scenes with nudity, both the art and the writing make it perfectly clear no one behind this wanted to be here. It almost feels insulting.

TL;DR - A complete wet blanket of a game. How do you build a game completely centered around a fetish but spend 99% of its run time beating your audience over the head with how someone who's into that fetish deserves a bad ending? Self-defeating in concept, and just a general disappointment all around. Can only recommend this if you don't mind sitting through tons of melodrama because you like hypnosis as a fetish that much.

* It's not a hypnosis game. It's game where people talking about hypnosis.
* It's not a PORN game. There is no porn.
* It's not a visual novel. There is just few pictures.
* It's not a action game. There is nothing happens.

This is simulator game. And this game simulating life of young boring impotent student.

Honestly, it's nice to see a VN about actual hypnotism. Most stories don't have the blanky eyes stuff asnd the induction and putting triggers and all that enough. Itg's usually "You're hypnotised, now do hentai stuff with me". The actual fact that the guys has control over the girls and can change them is hot.

Now, there are a few things that bring it down to 4 stars for me, but it's more about my expectations not fiting the vision of the creator. There ain't no sex scenes (although there is nudity). Also, the story is kind of shaming the main guy for doing bad stuff and saying he won't be happy because of it, but again, I can see what the creator aimed for and it's just me who would have wanted the "bad endings" to lead to the guy being satisfied and all.

First of all, to anyone thinking about picking this VN: IT'S NOT A PORN GAME. It's not a game for quick fap, so if that's what you seek, save yourself some time and look for Samin Gakuen, or something like that.

Now, let's look at what that game IS:

Music is one of the best I heard from +18 game. Definitely 5/5, but it's something I care the least about in VN, even ones like that, so it doesn't sway me much.

Graphics are good, but in old school kind of way, so some might not like it.
There are 2 artstyles to choose from for characters and both have their pros and cons.
Backgrounds are good too.
CGs, though, are in my opinion the weakest part. They aren't bad, but nearly all are induction scenes (character head / upper body with changes to the face expresion).

Now for the MOST IMPORTANT part. This will decide whatever this is something for you: STORY.
As many people pointed out in their reviews and posts, this VN is on surface an erotica (something like teenage supernatural romance stories, but more adult oriented). It's not porn, but more of a... sensual story. It's more about characters emotions and relations that pleasure and sex .
This, by itself, makes it a welcome breath of fresh air in hypno fetish VN scene.
Plot is basically the same as every highschool drama:
This game is clearly a statement on hypnosis, it's morality and a bit of a deconstruction how modern games (mis)handle it. What many people (myself partialy included) DIDN'T LIKE as much, was how the game handles it's themes and argues with the reader.
When a game wanders into political / philosophical / moral discussions there are few possible outcomes, from it being as inane as "this is right, that is wrong", to arguing about certian stance and providing arguments furthering it's case while (hopefully) acknowledging it's flaws, to simply deconstructing a theme and raising questions for the player so that s/he can come to thier own conclusions.
This game ranges from self righteus "mind control takes away free will and therefore it's EVIL", to actually making good points both for(rare as they are) and against it.
It's clear that the writer has good understanding of both real life hypnosis and it's gaming counterpart. So much so, that there are a few moments when you can feel incoming rant, the kind that only people passionate about something can give when they hear misconceptions about it.
Sadly, it's also obvious that author thinks about morality of such actions in a very biased way. To the point where it works to the detriment of the story as a whole. While most of good endings are OK, bad endings and even some parts of "evil" plotlines have times when characters or tone of the story takes turns that have no sense at all.

When I started this VN I hoped for a quick fap.
When I went through my first playthrough, I hoped that story would be to me like "The World Ends With You": good story with well thought out points that argues for something I disagree with, but can see how such conclusion can be made, as the logic is sound.
When I finished it all, I was sad that there even are evil paths, as the writer did a poor job on making them look beliveable, or even plausible.
In many VN that would be fine, story giving in to CG or the rule of cool is a normal thing in fiction . Sadly, this is one of those work that are supposed to make reader think, therefore faulty logic is much more apparent.

Despite this I still belive that it's a good VN, especially if you aren't deep into mind control fetish, like highschool dramas and / or pieces of literature that makes you analize characters psyche. Just be aware of bias on... darker routes.

Okay, I need to update my rating on this one. Previously, I was quite upset with the direction that the dev chose to take a game that was explicitly about mind control and added a good deal of moralizing on it... I have played the most recent version available (on another site, this site's version is a few updates behind) and I have to say, as new branches are added, some of the routes were really quite charming and a lot less "judgmental" of the player. I enjoyed it a lot more than I did the first time I played and have updated my rating accordingly.

A game with great potential that has dug its own grave. It's really interesting how the ending can completely destroy the whole game experience. After reaching at least half a dozen ends, I can safely say that the game focuses on 3 main premises.

a) Hypnotizing people is wrong.
b) I should never have done that.
c) It ruined my relationship.

It takes real ability to be able to completely destroy such a great concept as a mesmerizing pen

Good:
1) Artwork is good. It's not great because all the characters look a little boring and you won't find any really sexy women there, but it's a decent drawing.
2) The game has a suitable length. It is not too short or too long.

Bad:
1) All (or at least the vast majority) ends are the same.
2) Forcing moralism.
3) No sexual content.
4) No nudity.
5) The protagonist has a conscience that prevents him from making fun decisions.

This is an extraordinarily high quality visual novel with a large number of branching paths, and almost every major route is nearly complete with only a few missing options at release.

Before beginning an overly complicated critique that most people won't be interested in, I will give one note to help players decide if this visual novel is for them:

This VN is written by a woman, and it shows. It is deeply erotic, but the eroticism for the most part comes from the story, the dynamics of the characters, their relationship and its power dynamics, rather than from overtly sexual activity. The far extreme of "sex" in this story is nudity, and even that is framed as a power play rather than being done explicitly for sexual excitement. In this way it is very feminine in its sexuality. It's sexually stimulating in an emotional/intellectual way, rather than a physical way. It's more like a romance novel than porn, but without the romance because the main female character is very explicitly aromantic at the time and implied to be asexual as well.

If you're looking for porn, this is not the VN for you. If you're looking for an interactive romance novel, this is the VN for you. Even as a man, I definitely enjoyed this, I found it very stimulating breath of fresh air, but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

Anyway, my pretentious intellectual critique:

The story takes a deconstructionist approach to traditional mind control fantasies, with every non-consensual route having a bad end. The protagonist ends up either growing board with his slave(s), seemingly buying into the delusions he instills in them, and/or flying too close to the sun.

This theme seems to reduce itself ad absurdum, however, in the true consent path. Even if the protagonist does everything right, and respect her wishes not just to the letter but to their spirit, they still reach a point where they feel it has become problematic because:

• The line of consent may have been blurred in a way that is confirmed in other routes, but since the protagonist has not crossed even that blurred line in this route, there is no evidence of that
• Things have moved too fast and she has consented to giving him total control in little more than a week of talking to him, not because he has overstepped his bounds, but because she was driven by a desire to fulfill her fetishistic fantasies
• Because she has so rapidly pursued these fantasies and grown comfortable with him in doing so, she has pushed her own boundaries-- at her own initiative, without any push from him at all

The situation they find themselves in is certainly problematic. An 18 year old girl should not be committing to a total power exchange a week after opening up to an 18 year old boy and having a sexual awakening. But the issue is framed more of one of consent and seems to give at least some blame to the boy for not taking responsibility in slowing down her own pursuit of sexuality. It is not his responsibility to not consent to her advances. The story would be different if it were an adult taking advantage of her confusion, but they're both kids and he's just as confused as she is. Unless there is a clear power imbalance, and in this case there did not appear to be other than the one she consented to, no one has a responsibility not to consent any more than they do to consent. It would of course be a good thing if he ahd put the brakes on more, but he does not have a duty to do so, nor are we given the option to have him do so.

There is also the issue that consent is fluid. It is totally valid for boundaries to be rewritten, especially as people become more comfortable with eachother. People aren't bound by the rules the establish at the beginning of the relationship, they can renegotiate as time goes on, which is what happened here. Obviously, going from the very restrictive experimenting of their first "date" to total power exchange in a week, especially for kids that are just discovering their sexuality and having their first experiences is problematically fast. But like before, the issue isn't that the boundaries changed, which seems to be brought up as evidence that their relationship as it stands is toxic, but simply the speed at which those boundaries changed.

In fact, I find the idea that anything other than the unhealthy speed at which the relationship advances being problematic is reductive to real-life BDSM. There are a lot of people in healthy TPE relationships, and as long as these are entered into in a healthful way, not by teenagers rushing into it due to excitement in discovering themselves, there is nothing wrong with that.

By shoehorning the theme of consent into a story route in which it is not really a relevant issue, a sort of horseshoe effect has been created whereby the emphasis on consent taken to a toxic extreme has undermined the idea of consent itself, which unfortunately is a common theme in much political thought these days.

I would definitely appreciate this VN more if a few lines where changed to reframe this conversation during the pure consent route to the fundamental problem being the speed at which the relationship is entered into, and not plant the seeds of ideas like "He should not have consented to her" or "the boundaries of their relationship should not have changed even by her own initiative."

The route does, however, have a very good ending in which they take a step back, become friends, get to know eachother, and then reestablish their relationship in a more healthy way. This is absolutely the correct conclusion to the situation. Exploring this idea of the relationship moving too fast, and correcting it in this way is definitely a good thing and I don't want that to change, it's just that some of the framing introduces some problematic ideas that undermine the theme itself.

Pretty much all the "bad guy" endings were Cinderella story tragedies without the glass shoe. The phrase was made by a certain dev in a blog he barely updated. The cinderella style stories are fairly common in mind control erotica.

Anyway, what I mean is our "Cinderella" protagonist has a shit life until he gains a miraculous power he wished for: his mind-bending power.

From that power he gets a palace of wonder and gains everything he could possibly want. Until he suddenly loses everything. His power either fades, or people figure things out and they turn on him, or he didn't give the correct commands. The glass shoe is missing, his life either goes back to shit or gets significantly worse.

The other ending types involve the glass shoe, he loses everything but clutching on a last hope, he reverses the downfall, this time leaving no mistakes.

This game correctly did this. The main character is a bit annoying: he doesn't seem to know what he wants, and you'll find this in every "evil" ending. He doesn't want to hurt the girls.
As for the "Safer routes."

There were also interesting directions this story took outside the norm. The split personality for instance, is humanized in a way I never really thought about. And heck, I didn't even know robotification hypnosis was a fetish until I played this.

A weakness, however, is the pattern of getting punished for the fetish this game practically advertises: hypnosis. Unless you hate yourself and your talent you will get a bad/sad ending.

Excellent music choices btw.

So, if I liked the writing, dialogue, graphics, and music, why 4/5.

I feel like this game has two major flaws.

First, the characters are insufferable.

1. The main character who doesn't know what he wants and also a creep. Way too one-dimensional in his hobbies and thoughts. His existence is to pine over a girl.
2. Sayori, the smart girl, who hates you because you have potential and genius, but never feel like using it.
3. Nozomi. Also a girl who can't figure out what she wants. She'd be a perfect counterpart to the mc.
   Spoiler

   You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.
4. Hiroko is the worst, comes off as a tsundere but turns out she genuinely from the bottom of her heart hates you.

What puts me at such a shock is just how oddly the mc responds to this. He's apparently been isolated from his peers to such an extreme he has no friends. According to the MC it seems Hiroko and perhaps the others spread nasty rumors about him. He also has no consistent parent; one father who is always out at work. The MC is a superloner and his life was made hell by these girls he follows around pining for.

He's a creep and they seem to be his bullies.

To add a bit more to this: each character comes with a "allow you to hypnotize me" route.
The second part I'd say hurts this game is its wasted potential. At its heart, it's an erotic game but certainly not adult-oriented. There's no sex scenes either visual or written, but nudity is still there. It feels like you're trying to only meet the potential of the game halfway.

Many of the endings, while usually fitting, would have the mc goof. As an example:


TLDR; Great game for music and graphics and writing, but flawed with annoying characters, narration, and wasted potential.