Penumbra (Horror)

The full story: Chapters 2 and 3

• Chapter 2: the story goes on in the Nether. New presences, new memories to find, a new reunion and the mod's own structures inside fortresses.
• Chapter 3: the final chapter, in the End. A new place to explore, memories to gather before the dragon fight, and an ending with a choice (two possible outcomes).
• Houses to explore in the Overworld, each with memories that play out on the objects themselves and echoes you hear when you step on or look at certain spots.
• Aged books (really torn, stained and burnt paper), loose pages hidden in structures that you gather in a little notebook, and a Diary (J key) with what you have lived and what to do next.
• New voices and sounds for every character, made by Miguel with ElevenLabs, with natural pacing and subtitles in Portuguese and English.
• Cinematic cutscenes that use the real terrain (never inside walls, lava or water), articulated characters that walk and gesture, and you acting in the scene. Hold ESC to skip.
• /penumbra lore status tells you where you are and what is missing.

Two modes: Story and Only Terror

• On the first entry in a new world a dark screen asks for the mode (Story or Only Terror) and the difficulty (Light, Normal or Nightmare). Saved in the world and changeable later (/penumbra modo).
• Story: the three chapters, cutscenes, memories and lines.
• Only Terror: no cutscenes or chapters. Every creature shows up from the start purely as a threat, nobody speaks, the books are short and frightening. It is one step harder at the same difficulty, and day-to-day life has no goal and no end.
• Only Terror exclusives: nightmares when you sleep (now and then), the friend who is not your friend (multiplayer), fake mobs and a sound that follows the tension.
• No shyness in Only Terror and Story Nightmare: monsters do not stand there staring, they come.

A fear director that learns from you

• One fear director decides when and what. Real monsters are rare: the "fear budget" fills with the time you spend at risk (night, caves, dark, alone, far from home), not with the clock.
• Scares without warning: no jumpscare right after you see the monster. The signs (flickering light, a blink) are mostly false alarms, and the real scare comes when you do not expect it. After a strong scare, silence.
• Learns from your reaction: the game measures how you react (snapping the camera, running, freezing, backing off, opening a menu) and favours the kind of scare that works on you. When a kind stops working, it loses its turn. Saved per player.
• Rebuilt jumpscares for every creature: 3D face, in three beats, rawer, with camera shake. On in Story Nightmare and in Only Terror.
• /penumbra medo status shows the budget and what the director has learned.

Livelier creatures

• Articulated bodies for all: spine, neck, fingers, knees, feet that step on the real ground.
• The crawler spawns where you can see it, stalks and always has an outcome; in the dark it gets a cold outline so you can make out what is staring at you.
• The tall figure acts: it gets closer every time you look away, shows up when you turn around, runs at you, mimics footsteps, waits at your base, looks through the window, stands behind you when you close a chest.
• Ambushes at classic moments (Only Terror, Normal and Nightmare): closing the crafting table, opening a door, looking behind you.
• In Only Terror, something clings to the ceiling of dark caves and bases. Look up. If it drops on you, its hands cover your screen, the torch falls from your hand and nearby monsters come for you.
• "Someone was here": while you are away, your base becomes slightly wrong (a swapped block, a turned painting, a rotated bed, footprints through the house, a record playing softly). Everything goes back on its own, no item is lost and nothing is broken.

Camera, blinking and lights

• Camera (Mod Menu → Image): Smooth (tilts when turning and strafing, lands with weight) or Camcorder (found footage: handheld camcorder, footsteps and breathing, rounded lens, motion trail, only "● REC" in the corner, inside the CRT TV). Calm when calm, nervous when afraid.
• Tension camera: with a creature nearby the world's sound fades, the picture tightens and shakes.
• Human blinking: real eyelids on sudden turns, when something crosses your view, and from tiredness. Whatever is in the dark may move while you blink.
• Flickering lights: torches and lamps flicker, go out in a wave or all at once when something arrives, and the torch in your hand lights up and trembles with the creature close. Client-side only: no block in the world changes.

Darkness and difficulty

• Darker world per difficulty (Light, Normal, Nightmare), in the lightmap itself: works with Sodium and Iris. Nightmare is dark but navigable with a torch. Automatic compensation with shaderpacks.
• Hallucinations, small and rare: a shadow in the corner, a failing torch, a lying HUD, echoing footsteps, a whisper beside you.
• A breathing vignette, draining colour and a heartbeat as dread rises.

Multiplayer

• Dedicated server and LAN working: each player lives their own story in the same world.
• Players nearby watch cutscenes and memories together (holding ESC takes only you out of the scene).
• The end of Chapter 3 waits for the group and the ending is watched by everyone together.
• Group horror: creatures prefer the most isolated player, try to split the group, the others hear the scream of whoever got scared, and sanity drops away from friends.
• /assustar <players> [tom|gui|dean|kev|kailan] (op): send a jumpscare to a friend.
• Fixed what leaked between players (scene gifts, world freeze, scares that could bury another player).

Performance and compatibility

• /penumbra perf: time per system per tick and per frame, spikes and GC pauses.
• The hand torch light and the light wave rebuild as few chunks as possible; heavy searches only where there are torches and doors.
• Tested with Sodium, Iris (Pedra Shaders), LambDynamicLights and a large modpack (300+ mods), in long automated sessions.

Fixes

• People and creatures readable with shaders (no longer yellow, grey or too opaque).
• Cutscene camera never inside grass, blocks or pillars; subtitles inside the TV safe area.
• Voices that were silent in some scenes, scenes that could get stuck or never start, creatures that vanished when repositioned.
• The sanity indicator hides with the HUD (F1); the "keep holding ESC" hint really shows.
• Waterproof loose page; old worlds in Only Terror get what is missing on their own.
• 952 automated tests passing.