Pentiment makes typography the gameplay: a murder mystery written as a manuscript

Obsidian's Josh Sawyer, a historian by training, wanted to make a historical narrative game for nearly 20 years. He chose early-16th-century Bavaria — a moment when monasteries were dying, the printing press was rising and the Reformation was remaking society — and a period whose look had barely been touched by video games.

Set a murder mystery in 1520s Bavaria and make the game itself a manuscript: illuminated art, no voice acting, and fonts that reveal each character's education and class.

Pentiment casts the player as Andreas Maler, an artist investigating murders across decades in a Bavarian town. Art director Hannah Kennedy built the world from illuminated manuscripts and woodcuts, structuring scenes around the three-quarter-view figures found in period sources. With no spoken dialogue, typography carries performance: fonts designed from real 16th-century hands signal a character's education, and players can switch to an easy-read mode; dialogue choices and a day/night investigative loop let each player shape who Andreas is.

Released on 15 November 2022 for PC and Xbox, Pentiment was widely praised as a genuinely novel way to inhabit history — a playable world in which reading, class and literacy are the mechanics. It won awards including The Game Awards' Games for Impact, and its typography and research became the subject of design coverage from IGN to GDC talks.

Pentiment began as Josh Sawyer's decades-old dream: a historical narrative game by a designer with a degree in history. He set it in early-16th-century Bavaria, inside the Holy Roman Empire at the moment the printing press was arriving, scriptoriums were fading and the Reformation was tearing old certainties apart.

Obsidian built the game as a living illuminated manuscript. Art director Hannah Kennedy and her team translated medieval codices and early woodcuts into the game's look, even shaping scenes around the three-quarter-view poses found in period illustrations. There is no spoken dialogue — the game is written, read and played.

Typography is the voice acting. With font consultant Riley Cran, the team designed letterforms from real 16th-century hands, so the way a character writes or speaks reveals education and station; nobles, monks, peasants and printers each carry their own type, and a bibliography in the game documents the research behind it.

The player is Andreas Maler, an artist drawn into murders that ripple across decades, with RPG-style choices deciding which suspect's fate is sealed. Released on 15 November 2022, Pentiment won The Game Awards' Games for Impact and became the reference point for making history tactile — a game where reading itself is the gameplay.

A period where handwriting marked class made typography a natural mechanic, letting illiteracy, education and power be shown rather than told.

Choosing an era virtually absent from games — the Reformation's book culture — gave the studio unexplored visual and narrative territory.

No voice acting forced the writing to carry every performance, which suited a mystery about words, texts and who gets to read them.

Grounded research — from Shakespeare's will to Getty manuscripts — made the fiction feel historically real without sacrificing play.

Treat the medium as part of the setting: when a story is set in a world of handwriting and woodcuts, making the interface itself period-authentic lets players feel history rather than merely watch it.

After its November 2022 release, Pentiment became a touchstone for historical games and a showcase for Obsidian's writing studio, earning The Game Awards' Games for Impact and nominations across narrative and art categories. Its director and artists spoke about its design at GDC and in press worldwide, and the game's use of typography as characterization has been cited since as a model for making reading and literacy central to interactive storytelling.