whenever I play, the game crashes after going through some of the dialogue. when I go back in, it gets through a couple more lines, and then crashes again. do you know how to fix this? it's unplayable at the moment :/
After a long day of figuring out what the hell was causing it, this should be fixed now! Try re-downloading and let me know if you still have problems~
Wow I really loved the most recent update, Wisper was so cute and really hit me personally. I hope you add more stuff to the already established characters after you add the new ones of course. Love your work and thank you so much!
Sal's last game where he asks you how many times the Yo-yo spins in a minute seems to be broken, I'm trying to click the button to change the number displayed, but it's not doing anything.
Also it seems pausing the game while in a dialogue softlocks it. When I click "resume" the dialogue is gone, but the background keeps moving on its own as if I was still in a dialogue
Okay, so, Autofire doesn't work for me. Could've been patched after I downloaded it (I got this a bit back, not sure if there's been a patch since). Easy fix, I just weighed down my spacebar with a bottle. :P Got real laggy with Wisper, so I'd advise people with weaker computers to prepare for the worst cos it crashed a few times during his (?) final dialogue. Otherwise, fun to play with, was a nice distraction. Also noticed the "time dilation" trick you put in there. Pretty sneaky sis!
Still unhypnotised though. I don't think I can be, it relies on attention and my brain doesn't like to sit still. :P But it's fun to tamper with the custom text and play with it, the patterns are pretty, and the wubs are pleasant (I've looked at hypno stuff before and the noise they produced made me feel sick, but this one is pleasant, like humming machines).
Though if there was some endgame way of locking the special events (swirl and pendulum, not so much the gem) on-screen without having to constantly reactivate them would be handy. I say endgame cos then it can't be used to cheat points with.
My only real problem was the character limit to the custom text, but I think that's my fault for using sentences and not single words. :P
Hey, what's up with this? I'm not bothered by the delay, it's just strange to me that we're more than a week overdue and as far as I can find there's been no mention of it at all.
I think the 100 point gem event is bugged. Presumably the intent is for it to require 100 points total from the entire gem round (as opposed to 100 from a single click of it which there simply isn't enough time for), but it will not complete even when the value of the last click reaches 14 (as 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14 = 105), and I have not satisfied the objective even reaching 17 or 18.
First, the big one: I don't think autofire should be a powerup you have to buy. Not for something like this. I think that autofire should be a starting feature and active by default, and actually require going through a "Are you sure you want to do this?" prompt to turn off. I get you wanted interaction, but you need to account for repetitive motion strain being a thing. At the absolute minimum you need to spell out that it's there, possibly by making it a forced first purchase. But IMO it should be a default option.
Second. the timing needed to score 100 points in one round on King Cobra's "Simon Says" gem is perhaps a bit too tight. I'm frankly surprised I was able to pull it off.
That's absolutely understandable about the autofire! I can make some adjustments to make it more clear it's an option. I don't think it needs to be automatic, though, as you can use either the mouse or the spacebar to get to the amount of points needed to buy it. It's available from the start as the first option in the shop.
And there was a bug with the King Cobra's 100 points threshold, which has been fixed now!
There is a mobile-friendly web version over on vinyldragon.com/hypnoscreen ! I don't have plans to make a mobile-specific version, though, unless there's enough interest in that!
Today I noticed that the pendulum event doesn't seem to work in this update. Every time I click on the icon it just disappears without triggering the event
I played this today and it's great! The inductions worked super well for me and I love the idea of having colour schemes for each character, and King Cobra forcing you to use Kaa eyes to do his tasks
However, I did encounter problems
First is, it'd be great if in the options menu along with Awakener there was Induction, Jen would use her original induction to bring you down. That'd help achieve trance quickly ^^
Second, it's annoying being told you can't look away from Sal's yoyo and having to read their text at the same time. Same with King Cobra's eyes at the end, you can't follow it and read at the same time
Third is more characters but this is in demo so it's fine ^^
Fourth, an option to summon Sal's yoyo after finishing all his tasks. That way you can submit super easily to him
Fifth, more tests for Jen. She is the hypnosis scientist after all, and currently the only test is the affect on how you perceive time. Although again, it's a demo so I'm guessing you're planning on adding more
If you go to the "tist" menu, and flip the switch, you can replay all of the inductions you've unlocked with each character! Including Jen's first inductions :P
I get the issue with reading and following. One day, I'll try looking into voice acting, as it seems like the best fix. But unfortunately, this may be a necessary evil for now...
More characters (and more inductions for existing characters) are on the way!
And the issue with Sal's yoyo dissapearing has been solved, thank you so much!!
After having played the 1.2 update: It's pretty good! I like the new character quite a lot (despite me not really being into guys), and the new inductions are great. His personality and humor was funny and I liked seeing him grew more confident. My only complaints are the "Back and forth... back and forth" objective is too vague, and I'm not even sure how I got it. Also, it would be nice to be able to skip the 2-3 minutes of waiting during Sal's "A Fun Game" test.
A possible suggestion I have for the future if you want to add adult content is to have Dr. Faustus give you a consent form (an item you can pick from the shop that lets you enable/disable adult content), which could go great with the theme of the game not forcing you into doing stuff you don't want.
Thank you so much! Sal is a personal favorite, I'm glad you liked him too~
Good calls about the changes to him, I'll take them into consideration, thank you so much!
And that idea of a consent form is REALLY good! It's 100% how I'll put in adult content later on. Thank you so so so much! (and sorry for the late response :P)
Wonderful concept done well! I went into this expecting a cute, short experience... and found myself still at it way longer than I expected. I'm enamored (or perhaps entranced) with how effective this was <3
My only real feedback right now:
*The voice noises can be a little startlingly loud at first. I'd definitely been snapped out of it once or twice due to the suddenness of it. Though that didn't bother me as much the more I played. (Edit: I guess I was so into it I didn't realize there was a volume control for this. Oops!) *After finishing Sal's part, the pendulum event doesn't trigger anymore :( I think it'd be cute to change the pendulum to his yo-yo after finishing his part (or maybe you did, and that's why it didn't function properly?)
Otherwise, I really look forward to more content! I'm sure it's only due to my own thoughts and nothing else c.c
Kudos! ~A fur way too embarrassed to use his regular account for this
Maybe I was just in a better headspace today, but I suspect you did a really good rebalance of the pendulum minigame! I was a little concerned when I realized I'd have to play it to see Sal's content, but it really was completely painless and quite relaxing.
Now that you've got it in a comfortably playable state, however, I realize I kinda missed the original point: I found myself looking at the center ring and waiting for the pendulum to meet it, rather than tracking the pendulum. To polish that minigame a little more, perhaps you could try making the center ring transparent (about 40-60% opacity) and simply pulse its opacity between minimum near the edges of the screen, and maximum near the center? With that setup, the center ring only comes into focus when it matters, and I'm sure you could play with the effect to make it quite interesting.
I didn't notice it last time, but the "wave tone" as you've called it is a really great addition to the game! In fact, all of the audio in this build is just really well assembled. The way the music fades in and out as one switches between clicking in the spiral generator (leaving said wave tone in focus) and navigating menus is a very nice touch.
Also, I like that note about there being "many, MANY" more future experiments with Dr. Faustus. ;3
Regressions, issues, and further suggestions
You really didn't leave me much to complain about! All of this stuff is fairly shallow, you've solved most of my problems already. ;3
I think I found a couple of typos - I hope I wrote them down correctly!
I think it'd be worth changing the switch between progress and scene replays, as it'll be hard for new players to tell what it's supposed to "do".
I found that, if I read dialogue at a comfortable "speaking" pace, the printing would usually beat me to the end by a comfortable 30% margin. It might be worth experimenting with a slower default print speed.
The music will keep on fading in and out during interactions where the spiral isn't going in the background - just clicking on the dialogue box will do it.
Finally, I think that some of the "focused dialogue" (single statements in bold) could benefit from being centered in the text box. Similar to how some others have commented, having text so far from the center of the screen can somewhat distract from the main focus of an interaction.
Sal
Wow, just wow! Sal's whole design and personality is just great! As his initial uncertainty gave way to a more dominant streak, he was able to push buttons I didn't know I had! I don't have a Twitter, so please, pass along my compliments to limewah for their part in that. :3
The moments where he'd turn from his relaxed pose to directly face me head on were quite striking. The first time that happened - well, let's just say it was an impactful and surprising moment. Well done! :3
In fact, all of his character stills were masterfully done! Likewise, please, pass along my compliments to Gooeyroc! All of the art I've seen so far has seemed perfect for Hypnoscreen - I hope to see more of them in the near future~! ;3
(I also really like how they managed to capture Dr. Faustus in the promo tile - but that's not related to Sal ;P)
Final thoughts
Lots of exclamation marks and catfaces in this one! :3
I'm really liking the progress you've made in just one month. I don't think I can properly express how proud you're making me (a random internet stranger) with how well you've been doing with your work on Hypnoscreen. Seriously! I don't want to inflate your ego too much, though, so I'll leave it at that. ;3
Always looking forward to more content,
Extend, Unpack
(PS: You titled this release as 1.1! The filename is right, though.)
A lot of people have already said some of the things I've noticed (events cancelling auto-spiral in dialogue, spiral lags toward the center with slow spiral + auto-click (could be a pc issue), etc.).
One thing I'd suggest is labeling the quest/session switch in the tists menu. I thought it was a progress bar since it was under the tist progression and I thought the induction stuff Faust mentioned hadn't been implemented (and I was a bit out of it from staring at a spiral, haha). I didn't realize there were actually inductions until after I finished all of Faust's quests. Because of this I sequence broke, in a way - I bought the crystal and got my King's introduction, and later on Faust told me about the crystal + naga she saw around the lab.
The last thing I'd suggest is telling the user the button commands (fullscreen and "go back") first. I accidentally skipped a text box while navigating menus during the tutorial.
Despite the issues I and others have stated, I really enjoyed the experience. I look forward to future updates. :)
Good suggestions, thank you so much! I'll probably add in an indicator for the quest/session switch, and your notes about the tutorial have been noted. The other issues have been fixed!
This game is really fun, and i cant wait for more to be added. i've noticed a few problems however,
1. with low speed and fast clicking, the game seems to lag
2. if an event thingy pops up while in dialogue and is clicked, after it ends the shapes stop appearing automatically and appear on click
3. not really a problem but more of a suggestion, it would be good to be able to submit an rgb value into the custom colour thing rather than having to select it on the graph thingy
also one question. what does the thing you buy that says something like "you dont know what this is but you should buy it" do?
Thank you so much! The second issue you listed has been fixed, and I'm always working to try and speed up the game. The idea of a RGB value input is a really good idea, also, thank you!!!
And (although the name of that has been changed by this point) there's only one way to find out~~
I LOVE King Cobra. His attitude fits my weaknesses almost perfectly. Of his interactions though, my least favorite was being told I could easily be replaced.
It was really cool that his missions made you use certain settings to match his eyes!
I had some trouble playing with slower spirals, the game would visibly slow down when a lot of circles were on screen.
The outward setting causes distracting flashing on the sides of my screen, since it doesn't grow big enough before disappearing
Events are... weird. I can't click on them unless I stop the spiral and move the mouse, so I usually leave them off. Maybe if you could interact with them using space bar, it wouldn't be that bad?
I liked the spiral, but I found myself staring just off center from it, because I found the chunky shape of the center too distracting/nonhypnotic
As for the gem, maybe hitting space bar could just make it shimmer without giving points. I feel like the visual has potential, it just requires too much thinking to use. It looks really really cool as it's fading out though,
Some way to save presets would be really nice. I came up with one with various shades of red and gray, to make the gem more effective, it would be nice to have the option to save it for later.
I was already planning on sharing the game, when I got told to... and boy do I genuinely love being hypnotized into doing something I already wanted to do! I have a certain friend I think might really love this!
Thanks for all the feedback and love! King Cobra still absolutely needs plenty of tweaking, but I'm glad to see you enjoyed him!
I'm honestly aware of the problems with slower spiral speeds and (some of) the problems with the outward shapes. A lot of the problems come down to things like different monitor sizes/aspect ratios, but rest assured, I'm testing plenty of things out to make sure it gets ironed out!
The events are weird, I agree, and I think a big problem with that is that the mouse gets hidden after some clicking. I'm planning on removing or changing that feature, which should help!
I also absolutely get that about the spiral. All the assets, including that spiral, were generated by myself, because I couldn't directly source a high quality enough spiral. In a future update, I plan on digging back into my software and messing around with it to see if I can make something smoother and more hypnotic, but your notes are super appreciated! For a temporary "fix," try looking at the corner of the black part of the spiral, as it loops around and around, always pulling in the attention from your eye...
Saved presets are also absolutely going to be in there!
And I'm glad you felt that way about that last little bit! That was always the intention with that, and the rest of the game-I want to make sure people are only playing and doing things because they enjoy them. Otherwise, it's not a very fun game, in my eyes!
Thanks again for the feedback, and keep your eyes open for updates! (Like I said in the update notes, next version's gonna be up on the 19th!)
I love the game so far. I played the demo when it came out two weeks ago and was excited to see a new update so soon after. However, here are some bugs or user-unfriendly behaviors I've found:
-Entering custom text and pressing space will exit the menu, but "buffer" the space so next time you try to enter text it will put it before the next character (even if the next keystroke is shift). Makes entering multi-word text (like "BREATHE DEEP") more difficult than it aught to be
-Shift+R works even while entering custom text, makes entering text like "BREATHE DEEP" while holding shift reset your progress
-Resetting your progress while entering a custom word to appear on screen causes text to appear on screen even after resetting, and the player cannot turn off or edit this text until they buy the text menu again
-Attempting to enter a character over maximum number of characters (for instance, appending the string "BREATHE DEEP") buffers it, so writing a character to the next word causes both to appear (again, even if the next keystroke is shift)
-Custom color preset defaults to last preset used, overwriting user custom if they change off of it to either Black and White (left arrow) or Faustus (right arrow)
-The color preset menu loops but the custom color setting does not have a visible left arrow button (even though clicking where it aught to be does, in fact, scroll left)
-Heart shape set to flow outward causes distracting color flashing at the bottom corners of the screen, doesn't seem to flow far enough out so jumps between colors abruptly as rings get deleted
-A spiral, pendulum, or gem disappearing while a character is talking causes the colors to stop automatically cycling
These are all nitpicks, of course. I really love where the game is going and I can't wait for the next update. Keep it up!
Nitpicks are appreciated! I see it as people saying "I like this project and want it to be improved and expanded upon," which is exactly how I feel about it, too! And that kind of validation is always nice.
I never considered or encountered all the problems you're explaining with the custom text, and I really appreciate you pointing it out! In general, your feedback is heard, and I'm planning on eventually reworking the whole system to be a bit smoother.
Saving custom color presets is another thing I absolutely have planned! There's a couple different ways of implementing it, and I just need to decide which would work best...
That's weird that clicking left does scroll left, even though it disappears. The way it was originally put together, it could only scroll right infinitely, but stays on custom to help make sure you always purposefully change away from it. I'll have to take a look at it, thanks for pointing it out!
I appreciate you pointing out the bit about the heart going outward, too! I think in testing, I used the diamond and circle to make sure it looked smooth, but the heart is thinner at the bottom than those two, so it makes sense that problem lied under the surface. (I'm personally not a big fan of the outward shapes, so I'm not nearly as aware when problems arise from them. Thanks to you and everyone else for pointing them out!)
The color cycling is another good catch and easy fix. Thank you!
Glad you appreciate the game, I very much appreciate the feedback, and keep your eyes open! I hope you (and everyone else) enjoys this project the more it goes on~
This is going to be a little more brief than last time; I just wanted to provide feedback on some of the major changes in version 1.1. Since I'm not that interested in King Cobra, I'll be waiting for more content with Dr. Faustus (or someone else) before doing a full playthrough/critique of the game again.
It's quite good, and is at a good default volume to truly be called background music. Well done! I look forward to more tracks; one thing I regret quite a bit is listening to songs I liked in a never-ending loop! ;)
An interesting idea I'm sure you've already considered: giving characters their own, unique themes during scripted interactions would definitely help frame the player's first (and subsequent) interactions with each character.
Depending on how ambitious you want to get with your audio engineering for this game, it might also be interesting to eventually incorporate layered audio tracks (especially during or between scripted scenes) in order to punctuate the specific mood of each interaction with a character. That's firmly in the realm of "polish," though, and probably isn't a top priority right now.
Dialogue / Voiceover
The pseudo-voiceover is a good starting point, but it could definitely use some work. :3
It seems like the audio snippet is just sampled in a loop while text is being printed; the current approach feels a bit weird. In my experience, many games will sample the audio snippet for every character printed. That said, you may have tested that approach and found it a little too frenetic and distracting; I could definitely understand that.
You can get a lot more impact by inserting pauses between sentences; for example, that semicolon and comma I just inserted would be great places for noticeable (but short) breaks. In addition, sentences spoken very deliberately or with much haste could be printed at different speeds and with a more forceful (or otherwise modified) variant of the usual snippet.
Playing with text formatting, print speed, and the voice snippet can really help add personality to dialogue! Little details like that are quite satisfying, and help indicate the extra time and effort the developer put into the game to make the experience that much better!
By the way: depending on the tools you're using, you might be able to write helper functions (something like
speakWithVoice(faustusVoice, "The first part of my dialogue,", speed=fastSpeed)
) to help make scripting lots of dialogue less tedious.
Other Thoughts
- It's a bit too easy to accidentally skip text; if you click while text is printing, it should skip to the end of the text, not proceed to the next message. - I've noticed the game will shrink and no longer fills the entire screen if my monitor goes to sleep while it's open. (That happened while writing this comment, heh.)
Thank you for staying a fan, unpack! Sorry for not responding to your last post, I think my plan was to contact you at the thing you gave me, and I never ended up doing that, lol. I'll respond to both here, and try to remember to actually contact you directly this time!
Thank you about the music! A lot of my work for this build was actually creating it and making sure it fit the mood, was "backgroundy" enough, and also that it actually was enjoyable to listen to. I absolutely plan on having more tracks, including layered and timed stuff! But I have no idea how much of that will actually come to fruition-I get way too ambitious about sound design, and still need to work on the skills to back that up, lol. One way or another, though, you won't be listening to the same tune over and over again!
I like your note about the audio! I programmed it in the way that felt it made the most sense to once again stay in the background, but I get that the way it's implemented may make it actually distracting. I'll toy around with how it works and toss it to my playtesters to see what they think!
I absolutely plan on changing the entire text system, too-right now it's honestly fairly lazily done, with just a script or two...but I want to have as much characterization in the game as possible, so italics and bold and all that nonsense will absolutely be present!
I've experienced that problem too-the same thing happens if you focus your screen on something else before the game can launch. It's a weird problem I'm familiar with and could talk about too much, and am not totally sure how to fix it, but it's on the docket! As a temporary fix, try hitting f4 when that happens, forcing the game to go into windowed mode, and then hitting f4 again to fullscreen it.
All the notes are once again super appreciated and taken into account! I hope you continue to enjoy this as I continue to update it!
The lack of a response is no trouble; I understand you've had a lot on your mind! That said, Itch isn't great for lengthy back-and-forth; that's why I offered an alternative. ;P
No rush, though! I'm content offering my feedback where useful.
I can sympathize over technical ambition - I've bitten off more than I could chew many times in personal and professional projects. I'm glad to hear you'll be making the attempt! It'll be cool to see what you make of it.
Referring to the dialogue systems: I look forward to seeing their improvements! I can definitely sympathize with the process that leads up to getting something done the cheap way to save time. ;3
Good to know there's a workaround! I'm sorry that I can't help narrow down the issue much further than that; I'm not a game developer by trade, so I don't know enough about game engines to debug something odd like that.
That said... I may actually have some info that could help mitigate the issue. Most games I play use a Windows API (that I had to Google, as I'm not familiar with it) to prevent the computer/monitor from sleeping until the game is exited. It wouldn't work in an HTML5 version, but there's probably some other solution you could use from a browser; I believe YouTube may do something like that.
Finally - I'm glad that my feedback is useful! I'd very much like to help you succeed. :3
Never thought I'd comment on something like this, but here we go. I found this through discovering that there was a furry tab on Itch.io. This one caught my eye, because I've had a passing interest in hypnosis for quite a few years now. Trying out videos on and off. I've not ever been able to go too deeply into trance. I think because of 3 reasons. First, I've never given a 'tist's videos enough time to really build up a level of trust. Second, I've always went for the advanced videos straight away, stuff I simply do not have the skills for. And Third, with videos, I always feel like I'm on the clock. Videos are very non-interactive, and therefore, I always feel pressured during the induction period of the video because I know that I am on a time limit before the payload portion of the video starts.
Most of those roadblocks went away here. On the trust thing, the majority of that issue is just solved by time with the file, which will never be completely solved on the first run through with a 'tist for me. A couple of minor things that help is the talk about consent, and instructions on how to leave at the very beginning. Another thing that helped, with me anyway, is my interest in furries, and my favorite color being purple, which means that I really dig Faustus' design. As well as her attitude.
There is nothing really advanced here either, no fancy payload(don't think I didn't notice the suggestion to give feedback, I don't mind following through with that though). Just good old fashioned relaxation, so far anyway.
I think what really helped me though, was the interactivity of the file. It didn't matter to me if I happened to get distracted, or I started to accidentally wake up out of trance, I could breathe, take my time, and do what I needed to do to get back in. They say that all hypnosis is self hypnosis, nothing really drives that point home more that having direct control over how often the screen changes color. One suggestion I might offer however, is possibly an easier way to back out of a dialogue sequence. Later on it might be nice to be able to go "Oh, I had the right mindset for this, but I got distracted and now I lost it, may I go back to staring at shapes mindlessly for a while?" Something in the escape menu would probably work,or perhaps just something as simple as backspace, possibly twice for confirmation?
Now then, A couple criticisms. I think the ability to customize the notification sound when a task is complete would be a decent addition. As it stands now, the noise was a little harsh to my ears, and brought me out of trance a decent amount.
I know other people have said it before, but I'll also say it. I think Cobra's colors are a little harsh at first, but I think it's mostly that they are so drastically different from Faustus. I think that could be mitigated with more content, and having Cobra be unlocked next to someone who has a similar color scheme. The reason I say this is because while switching to him did bring me out of trance, it didn't take too much effort to get back in, once I got used to his color scheme anyway. But that'll have to come once more content happens.
One suggestion I have is that it might be interesting to play around with a mode where you don't have to choose what dialogue section happens. Again, this would be more interesting once there is more content, but I think it might be interesting if I could go "For this session, I want to have X, Y, or Z dialogue pop up at a variable frequency." I personally would only use such functionality once I have already gone through those dialogues once. It's the trust thing that's gotta be built up for me. Totally up to the dev though, it's their game after all.
And now, a question for the creator, since I notice an active dev(always a fantastic sign by the way). I note that this game has the tag of "nsfw". Is that purely because people have a tendency of viewing hypnosis that way, or do you plan on taking this thing more in that direction at some point? I'm not saying I would either support, nor reject such a file, or lack thereof. I just would like to know what sorts of things would be included here before I choose whether or not to follow a project like this in the long run.
I'm really glad I could be (one of) your introduction(s) to hypnosis! I really think it's a fun thing that's not explicitly explored nearly enough, especially in the context of self-hypnosis. I try to make this game as player-paced and beginner-friendly as possible, so I'm ecstatic to hear you feel this way!
And your suggestions and criticisms are also super appreciated! I plan on completely removing the alert feature for the next build to go back to automatic induction starts, while also including the bit you're talking about where you can exit out of an induction and re-enter it any time, at your pace. Again, despite being a game about hypnosis, player choice is an important aspect! (hence the fact there's a million toggles in the game, lol)
As a character designer, I always like to make characters that are as wildly different from each other as possible, in terms of both visual style and personality. A lot of the feedback I've gotten is about the stark contrast between Faustus and King Cobra, and I really appreciate you saying so specifically about the visuals, too! I'm going to see if there's a way I can meld things together more for future builds, or see if adding more character variety either muddies the pot or makes the contrast less surprising.
And thank you for asking about nsfw content! It's a big thing on the back of my mind in making this game, and I'd love to talk about it for a bit. For a TLDR (which if you've read this far, you probably don't need), the answer is maybe! But here's the longer and more in depth answer:
I'm always going to include the 18+ warning in this and any other hypnosis project I make just because my interest in hypnosis is tied to a kink, and I think just that connection means a level of consent needs to be present. Even if I decide to not have any sexual content, that'll stay in this and any other future projects like it!
My original (and current) plan was to have sexual content in the game, once it's fleshed out enough as a game. I wanted it to be clearly seen as a hypnosis game before a porn game, basically. I do plan to include nsfw content in the game, but I'm interested in hearing what someone like you who (maybe) is more hesitant about that would think. I've planned on including a sort of way to "opt-out" before and during any sort of sexual content (in addition to the many other "opt-outs" that already exist lol), but beyond that, it is planned. If you're not interested in that, I won't be offended by you not following this project. However, if you have input as someone who's interested in the game through a non-sexual lens, I would absolutely love to hear it!
In terms of our conversation, I've taken a few days to think on your response. I am currently undecided on if I would partake in any nsfw content that would come from this. But regardless of if I do choose to do so or not. The planned presence of nsfw content does make things awkward in terms of sharing this game with others. Like, what am I going to say? "Oh, I don't partake in that portion." idk that people would really believe that. This is already a weird enough activity as it is, throwing that complication into it makes it difficult.
A friend of mine who I've been discussing this thing with brings up something I should ask you. What is it exactly that is motivating you to make this? You have said that hypnosis is at least tied to a kink for you, but how much of that is your motivation for making this game?
In terms of the new update. I did check it out(Why not? at least until I decide). Sal was definitely an experience. And one I thoroughly enjoyed. I went through the cast of the other 2 again before I jumped into his, so I was definitely pretty deep under. His similarity to Cobra definitely made the transition from character much easier than Faustus to Cobra. I definitely went deeper than I've been able to go before. Towards the end of his script though, there was a typo. I believe he said "loose" instead of "lose". I could totally be mistaken though, I was pretty deep.
This game is just amazing, and seriously has potential to be a masterpiece! Since you asked for feedback on the game, I figured I'd give my 2¢:
Likes:
The concept is great, it's got a lot of functionality for an early build.
The fact that the game asks you to "advertise" it is pretty cool and definitely in-line with what a "game that tries to hypnotize you" should do.
The writing is great. I like the humor and the way the game always leaves it up to you if you want to do something.
Dr. Jen Faustus is amazing, I think Pinkanator's comment summed it up very well.
Dislikes:
I'm not a huge fan of the snake guy. Extend.Unpack and Mirage Oasis's comments do a good job of explaining why.
Suggestions?:
1. More trances, and more depth in the trances. I love Spiral Clicker and always wished Helen inducted you in more ways than just the 5 inductions she currently has. Also, including "triggers" and conditioning could be fun.
2. Sexual Content? Having Dr. Jen Faustus naked, using trances to make the player masturbate, etc. would be amazing.
Also, do you have a Patreon or something of the sort where people can contribute to you? I wouldn't mind helping this game's growth!
Thank you so much! There will definitely be plenty more trances as we go on, with more trances for existing characters and more characters to come!
I absolutely get preferring Faustus over King Cobra (secretly she's my favorite too), I just wanted to have different characters to appeal to different tastes. Feel free to ignore his content as updates come, no harm no foul!
Sexual content is a probably but still a maybe! It was absolutely in my original plan, but I want to make sure the game itself is fun enough on its own before I decide to dive into sexual content.
And for supporting, thank you so much!!! I don't have a patreon or subscribestar or anything set up yet, just because I don't know how long I'll keep at this project and others, and I don't want to nail myself to any agreements (or others) until I get some more work under my belt, and am sure about a more consistent schedule. But if you'd like to donate through itch.io, or my ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/vinyldragon), I'd appreciate it a ton! Thanks so much again!
Thank you so much! Just about all "advertising" for this game is through word-of-mouth to those who would be interested. I hope your friends enjoy, too!
As skullman said-shift and r can restart! but that said, in the next build the inductions will be able to be played and replayed anytime once they've been unlocked, so look forward to that!
I came from the same site that mirage and pinkanator came from. Hypnohub. And i gotta say i very much enjoyed your creation. I'm anxiously looking forward to the full release.
This is WILDLY promising. This is something I really hoped would eventually get made ever since I realized that Spiral Clicker had trances written into it. I thought those were well written, but Faustus's are far and away better. The basic visual is also just legitimately amazing-I was never quite sure if the trails I was seeing were generated by the game or just my eyes fuzzing up, but they were a STRONG effect anyway. I don't trance super easily usually, but this definitely worked.
I'm gonna echo a lot of other people's tunes, though: While Faustus is near perfect, King Cobra is...underwhelming? Overwhelming? Kind of both? His minigame is way too hard to do at all without breaking immersion, and his vibe is complete whiplash to hers. I don't know if he just needs reworked, or if in a full version it would just need to be made sure that you can avoid characters you have no interest in one way or another.
THANK YOU! I worked hard on the spiral "engine" of the game before anything else (including a couple scrapped prototypes), and I'm very glad it's worked so well for people. There shouldn't be any trails on the visuals, at least hopefully-so we'll just say it was your eyes getting a bit too sleepy, heh.
And understandable about not liking King Cobra! I wanted to have multiple characters since the beginning for the specific reason that you could then "pick and choose" what to do. Obviously I can only put in a finite amount of content, so if you don't play through X character's route, there's not much I can do to extend the game for just you. But your thoughts are heard and appreciated! And thank you for sharing this game on the hypnopics forums, greatly appreciated!!!
After 5 years in the hypno community, this is what I've been desperately waiting for. Trying hard not to drift out into the background spiral of this page rn, but after finishing Dr Faustus's experiment, and still having more to enjoy, I can't begin to recommend this enough.
I've already fallen deeply in love with Faustus herself and her eccentricities, her design is adorably hot, the trances themselves are wonderfully powerful and unique, and I'm so excited to try more.
To echo some of the feedback already given, I too would suggest some optional background music, I usually find it pushes trance just that extra bit over the edge.
In personal issue territory, the game started to lag to all hell under certain situations, testing the 256 speed option, using text with the spiral online, and the game straight up froze and bugged out when I finally came to my senses during the experiment and took quite a bit of hopelessly clicking before it woke up. I'm going to peg these issues all as system related though, this laptop's a bit crappy, and for the most part the game ran great.
Another note, I did have to accidentally wipe my progress after starting the snake quest by mistake while still woozy, panic jumping to the awakener, then realizing I couldn't get the quest intro back. Not that I mind playing the game again, but just to point out.
In any case, looking forward to jumping back in tomorrow, and I'm so looking forward to more! Best of luck in your efforts ^w^
THANK YOU!!! The inspiration for this game was me constantly wanting something like it in the world, but it kept not existing (which, note to anyone who wants to steal this idea/feels took it from them before they could make it somehow, PLEASE MAKE IT and I'll be the first to play!)
It's interesting that the game straight-up froze, I've never had that happen before. There are some problems with the more extreme spiral speeds (both lower and higher) that I'm currently working on fixing, so thanks for pointing that out!
I've also reworked the way you play inductions so you won't have to lose all your progress just to replay something. The full reset is more of a placeholder mechanic than something long-term.
Thank you so much, keep it up with the feedback, and thank you for spreading the word on HypnoHub!
Great to hear on both counts, as I say I'm sure it was probably something on my end, but hope it goes well. I just finished skimming through Faustus again so I could enjoy my King, and it still took a while to load after clicking after "5 minutes" (more like 20 really). If there's meant to be a message that tells you how long it really was, I haven't seen it both times.
Real glad to see progress on inductions too, I was so happy to sink into them that I'll be sure to revisit them over and over >w<
One new critique I'd point out based on my further input, that I'm not entirely sure how you'd fix tbh, the red of the gem and the yellow of the snake eyes really melt together, and not exactly in a good way. That might just be me though. Gem itself is reaaal pretty >w<
This is a really fun game. I love the gameplay loop of running the spiral to earn points then buying more stuff in the shop to spiral even more.
It was a good idea to make many of the unlockable items options you can turn on or off, as well as customizable. I personally preferred the auto-clicker to manually clicking.
I also liked the spiral and pendulum minigames. They were a small deviation from the norm which helped stop me drifting off as easily. The gemstone felt a little intrusive since it took up a huge part of the center of the spiral. Would be nice if I could turn it off individually.
In my opinion, I found Dr. Faustus to be a lovely tist to submit to. Level-headed and accepting with enough eccentricity to be interesting but not too much to be distracting. Her experiments were simple relaxation and focus trances which I really liked. I would love to do more of her experiments.
Her theme was also a nice palette choice especially with random colours on. The muted colours make the sky blue really stand out whenever it appears. Reminds me of ripples in a pond on a rainy day.
I found the snake to be less interesting. It was a very sudden shift in aesthetic and personality. The golden textbox and the offset, more imposing portrait were visually louder than I was expecting. His personality was also very demanding off the bat while I'd built up a familiarity with the more easygoing Doctor. Perhaps that's just my personality though, or that I didn't have as much time to build rapport with him.
All in all though, I really really loved what you did here! I can't wait to see more!
(also, is there a way I can submit bug reports? I noticed two very minor bugs at the end of the game)
Thank you so much!!! I agree with a lot of your recommendations-options like toggling the minigames are all going to be included in the build this Friday!
And I'm really glad you liked Dr. Faustus (don't tell anyone, she's my favorite so far too). I've always planned on including multiple characters in the game, and I wanted to have at least two available for this demo-some people have told me they're excited to see more of King Cobra, while others echo your thoughts. Hopefully the more that comes, the better!
And feel free to DM me on twitter @vinyl-dragon about the bugs, or email me at endraconic@gmail.com!
Hey, I'm glad you're making this game. It definitely seems like a labor of love. I'm not usually into hypnosis, but I dabble occasionally, and this seemed interesting enough to check out. I'm glad I did!
I really like Dr. Faustus! She strikes a great, endearing balance between zany and welcoming. Her sharp but muted (dark?) character design really appeals to me. I'd describe her current content as "pleasantly relaxing", and would like to see more (and more varied!) content involving her!
On the other hand, the snake isn't quite my speed. I know there are plenty who would disagree; I imagine they could provide more helpful opinions. Regarding content warnings, when the player is about to make a decision that will enable potentially unwanted content, it might make sense to elaborate a little on just what they're getting into; you could probably do so without breaking immersion _too_ much. (Personally, it didn't really bother me, but I also generally don't get deep enough into trance to fall victim to that sort of thing... or at least, that's what I keep telling myself. ;P)
I found the pendulum and gem "minigames" to be somewhat distracting; that is, the mental effort they required to "solve" drew me out of my trance state and I ended up avoiding them entirely in the end. I can understand wanting to add a bit of variety to the game, though; I'm curious how you may end up experimenting with that goal in the future.
The subliminal message feature was a pleasant surprise. I think it would be useful to have separate controls for frequency and duration, and at some point support for custom phrase lists.
I think the game is definitely missing some kind of background sound. I think some combination of light trance music and/or simple tones/humming would be a good starting point when you get there; that said, I'm really discerning about sound, so I'd definitely prefer to be given the option to mute any background sounds if they're not to my liking.
On that note, I think some kind of basic pseudo-voiceover could be worth experimenting with. An approach like that can be cheap, flexible, and remarkably impactful when done with care. (For a high-profile example, see Undertale. :P)
Finally, I'd definitely like to see more character stills! Up to a point, the more variety you can provide, the more believable your characters will be, and the more they'll feel like people.
---
Overall, you have a really solid foundation in a rare niche! I look forward to seeing more of your work; I hope my contribution helps! ;3
(PS: I recommend you try Hover or Namecheap to buy your domain, and Let's Encrypt for free and easy HTTPS to use with it! I can't recommend any hosting providers, that's outside my expertise.)
By the way... please don't feel pressured to set up a web edition of the game if you think my donation could be put to better use elsewhere.
I think having a dedicated website is important to grow your player base, but I have no idea how much value you see in buying (or upgrading) your license. Feel free to use the money for whatever you need to! :3
I'm absolutely going to start work on a website! I didn't expect this game to do as well as it's doing so far, so I wanted to make a promise to myself that I'd put as much money as I get from the game back into it, at least until I feel it's a finished enough project (which it's not at all, yet, to me)
I'm glad for the feedback about the characters! I have gotten varied opinions about people liking or not liking either character more or less, which is good, and why I planned multiple characters in the first place. I like your idea of changing the Cobra dialogue, too, and I have some ideas in how to implement it!
I also absolutely understand the feeling about the minigames. That's another thing I've gotten varied feedback about, and I think I'll add in an option to turn them on/off after purchasing rather than removing or changing them entirely.
The subliminal message feature IS actually editable! I've been trying to figure out the best way to show this, because you're not the first person to not notice it, but you can change the text that pops up by hovering over and clicking the specific boxes. I also fully agree about the duration/frequency!
And sound is honestly at the top of my docket. I originally wanted to have it done by the demo release, but I was too indecisive (plus, I want to do something very specific with music and binaural, and that is taking probably too much time). I love the idea of the pseudo-voiceover, even if I later decide that full voice acting will be included, I think that will help add a lot to characterization.
And agreed about character stills, too! The more the better. Which brings me to my final thing, which is, THANK YOU AGAIN! I'm first going to set up the website fully (again very much thanks for your donation), and then I'll start looking at getting an artist on-call to make more quality and quantity character stills.
Again, thank you, and please let me know if you have any other ideas, critique, or suggestions!
> I wanted to make a promise to myself that I'd put as much money as I get from the game back into it, [...]
I'm glad to hear that! :3
As I said before, I think having a website for your project (a quality one) is really important, and worth doing whether or not people have to download the game to play it. To clarify on my second comment, though, only you can decide whether an HTML5 (I assume) version of the game is worth the license fee. I didn't want you to feel locked into that decision by me for turning "someday" into "now".
> I have gotten varied opinions [...] which is good, and why I planned multiple characters in the first place.
Definitely a good choice! Different people are looking for different experiences. I'm looking forward to seeing what you've thought up!
> The subliminal message feature IS actually editable! I've been trying to figure out the best way to show this, [...]
I see! Maybe it's a little old school (and I'm sure you could find a better approach eventually) but changing the interface so that there are obvious "remove this item" and "add a new item" buttons might make it easier to realize.
I know tutorials can be an expensive suggestion, but it would be a good "eventually" goal, if you do want to flesh out the feature in the future. :P
> And sound is honestly at the top of my docket. [...] I want to do something very specific with music and binaural, [...]
Interesting! Please, feel free to take your time; I know better than most people that it's usually not worth rushing a project or feature, even moreso in a passion project.
> I love the idea of the pseudo-voiceover, even if I later decide that full voice acting will be included, [...]
I'm glad you find the idea appealing! It's a feature that really provides phenomenal value, imo. Across the board, indie and (older) AAA titles stuck with it for good reason - when it works, it just works!
As for later, I think a proper voiceover would be great. However, from what I hear, it gets expensive and complicated very quickly; it's most likely only worth investigating once most of the game is effectively finished and set in stone.
> And agreed about character stills, too! The more the better.
Definitely! :3
You've got a good design right now; I know I've already said so, but it bears repeating. I hope you can find a suitable artist who can refine your vision into the reality you seek!
On that note - I actually wrote my second comment when I realized you might prefer to use that money for commissions rather than licensing. ;P
> Which brings me to my final thing, which is, THANK YOU AGAIN!
I'm glad you appreciate it! It's rare for me to find a project like this; one in a niche I enjoy, and one where my money can make a real difference. (Plus, it was really late on payday when I tried it out, so it was an easier impulse to follow through on. ;p)
> Again, thank you, and please let me know if you have any other ideas, critique, or suggestions!
I didn't receive a notification about your response, and I don't think Itch has private messages. I'm happy to give feedback on anything you'd like to share (or just chat) on Matrix: @extend.unpack:matrix.org
Otherwise, I'll be following your progress, and may leave a comment now and then as I do so. Good luck! :3
Oh boi, finally got my hands on this new version! I'm glad that you fixed that 5 minutes spiral bug and I finally was able to finish it. Welp, you are still awesome and I really want you to continue, thank you for your work, hope to see you soon again!
You know who am I? Well, I am the guy who posted a comment 3 days ago but that's basicly it, I am not sure what are you talking about, but you are welcome!
Sorry! I thought you were one of my playtesters-I think three days ago you caught this game before it was technically "released!" Thanks so much, and I'm really glad it's been helping you sleep!
So, just played this on a bit of a whim - It was nice, but.. It would have been nice to have gotten a little bit of a CW with Cobra's themes? (and, like, this is coming from a 'CWs are just A Thing this sort of content should have' mindset. Also, um.. I get wanting to advertise your game, but it'd be nice to have that asked outside of trance. ^-^;
But yeah, other than that, it was nice. I do have some feedback other than the above, but I'll save it for if you want it. It's nothing major. ^-^
That makes a lot of sense! I'll add a content warning text file in the next build with summaries of each route, I think that helps a lot. I want to be as clear and fair in every suggestion with this game, and I took a bit of a risk with the Cobra bit, which is why I have such specific wording of "circles you deem fit" and things like that. But it's hard to do that while writing a character that's an asshole... A content warning page makes sense as the fix!
And please, DM me on Twitter with your feedback, I'd love to hear it!
Edit: (and I'm an asshole for not including this in the original bit) I'm really sorry that made you uncomfortable! That's never my intention with the game, and I hope everything is ok! I included the bit from Jen about "being able to wake up whenever you choose" to help make sure no toes get stepped on, but I'm already adding the content warning page, and I'll add in more reinforcement for that, too! Thank you!
Thanks! I've added a plan to make an HTML5 version which should let it be played on android and chromebook. I just need to cover the cost of the license and domain! This project will always be 100% free, so when the website and HTML5 version depend on donations and how long I can scrounge up the money myself, too.
That's great. I definitely going to donate you some money in the end of this month.
Also I have a suggestion: How about adding something that forces you to look in the center like in this game https://organa.itch.io/hypnoyourself-clicker, because I often find my eyes wander around.
Wish you luck!
P.S. Sorry for my poor English I am still learning it, hope my text is readable
Thank you so much! And that's a good idea. I originally had the number be in the direct center of the screen, I might move it back down there.
And thanks for pointing out the game! I like the idea of focusing on the clock hands and that keeps your eyes on the center of the screen. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I'll get to work! Thanks!
I was happy to try out what looked like a simple Flash-style game, but this exceeded all my expectations! It really shows how much time, effort, and love you put into this game. Even in the short time I've spent playing so far, it's really impressed me and I'm so glad I took the time to try it out.
Really love the shopping with points mechanic and the way you unlock different hypnotists by completing tasks. It's a very engaging way to play and got me hooked already. King Cobra is definitely my favorite 'tist so far and I'm eager to keep going and unlock all the content!
Thank you so much!!! Similar to your surprise, I never expected to get so much praise from my first launch of this game! I've spent a lot of time trying to make all the mechanics work together, and making sure the game itself is fun. I called this a demo because I wanted to see if that core loop was fun enough to build the rest of the game, and I'm very glad it is! Thank you for the feedback, and rest assured more is on the way!
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Comments
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whenever I play, the game crashes after going through some of the dialogue. when I go back in, it gets through a couple more lines, and then crashes again. do you know how to fix this? it's unplayable at the moment :/
I am getting the same problem
After a long day of figuring out what the hell was causing it, this should be fixed now! Try re-downloading and let me know if you still have problems~
I've re-uploaded the game, things seem to be fixed on my end. Could you try again?
Sorry I am still getting the same crashes. I haven't played previous versions so I couldn't tell you if its because of the update or my pc
it seems to be working for me now (i got through the dialogue that comes at 150 clicks with no crashes)! thank you!
Wow I really loved the most recent update, Wisper was so cute and really hit me personally. I hope you add more stuff to the already established characters after you add the new ones of course. Love your work and thank you so much!
I've been playing since 1.1 and it's great seeing the game getting better each and every update!
Keep up the good work!
Amazing game, I absolutely love it.
Sal's last game where he asks you how many times the Yo-yo spins in a minute seems to be broken, I'm trying to click the button to change the number displayed, but it's not doing anything.
Also it seems pausing the game while in a dialogue softlocks it. When I click "resume" the dialogue is gone, but the background keeps moving on its own as if I was still in a dialogue
Edit: using the awakener un-softlocks it
Okay, so, Autofire doesn't work for me. Could've been patched after I downloaded it (I got this a bit back, not sure if there's been a patch since). Easy fix, I just weighed down my spacebar with a bottle. :P Got real laggy with Wisper, so I'd advise people with weaker computers to prepare for the worst cos it crashed a few times during his (?) final dialogue. Otherwise, fun to play with, was a nice distraction. Also noticed the "time dilation" trick you put in there. Pretty sneaky sis!
Still unhypnotised though. I don't think I can be, it relies on attention and my brain doesn't like to sit still. :P But it's fun to tamper with the custom text and play with it, the patterns are pretty, and the wubs are pleasant (I've looked at hypno stuff before and the noise they produced made me feel sick, but this one is pleasant, like humming machines).
Though if there was some endgame way of locking the special events (swirl and pendulum, not so much the gem) on-screen without having to constantly reactivate them would be handy. I say endgame cos then it can't be used to cheat points with.
My only real problem was the character limit to the custom text, but I think that's my fault for using sentences and not single words. :P
Hey, what's up with this? I'm not bothered by the delay, it's just strange to me that we're more than a week overdue and as far as I can find there's been no mention of it at all.
I absolutely LOVE this game! I can't wait to see more!
Also as a bit of experience sharing, while posessed by wisper, I went and got some snacks and ate them!
I think the 100 point gem event is bugged. Presumably the intent is for it to require 100 points total from the entire gem round (as opposed to 100 from a single click of it which there simply isn't enough time for), but it will not complete even when the value of the last click reaches 14 (as 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14 = 105), and I have not satisfied the objective even reaching 17 or 18.
This has been fixed! Thank you for pointing it out, it completely flew by my playtesters.
A couple of things.
First, the big one: I don't think autofire should be a powerup you have to buy. Not for something like this. I think that autofire should be a starting feature and active by default, and actually require going through a "Are you sure you want to do this?" prompt to turn off. I get you wanted interaction, but you need to account for repetitive motion strain being a thing. At the absolute minimum you need to spell out that it's there, possibly by making it a forced first purchase. But IMO it should be a default option.
Second. the timing needed to score 100 points in one round on King Cobra's "Simon Says" gem is perhaps a bit too tight. I'm frankly surprised I was able to pull it off.
Other than that, the game is fun.
That's absolutely understandable about the autofire! I can make some adjustments to make it more clear it's an option. I don't think it needs to be automatic, though, as you can use either the mouse or the spacebar to get to the amount of points needed to buy it. It's available from the start as the first option in the shop.
And there was a bug with the King Cobra's 100 points threshold, which has been fixed now!
Thank you so much for the feedback!!! <3
Really love the new updates and the add 'tists! This game is a lot of fun and very relaxing, so thank you for continuing to work on and update it.
Thank you!!! I love working on this game, so I don't have plans to stop any time soon :P
hey is there any chance this will get a port to mobile devices? It seems like the concept would still work
There is a mobile-friendly web version over on vinyldragon.com/hypnoscreen ! I don't have plans to make a mobile-specific version, though, unless there's enough interest in that!
Today I noticed that the pendulum event doesn't seem to work in this update. Every time I click on the icon it just disappears without triggering the event
Should be fixed. Sorry for not replying before, thank you!
I played this today and it's great! The inductions worked super well for me and I love the idea of having colour schemes for each character, and King Cobra forcing you to use Kaa eyes to do his tasks
However, I did encounter problems
First is, it'd be great if in the options menu along with Awakener there was Induction, Jen would use her original induction to bring you down. That'd help achieve trance quickly ^^
Second, it's annoying being told you can't look away from Sal's yoyo and having to read their text at the same time. Same with King Cobra's eyes at the end, you can't follow it and read at the same time
Third is more characters but this is in demo so it's fine ^^
Fourth, an option to summon Sal's yoyo after finishing all his tasks. That way you can submit super easily to him
Fifth, more tests for Jen. She is the hypnosis scientist after all, and currently the only test is the affect on how you perceive time. Although again, it's a demo so I'm guessing you're planning on adding more
Otherwise, I love the game. Good work ^^
If you go to the "tist" menu, and flip the switch, you can replay all of the inductions you've unlocked with each character! Including Jen's first inductions :P
I get the issue with reading and following. One day, I'll try looking into voice acting, as it seems like the best fix. But unfortunately, this may be a necessary evil for now...
More characters (and more inductions for existing characters) are on the way!
And the issue with Sal's yoyo dissapearing has been solved, thank you so much!!
(And sorry for the late response :P)
After having played the 1.2 update: It's pretty good! I like the new character quite a lot (despite me not really being into guys), and the new inductions are great. His personality and humor was funny and I liked seeing him grew more confident. My only complaints are the "Back and forth... back and forth" objective is too vague, and I'm not even sure how I got it. Also, it would be nice to be able to skip the 2-3 minutes of waiting during Sal's "A Fun Game" test.
A possible suggestion I have for the future if you want to add adult content is to have Dr. Faustus give you a consent form (an item you can pick from the shop that lets you enable/disable adult content), which could go great with the theme of the game not forcing you into doing stuff you don't want.
Thank you so much! Sal is a personal favorite, I'm glad you liked him too~
Good calls about the changes to him, I'll take them into consideration, thank you so much!
And that idea of a consent form is REALLY good! It's 100% how I'll put in adult content later on. Thank you so so so much! (and sorry for the late response :P)
Wonderful concept done well! I went into this expecting a cute, short experience... and found myself still at it way longer than I expected. I'm enamored (or perhaps entranced) with how effective this was <3
My only real feedback right now:
*The voice noises can be a little startlingly loud at first. I'd definitely been snapped out of it once or twice due to the suddenness of it. Though that didn't bother me as much the more I played. (Edit: I guess I was so into it I didn't realize there was a volume control for this. Oops!)
*After finishing Sal's part, the pendulum event doesn't trigger anymore :( I think it'd be cute to change the pendulum to his yo-yo after finishing his part (or maybe you did, and that's why it didn't function properly?)
Otherwise, I really look forward to more content! I'm sure it's only due to my own thoughts and nothing else c.c
Kudos!
~A fur way too embarrassed to use his regular account for this
Version 1.2
Feedback on improvements
Maybe I was just in a better headspace today, but I suspect you did a really good rebalance of the pendulum minigame! I was a little concerned when I realized I'd have to play it to see Sal's content, but it really was completely painless and quite relaxing.
Now that you've got it in a comfortably playable state, however, I realize I kinda missed the original point: I found myself looking at the center ring and waiting for the pendulum to meet it, rather than tracking the pendulum. To polish that minigame a little more, perhaps you could try making the center ring transparent (about 40-60% opacity) and simply pulse its opacity between minimum near the edges of the screen, and maximum near the center? With that setup, the center ring only comes into focus when it matters, and I'm sure you could play with the effect to make it quite interesting.
I didn't notice it last time, but the "wave tone" as you've called it is a really great addition to the game! In fact, all of the audio in this build is just really well assembled. The way the music fades in and out as one switches between clicking in the spiral generator (leaving said wave tone in focus) and navigating menus is a very nice touch.
Also, I like that note about there being "many, MANY" more future experiments with Dr. Faustus. ;3
Regressions, issues, and further suggestions
You really didn't leave me much to complain about! All of this stuff is fairly shallow, you've solved most of my problems already. ;3
I think I found a couple of typos - I hope I wrote them down correctly!
- diologue -> dialogue
- uninturrupted -> uninterrupted
I think it'd be worth changing the switch between progress and scene replays, as it'll be hard for new players to tell what it's supposed to "do".
I found that, if I read dialogue at a comfortable "speaking" pace, the printing would usually beat me to the end by a comfortable 30% margin. It might be worth experimenting with a slower default print speed.
The music will keep on fading in and out during interactions where the spiral isn't going in the background - just clicking on the dialogue box will do it.
Finally, I think that some of the "focused dialogue" (single statements in bold) could benefit from being centered in the text box. Similar to how some others have commented, having text so far from the center of the screen can somewhat distract from the main focus of an interaction.
Sal
Wow, just wow! Sal's whole design and personality is just great! As his initial uncertainty gave way to a more dominant streak, he was able to push buttons I didn't know I had! I don't have a Twitter, so please, pass along my compliments to limewah for their part in that. :3
The moments where he'd turn from his relaxed pose to directly face me head on were quite striking. The first time that happened - well, let's just say it was an impactful and surprising moment. Well done! :3
In fact, all of his character stills were masterfully done! Likewise, please, pass along my compliments to Gooeyroc! All of the art I've seen so far has seemed perfect for Hypnoscreen - I hope to see more of them in the near future~! ;3
(I also really like how they managed to capture Dr. Faustus in the promo tile - but that's not related to Sal ;P)
Final thoughts
Lots of exclamation marks and catfaces in this one! :3
I'm really liking the progress you've made in just one month. I don't think I can properly express how proud you're making me (a random internet stranger) with how well you've been doing with your work on Hypnoscreen. Seriously! I don't want to inflate your ego too much, though, so I'll leave it at that. ;3
Always looking forward to more content,
Extend, Unpack
(PS: You titled this release as 1.1! The filename is right, though.)
A lot of people have already said some of the things I've noticed (events cancelling auto-spiral in dialogue, spiral lags toward the center with slow spiral + auto-click (could be a pc issue), etc.).
One thing I'd suggest is labeling the quest/session switch in the tists menu. I thought it was a progress bar since it was under the tist progression and I thought the induction stuff Faust mentioned hadn't been implemented (and I was a bit out of it from staring at a spiral, haha). I didn't realize there were actually inductions until after I finished all of Faust's quests. Because of this I sequence broke, in a way - I bought the crystal and got my King's introduction, and later on Faust told me about the crystal + naga she saw around the lab.
The last thing I'd suggest is telling the user the button commands (fullscreen and "go back") first. I accidentally skipped a text box while navigating menus during the tutorial.
Despite the issues I and others have stated, I really enjoyed the experience. I look forward to future updates. :)
Good suggestions, thank you so much! I'll probably add in an indicator for the quest/session switch, and your notes about the tutorial have been noted. The other issues have been fixed!
Thanks so much (and sorry for the late response)!
This game is really fun, and i cant wait for more to be added. i've noticed a few problems however,
1. with low speed and fast clicking, the game seems to lag
2. if an event thingy pops up while in dialogue and is clicked, after it ends the shapes stop appearing automatically and appear on click
3. not really a problem but more of a suggestion, it would be good to be able to submit an rgb value into the custom colour thing rather than having to select it on the graph thingy
also one question. what does the thing you buy that says something like "you dont know what this is but you should buy it" do?
Thank you so much! The second issue you listed has been fixed, and I'm always working to try and speed up the game. The idea of a RGB value input is a really good idea, also, thank you!!!
And (although the name of that has been changed by this point) there's only one way to find out~~
(Sorry for the late response!)
I LOVE King Cobra. His attitude fits my weaknesses almost perfectly.
Of his interactions though, my least favorite was being told I could easily be replaced.
It was really cool that his missions made you use certain settings to match his eyes!
I had some trouble playing with slower spirals, the game would visibly slow down when a lot of circles were on screen.
The outward setting causes distracting flashing on the sides of my screen, since it doesn't grow big enough before disappearing
Events are... weird. I can't click on them unless I stop the spiral and move the mouse, so I usually leave them off. Maybe if you could interact with them using space bar, it wouldn't be that bad?
I liked the spiral, but I found myself staring just off center from it, because I found the chunky shape of the center too distracting/nonhypnotic
As for the gem, maybe hitting space bar could just make it shimmer without giving points. I feel like the visual has potential, it just requires too much thinking to use. It looks really really cool as it's fading out though,
Some way to save presets would be really nice. I came up with one with various shades of red and gray, to make the gem more effective, it would be nice to have the option to save it for later.
I was already planning on sharing the game, when I got told to... and boy do I genuinely love being hypnotized into doing something I already wanted to do! I have a certain friend I think might really love this!
Thanks for all the feedback and love! King Cobra still absolutely needs plenty of tweaking, but I'm glad to see you enjoyed him!
I'm honestly aware of the problems with slower spiral speeds and (some of) the problems with the outward shapes. A lot of the problems come down to things like different monitor sizes/aspect ratios, but rest assured, I'm testing plenty of things out to make sure it gets ironed out!
The events are weird, I agree, and I think a big problem with that is that the mouse gets hidden after some clicking. I'm planning on removing or changing that feature, which should help!
I also absolutely get that about the spiral. All the assets, including that spiral, were generated by myself, because I couldn't directly source a high quality enough spiral. In a future update, I plan on digging back into my software and messing around with it to see if I can make something smoother and more hypnotic, but your notes are super appreciated! For a temporary "fix," try looking at the corner of the black part of the spiral, as it loops around and around, always pulling in the attention from your eye...
Saved presets are also absolutely going to be in there!
And I'm glad you felt that way about that last little bit! That was always the intention with that, and the rest of the game-I want to make sure people are only playing and doing things because they enjoy them. Otherwise, it's not a very fun game, in my eyes!
Thanks again for the feedback, and keep your eyes open for updates! (Like I said in the update notes, next version's gonna be up on the 19th!)
I love the game so far. I played the demo when it came out two weeks ago and was excited to see a new update so soon after. However, here are some bugs or user-unfriendly behaviors I've found:
-Entering custom text and pressing space will exit the menu, but "buffer" the space so next time you try to enter text it will put it before the next character (even if the next keystroke is shift). Makes entering multi-word text (like "BREATHE DEEP") more difficult than it aught to be
-Shift+R works even while entering custom text, makes entering text like "BREATHE DEEP" while holding shift reset your progress
-Resetting your progress while entering a custom word to appear on screen causes text to appear on screen even after resetting, and the player cannot turn off or edit this text until they buy the text menu again
-Attempting to enter a character over maximum number of characters (for instance, appending the string "BREATHE DEEP") buffers it, so writing a character to the next word causes both to appear (again, even if the next keystroke is shift)
-Custom color preset defaults to last preset used, overwriting user custom if they change off of it to either Black and White (left arrow) or Faustus (right arrow)
-The color preset menu loops but the custom color setting does not have a visible left arrow button (even though clicking where it aught to be does, in fact, scroll left)
-Heart shape set to flow outward causes distracting color flashing at the bottom corners of the screen, doesn't seem to flow far enough out so jumps between colors abruptly as rings get deleted
-A spiral, pendulum, or gem disappearing while a character is talking causes the colors to stop automatically cycling
These are all nitpicks, of course. I really love where the game is going and I can't wait for the next update. Keep it up!
Nitpicks are appreciated! I see it as people saying "I like this project and want it to be improved and expanded upon," which is exactly how I feel about it, too! And that kind of validation is always nice.
I never considered or encountered all the problems you're explaining with the custom text, and I really appreciate you pointing it out! In general, your feedback is heard, and I'm planning on eventually reworking the whole system to be a bit smoother.
Saving custom color presets is another thing I absolutely have planned! There's a couple different ways of implementing it, and I just need to decide which would work best...
That's weird that clicking left does scroll left, even though it disappears. The way it was originally put together, it could only scroll right infinitely, but stays on custom to help make sure you always purposefully change away from it. I'll have to take a look at it, thanks for pointing it out!
I appreciate you pointing out the bit about the heart going outward, too! I think in testing, I used the diamond and circle to make sure it looked smooth, but the heart is thinner at the bottom than those two, so it makes sense that problem lied under the surface. (I'm personally not a big fan of the outward shapes, so I'm not nearly as aware when problems arise from them. Thanks to you and everyone else for pointing them out!)
The color cycling is another good catch and easy fix. Thank you!
Glad you appreciate the game, I very much appreciate the feedback, and keep your eyes open! I hope you (and everyone else) enjoys this project the more it goes on~
This is going to be a little more brief than last time; I just wanted to provide feedback on some of the major changes in version 1.1. Since I'm not that interested in King Cobra, I'll be waiting for more content with Dr. Faustus (or someone else) before doing a full playthrough/critique of the game again.
By the way, I think you may have missed my last response. ;3
Background Music
It's quite good, and is at a good default volume to truly be called background music. Well done! I look forward to more tracks; one thing I regret quite a bit is listening to songs I liked in a never-ending loop! ;)
An interesting idea I'm sure you've already considered: giving characters their own, unique themes during scripted interactions would definitely help frame the player's first (and subsequent) interactions with each character.
Depending on how ambitious you want to get with your audio engineering for this game, it might also be interesting to eventually incorporate layered audio tracks (especially during or between scripted scenes) in order to punctuate the specific mood of each interaction with a character. That's firmly in the realm of "polish," though, and probably isn't a top priority right now.
Dialogue / Voiceover
The pseudo-voiceover is a good starting point, but it could definitely use some work. :3
It seems like the audio snippet is just sampled in a loop while text is being printed; the current approach feels a bit weird. In my experience, many games will sample the audio snippet for every character printed. That said, you may have tested that approach and found it a little too frenetic and distracting; I could definitely understand that.
You can get a lot more impact by inserting pauses between sentences; for example, that semicolon and comma I just inserted would be great places for noticeable (but short) breaks. In addition, sentences spoken very deliberately or with much haste could be printed at different speeds and with a more forceful (or otherwise modified) variant of the usual snippet.
Playing with text formatting, print speed, and the voice snippet can really help add personality to dialogue! Little details like that are quite satisfying, and help indicate the extra time and effort the developer put into the game to make the experience that much better!
By the way: depending on the tools you're using, you might be able to write helper functions (something like
) to help make scripting lots of dialogue less tedious.
Other Thoughts
- It's a bit too easy to accidentally skip text; if you click while text is printing, it should skip to the end of the text, not proceed to the next message.
- I've noticed the game will shrink and no longer fills the entire screen if my monitor goes to sleep while it's open. (That happened while writing this comment, heh.)
Thank you for staying a fan, unpack! Sorry for not responding to your last post, I think my plan was to contact you at the thing you gave me, and I never ended up doing that, lol. I'll respond to both here, and try to remember to actually contact you directly this time!
Thank you about the music! A lot of my work for this build was actually creating it and making sure it fit the mood, was "backgroundy" enough, and also that it actually was enjoyable to listen to. I absolutely plan on having more tracks, including layered and timed stuff! But I have no idea how much of that will actually come to fruition-I get way too ambitious about sound design, and still need to work on the skills to back that up, lol. One way or another, though, you won't be listening to the same tune over and over again!
I like your note about the audio! I programmed it in the way that felt it made the most sense to once again stay in the background, but I get that the way it's implemented may make it actually distracting. I'll toy around with how it works and toss it to my playtesters to see what they think!
I absolutely plan on changing the entire text system, too-
right now it's honestly fairly lazily done, with just a script or two...but I want to have as much characterization in the game as possible, so italics and bold and all that nonsense will absolutely be present!I've experienced that problem too-the same thing happens if you focus your screen on something else before the game can launch. It's a weird problem I'm familiar with and could talk about too much, and am not totally sure how to fix it, but it's on the docket! As a temporary fix, try hitting f4 when that happens, forcing the game to go into windowed mode, and then hitting f4 again to fullscreen it.
All the notes are once again super appreciated and taken into account! I hope you continue to enjoy this as I continue to update it!
The lack of a response is no trouble; I understand you've had a lot on your mind! That said, Itch isn't great for lengthy back-and-forth; that's why I offered an alternative. ;P
No rush, though! I'm content offering my feedback where useful.
I can sympathize over technical ambition - I've bitten off more than I could chew many times in personal and professional projects. I'm glad to hear you'll be making the attempt! It'll be cool to see what you make of it.
Referring to the dialogue systems: I look forward to seeing their improvements! I can definitely sympathize with the process that leads up to getting something done the cheap way to save time. ;3
Good to know there's a workaround! I'm sorry that I can't help narrow down the issue much further than that; I'm not a game developer by trade, so I don't know enough about game engines to debug something odd like that.
That said... I may actually have some info that could help mitigate the issue. Most games I play use a Windows API (that I had to Google, as I'm not familiar with it) to prevent the computer/monitor from sleeping until the game is exited. It wouldn't work in an HTML5 version, but there's probably some other solution you could use from a browser; I believe YouTube may do something like that.
Finally - I'm glad that my feedback is useful! I'd very much like to help you succeed. :3
Edit: Ooh, I like the new art!
Never thought I'd comment on something like this, but here we go. I found this through discovering that there was a furry tab on Itch.io. This one caught my eye, because I've had a passing interest in hypnosis for quite a few years now. Trying out videos on and off. I've not ever been able to go too deeply into trance. I think because of 3 reasons. First, I've never given a 'tist's videos enough time to really build up a level of trust. Second, I've always went for the advanced videos straight away, stuff I simply do not have the skills for. And Third, with videos, I always feel like I'm on the clock. Videos are very non-interactive, and therefore, I always feel pressured during the induction period of the video because I know that I am on a time limit before the payload portion of the video starts.
Most of those roadblocks went away here. On the trust thing, the majority of that issue is just solved by time with the file, which will never be completely solved on the first run through with a 'tist for me. A couple of minor things that help is the talk about consent, and instructions on how to leave at the very beginning. Another thing that helped, with me anyway, is my interest in furries, and my favorite color being purple, which means that I really dig Faustus' design. As well as her attitude.
There is nothing really advanced here either, no fancy payload(don't think I didn't notice the suggestion to give feedback, I don't mind following through with that though). Just good old fashioned relaxation, so far anyway.
I think what really helped me though, was the interactivity of the file. It didn't matter to me if I happened to get distracted, or I started to accidentally wake up out of trance, I could breathe, take my time, and do what I needed to do to get back in. They say that all hypnosis is self hypnosis, nothing really drives that point home more that having direct control over how often the screen changes color. One suggestion I might offer however, is possibly an easier way to back out of a dialogue sequence. Later on it might be nice to be able to go "Oh, I had the right mindset for this, but I got distracted and now I lost it, may I go back to staring at shapes mindlessly for a while?" Something in the escape menu would probably work,or perhaps just something as simple as backspace, possibly twice for confirmation?
Now then, A couple criticisms. I think the ability to customize the notification sound when a task is complete would be a decent addition. As it stands now, the noise was a little harsh to my ears, and brought me out of trance a decent amount.
I know other people have said it before, but I'll also say it. I think Cobra's colors are a little harsh at first, but I think it's mostly that they are so drastically different from Faustus. I think that could be mitigated with more content, and having Cobra be unlocked next to someone who has a similar color scheme. The reason I say this is because while switching to him did bring me out of trance, it didn't take too much effort to get back in, once I got used to his color scheme anyway. But that'll have to come once more content happens.
One suggestion I have is that it might be interesting to play around with a mode where you don't have to choose what dialogue section happens. Again, this would be more interesting once there is more content, but I think it might be interesting if I could go "For this session, I want to have X, Y, or Z dialogue pop up at a variable frequency." I personally would only use such functionality once I have already gone through those dialogues once. It's the trust thing that's gotta be built up for me. Totally up to the dev though, it's their game after all.
And now, a question for the creator, since I notice an active dev(always a fantastic sign by the way). I note that this game has the tag of "nsfw". Is that purely because people have a tendency of viewing hypnosis that way, or do you plan on taking this thing more in that direction at some point? I'm not saying I would either support, nor reject such a file, or lack thereof. I just would like to know what sorts of things would be included here before I choose whether or not to follow a project like this in the long run.
I'm really glad I could be (one of) your introduction(s) to hypnosis! I really think it's a fun thing that's not explicitly explored nearly enough, especially in the context of self-hypnosis. I try to make this game as player-paced and beginner-friendly as possible, so I'm ecstatic to hear you feel this way!
And your suggestions and criticisms are also super appreciated! I plan on completely removing the alert feature for the next build to go back to automatic induction starts, while also including the bit you're talking about where you can exit out of an induction and re-enter it any time, at your pace. Again, despite being a game about hypnosis, player choice is an important aspect! (hence the fact there's a million toggles in the game, lol)
As a character designer, I always like to make characters that are as wildly different from each other as possible, in terms of both visual style and personality. A lot of the feedback I've gotten is about the stark contrast between Faustus and King Cobra, and I really appreciate you saying so specifically about the visuals, too! I'm going to see if there's a way I can meld things together more for future builds, or see if adding more character variety either muddies the pot or makes the contrast less surprising.
And thank you for asking about nsfw content! It's a big thing on the back of my mind in making this game, and I'd love to talk about it for a bit. For a TLDR (which if you've read this far, you probably don't need), the answer is maybe! But here's the longer and more in depth answer:
I'm always going to include the 18+ warning in this and any other hypnosis project I make just because my interest in hypnosis is tied to a kink, and I think just that connection means a level of consent needs to be present. Even if I decide to not have any sexual content, that'll stay in this and any other future projects like it!
My original (and current) plan was to have sexual content in the game, once it's fleshed out enough as a game. I wanted it to be clearly seen as a hypnosis game before a porn game, basically. I do plan to include nsfw content in the game, but I'm interested in hearing what someone like you who (maybe) is more hesitant about that would think. I've planned on including a sort of way to "opt-out" before and during any sort of sexual content (in addition to the many other "opt-outs" that already exist lol), but beyond that, it is planned. If you're not interested in that, I won't be offended by you not following this project. However, if you have input as someone who's interested in the game through a non-sexual lens, I would absolutely love to hear it!
In terms of our conversation, I've taken a few days to think on your response. I am currently undecided on if I would partake in any nsfw content that would come from this. But regardless of if I do choose to do so or not. The planned presence of nsfw content does make things awkward in terms of sharing this game with others. Like, what am I going to say? "Oh, I don't partake in that portion." idk that people would really believe that. This is already a weird enough activity as it is, throwing that complication into it makes it difficult.
A friend of mine who I've been discussing this thing with brings up something I should ask you. What is it exactly that is motivating you to make this? You have said that hypnosis is at least tied to a kink for you, but how much of that is your motivation for making this game?
In terms of the new update. I did check it out(Why not? at least until I decide). Sal was definitely an experience. And one I thoroughly enjoyed. I went through the cast of the other 2 again before I jumped into his, so I was definitely pretty deep under. His similarity to Cobra definitely made the transition from character much easier than Faustus to Cobra. I definitely went deeper than I've been able to go before. Towards the end of his script though, there was a typo. I believe he said "loose" instead of "lose". I could totally be mistaken though, I was pretty deep.
This game is just amazing, and seriously has potential to be a masterpiece! Since you asked for feedback on the game, I figured I'd give my 2¢:
Likes:
The concept is great, it's got a lot of functionality for an early build.
The fact that the game asks you to "advertise" it is pretty cool and definitely in-line with what a "game that tries to hypnotize you" should do.
The writing is great. I like the humor and the way the game always leaves it up to you if you want to do something.
Dr. Jen Faustus is amazing, I think Pinkanator's comment summed it up very well.
Dislikes:
I'm not a huge fan of the snake guy. Extend.Unpack and Mirage Oasis's comments do a good job of explaining why.
Suggestions?:
1. More trances, and more depth in the trances. I love Spiral Clicker and always wished Helen inducted you in more ways than just the 5 inductions she currently has. Also, including "triggers" and conditioning could be fun.
2. Sexual Content? Having Dr. Jen Faustus naked, using trances to make the player masturbate, etc. would be amazing.
Also, do you have a Patreon or something of the sort where people can contribute to you? I wouldn't mind helping this game's growth!
Thank you so much! There will definitely be plenty more trances as we go on, with more trances for existing characters and more characters to come!
I absolutely get preferring Faustus over King Cobra (secretly she's my favorite too), I just wanted to have different characters to appeal to different tastes. Feel free to ignore his content as updates come, no harm no foul!
Sexual content is a probably but still a maybe! It was absolutely in my original plan, but I want to make sure the game itself is fun enough on its own before I decide to dive into sexual content.
And for supporting, thank you so much!!! I don't have a patreon or subscribestar or anything set up yet, just because I don't know how long I'll keep at this project and others, and I don't want to nail myself to any agreements (or others) until I get some more work under my belt, and am sure about a more consistent schedule. But if you'd like to donate through itch.io, or my ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/vinyldragon), I'd appreciate it a ton! Thanks so much again!
Very fun so far, can't wait to see more!
Thank you, more to come! <3
Thank you so much! Just about all "advertising" for this game is through word-of-mouth to those who would be interested. I hope your friends enjoy, too!
wow this was super good, i always wanted more games like this in the hypno community.
Thank you! And absolutely agreed, which is why I decided to make this, heh. Keep an eye out for future updates!
Shift and R at the Same time.
Thank you!
As skullman said-shift and r can restart! but that said, in the next build the inductions will be able to be played and replayed anytime once they've been unlocked, so look forward to that!
I came from the same site that mirage and pinkanator came from. Hypnohub. And i gotta say i very much enjoyed your creation. I'm anxiously looking forward to the full release.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I am excited to make more too, honestly...
Well, never a better time to make an account...
This is WILDLY promising. This is something I really hoped would eventually get made ever since I realized that Spiral Clicker had trances written into it. I thought those were well written, but Faustus's are far and away better. The basic visual is also just legitimately amazing-I was never quite sure if the trails I was seeing were generated by the game or just my eyes fuzzing up, but they were a STRONG effect anyway. I don't trance super easily usually, but this definitely worked.
I'm gonna echo a lot of other people's tunes, though: While Faustus is near perfect, King Cobra is...underwhelming? Overwhelming? Kind of both? His minigame is way too hard to do at all without breaking immersion, and his vibe is complete whiplash to hers. I don't know if he just needs reworked, or if in a full version it would just need to be made sure that you can avoid characters you have no interest in one way or another.
THANK YOU! I worked hard on the spiral "engine" of the game before anything else (including a couple scrapped prototypes), and I'm very glad it's worked so well for people. There shouldn't be any trails on the visuals, at least hopefully-so we'll just say it was your eyes getting a bit too sleepy, heh.
And understandable about not liking King Cobra! I wanted to have multiple characters since the beginning for the specific reason that you could then "pick and choose" what to do. Obviously I can only put in a finite amount of content, so if you don't play through X character's route, there's not much I can do to extend the game for just you. But your thoughts are heard and appreciated! And thank you for sharing this game on the hypnopics forums, greatly appreciated!!!
After 5 years in the hypno community, this is what I've been desperately waiting for. Trying hard not to drift out into the background spiral of this page rn, but after finishing Dr Faustus's experiment, and still having more to enjoy, I can't begin to recommend this enough.
I've already fallen deeply in love with Faustus herself and her eccentricities, her design is adorably hot, the trances themselves are wonderfully powerful and unique, and I'm so excited to try more.
To echo some of the feedback already given, I too would suggest some optional background music, I usually find it pushes trance just that extra bit over the edge.
In personal issue territory, the game started to lag to all hell under certain situations, testing the 256 speed option, using text with the spiral online, and the game straight up froze and bugged out when I finally came to my senses during the experiment and took quite a bit of hopelessly clicking before it woke up. I'm going to peg these issues all as system related though, this laptop's a bit crappy, and for the most part the game ran great.
Another note, I did have to accidentally wipe my progress after starting the snake quest by mistake while still woozy, panic jumping to the awakener, then realizing I couldn't get the quest intro back. Not that I mind playing the game again, but just to point out.
In any case, looking forward to jumping back in tomorrow, and I'm so looking forward to more! Best of luck in your efforts ^w^
THANK YOU!!! The inspiration for this game was me constantly wanting something like it in the world, but it kept not existing (which, note to anyone who wants to steal this idea/feels took it from them before they could make it somehow, PLEASE MAKE IT and I'll be the first to play!)
It's interesting that the game straight-up froze, I've never had that happen before. There are some problems with the more extreme spiral speeds (both lower and higher) that I'm currently working on fixing, so thanks for pointing that out!
I've also reworked the way you play inductions so you won't have to lose all your progress just to replay something. The full reset is more of a placeholder mechanic than something long-term.
Thank you so much, keep it up with the feedback, and thank you for spreading the word on HypnoHub!
Great to hear on both counts, as I say I'm sure it was probably something on my end, but hope it goes well. I just finished skimming through Faustus again so I could enjoy my King, and it still took a while to load after clicking after "5 minutes" (more like 20 really). If there's meant to be a message that tells you how long it really was, I haven't seen it both times.
Real glad to see progress on inductions too, I was so happy to sink into them that I'll be sure to revisit them over and over >w<
One new critique I'd point out based on my further input, that I'm not entirely sure how you'd fix tbh, the red of the gem and the yellow of the snake eyes really melt together, and not exactly in a good way. That might just be me though. Gem itself is reaaal pretty >w<
This is a really fun game. I love the gameplay loop of running the spiral to earn points then buying more stuff in the shop to spiral even more.
It was a good idea to make many of the unlockable items options you can turn on or off, as well as customizable. I personally preferred the auto-clicker to manually clicking.
I also liked the spiral and pendulum minigames. They were a small deviation from the norm which helped stop me drifting off as easily. The gemstone felt a little intrusive since it took up a huge part of the center of the spiral. Would be nice if I could turn it off individually.
In my opinion, I found Dr. Faustus to be a lovely tist to submit to. Level-headed and accepting with enough eccentricity to be interesting but not too much to be distracting. Her experiments were simple relaxation and focus trances which I really liked. I would love to do more of her experiments.
Her theme was also a nice palette choice especially with random colours on. The muted colours make the sky blue really stand out whenever it appears. Reminds me of ripples in a pond on a rainy day.
I found the snake to be less interesting. It was a very sudden shift in aesthetic and personality. The golden textbox and the offset, more imposing portrait were visually louder than I was expecting. His personality was also very demanding off the bat while I'd built up a familiarity with the more easygoing Doctor. Perhaps that's just my personality though, or that I didn't have as much time to build rapport with him.
All in all though, I really really loved what you did here! I can't wait to see more!
(also, is there a way I can submit bug reports? I noticed two very minor bugs at the end of the game)
Thank you so much!!! I agree with a lot of your recommendations-options like toggling the minigames are all going to be included in the build this Friday!
And I'm really glad you liked Dr. Faustus (don't tell anyone, she's my favorite so far too). I've always planned on including multiple characters in the game, and I wanted to have at least two available for this demo-some people have told me they're excited to see more of King Cobra, while others echo your thoughts. Hopefully the more that comes, the better!
And feel free to DM me on twitter @vinyl-dragon about the bugs, or email me at endraconic@gmail.com!
Hey, I'm glad you're making this game. It definitely seems like a labor of love. I'm not usually into hypnosis, but I dabble occasionally, and this seemed interesting enough to check out. I'm glad I did!
I really like Dr. Faustus! She strikes a great, endearing balance between zany and welcoming. Her sharp but muted (dark?) character design really appeals to me. I'd describe her current content as "pleasantly relaxing", and would like to see more (and more varied!) content involving her!
On the other hand, the snake isn't quite my speed. I know there are plenty who would disagree; I imagine they could provide more helpful opinions. Regarding content warnings, when the player is about to make a decision that will enable potentially unwanted content, it might make sense to elaborate a little on just what they're getting into; you could probably do so without breaking immersion _too_ much. (Personally, it didn't really bother me, but I also generally don't get deep enough into trance to fall victim to that sort of thing... or at least, that's what I keep telling myself. ;P)
I found the pendulum and gem "minigames" to be somewhat distracting; that is, the mental effort they required to "solve" drew me out of my trance state and I ended up avoiding them entirely in the end. I can understand wanting to add a bit of variety to the game, though; I'm curious how you may end up experimenting with that goal in the future.
The subliminal message feature was a pleasant surprise. I think it would be useful to have separate controls for frequency and duration, and at some point support for custom phrase lists.
I think the game is definitely missing some kind of background sound. I think some combination of light trance music and/or simple tones/humming would be a good starting point when you get there; that said, I'm really discerning about sound, so I'd definitely prefer to be given the option to mute any background sounds if they're not to my liking.
On that note, I think some kind of basic pseudo-voiceover could be worth experimenting with. An approach like that can be cheap, flexible, and remarkably impactful when done with care. (For a high-profile example, see Undertale. :P)
Finally, I'd definitely like to see more character stills! Up to a point, the more variety you can provide, the more believable your characters will be, and the more they'll feel like people.
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Overall, you have a really solid foundation in a rare niche! I look forward to seeing more of your work; I hope my contribution helps! ;3
(PS: I recommend you try Hover or Namecheap to buy your domain, and Let's Encrypt for free and easy HTTPS to use with it! I can't recommend any hosting providers, that's outside my expertise.)
By the way... please don't feel pressured to set up a web edition of the game if you think my donation could be put to better use elsewhere.
I think having a dedicated website is important to grow your player base, but I have no idea how much value you see in buying (or upgrading) your license. Feel free to use the money for whatever you need to! :3
HOLY FUCK THANK YOU SO MUCH
I'm absolutely going to start work on a website! I didn't expect this game to do as well as it's doing so far, so I wanted to make a promise to myself that I'd put as much money as I get from the game back into it, at least until I feel it's a finished enough project (which it's not at all, yet, to me)
I'm glad for the feedback about the characters! I have gotten varied opinions about people liking or not liking either character more or less, which is good, and why I planned multiple characters in the first place. I like your idea of changing the Cobra dialogue, too, and I have some ideas in how to implement it!
I also absolutely understand the feeling about the minigames. That's another thing I've gotten varied feedback about, and I think I'll add in an option to turn them on/off after purchasing rather than removing or changing them entirely.
The subliminal message feature IS actually editable! I've been trying to figure out the best way to show this, because you're not the first person to not notice it, but you can change the text that pops up by hovering over and clicking the specific boxes. I also fully agree about the duration/frequency!
And sound is honestly at the top of my docket. I originally wanted to have it done by the demo release, but I was too indecisive (plus, I want to do something very specific with music and binaural, and that is taking probably too much time). I love the idea of the pseudo-voiceover, even if I later decide that full voice acting will be included, I think that will help add a lot to characterization.
And agreed about character stills, too! The more the better. Which brings me to my final thing, which is, THANK YOU AGAIN! I'm first going to set up the website fully (again very much thanks for your donation), and then I'll start looking at getting an artist on-call to make more quality and quantity character stills.
Again, thank you, and please let me know if you have any other ideas, critique, or suggestions!
> HOLY FUCK THANK YOU SO MUCH
Hehehe, you're welcome!
> I wanted to make a promise to myself that I'd put as much money as I get from the game back into it, [...]
I'm glad to hear that! :3
As I said before, I think having a website for your project (a quality one) is really important, and worth doing whether or not people have to download the game to play it. To clarify on my second comment, though, only you can decide whether an HTML5 (I assume) version of the game is worth the license fee. I didn't want you to feel locked into that decision by me for turning "someday" into "now".
> I have gotten varied opinions [...] which is good, and why I planned multiple characters in the first place.
Definitely a good choice! Different people are looking for different experiences. I'm looking forward to seeing what you've thought up!
> The subliminal message feature IS actually editable! I've been trying to figure out the best way to show this, [...]
I see! Maybe it's a little old school (and I'm sure you could find a better approach eventually) but changing the interface so that there are obvious "remove this item" and "add a new item" buttons might make it easier to realize.
I know tutorials can be an expensive suggestion, but it would be a good "eventually" goal, if you do want to flesh out the feature in the future. :P
> And sound is honestly at the top of my docket. [...] I want to do something very specific with music and binaural, [...]
Interesting! Please, feel free to take your time; I know better than most people that it's usually not worth rushing a project or feature, even moreso in a passion project.
> I love the idea of the pseudo-voiceover, even if I later decide that full voice acting will be included, [...]
I'm glad you find the idea appealing! It's a feature that really provides phenomenal value, imo. Across the board, indie and (older) AAA titles stuck with it for good reason - when it works, it just works!
As for later, I think a proper voiceover would be great. However, from what I hear, it gets expensive and complicated very quickly; it's most likely only worth investigating once most of the game is effectively finished and set in stone.
> And agreed about character stills, too! The more the better.
Definitely! :3
You've got a good design right now; I know I've already said so, but it bears repeating. I hope you can find a suitable artist who can refine your vision into the reality you seek!
On that note - I actually wrote my second comment when I realized you might prefer to use that money for commissions rather than licensing. ;P
> Which brings me to my final thing, which is, THANK YOU AGAIN!
I'm glad you appreciate it! It's rare for me to find a project like this; one in a niche I enjoy, and one where my money can make a real difference. (Plus, it was really late on payday when I tried it out, so it was an easier impulse to follow through on. ;p)
> Again, thank you, and please let me know if you have any other ideas, critique, or suggestions!
I didn't receive a notification about your response, and I don't think Itch has private messages. I'm happy to give feedback on anything you'd like to share (or just chat) on Matrix: @extend.unpack:matrix.org
Otherwise, I'll be following your progress, and may leave a comment now and then as I do so. Good luck! :3
Oh boi, finally got my hands on this new version! I'm glad that you fixed that 5 minutes spiral bug and I finally was able to finish it. Welp, you are still awesome and I really want you to continue, thank you for your work, hope to see you soon again!
Thank you! I think I know exactly who you are... and I have plans to keep going, absolutely!
You know who am I? Well, I am the guy who posted a comment 3 days ago but that's basicly it, I am not sure what are you talking about, but you are welcome!
Oh and also, I've found a irl use for your game. I am playing it before sleep and it was the nicest sleep times I've had in a while
Sorry! I thought you were one of my playtesters-I think three days ago you caught this game before it was technically "released!"
Thanks so much, and I'm really glad it's been helping you sleep!
So, just played this on a bit of a whim - It was nice, but.. It would have been nice to have gotten a little bit of a CW with Cobra's themes? (and, like, this is coming from a 'CWs are just A Thing this sort of content should have' mindset. Also, um.. I get wanting to advertise your game, but it'd be nice to have that asked outside of trance. ^-^;
But yeah, other than that, it was nice. I do have some feedback other than the above, but I'll save it for if you want it. It's nothing major. ^-^
That makes a lot of sense! I'll add a content warning text file in the next build with summaries of each route, I think that helps a lot. I want to be as clear and fair in every suggestion with this game, and I took a bit of a risk with the Cobra bit, which is why I have such specific wording of "circles you deem fit" and things like that. But it's hard to do that while writing a character that's an asshole... A content warning page makes sense as the fix!
And please, DM me on Twitter with your feedback, I'd love to hear it!
Edit: (and I'm an asshole for not including this in the original bit) I'm really sorry that made you uncomfortable! That's never my intention with the game, and I hope everything is ok! I included the bit from Jen about "being able to wake up whenever you choose" to help make sure no toes get stepped on, but I'm already adding the content warning page, and I'll add in more reinforcement for that, too! Thank you!
Hey! Cool game you made! Do you planning to bring it on android?
Thanks! I've added a plan to make an HTML5 version which should let it be played on android and chromebook. I just need to cover the cost of the license and domain!
This project will always be 100% free, so when the website and HTML5 version depend on donations and how long I can scrounge up the money myself, too.
That's great. I definitely going to donate you some money in the end of this month.
Also I have a suggestion: How about adding something that forces you to look in the center like in this game https://organa.itch.io/hypnoyourself-clicker, because I often find my eyes wander around.
Wish you luck!
P.S. Sorry for my poor English I am still learning it, hope my text is readable
Thank you so much! And that's a good idea. I originally had the number be in the direct center of the screen, I might move it back down there.
And thanks for pointing out the game! I like the idea of focusing on the clock hands and that keeps your eyes on the center of the screen. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I'll get to work! Thanks!
Great Job!
I was happy to try out what looked like a simple Flash-style game, but this exceeded all my expectations! It really shows how much time, effort, and love you put into this game. Even in the short time I've spent playing so far, it's really impressed me and I'm so glad I took the time to try it out.
Really love the shopping with points mechanic and the way you unlock different hypnotists by completing tasks. It's a very engaging way to play and got me hooked already. King Cobra is definitely my favorite 'tist so far and I'm eager to keep going and unlock all the content!
Thank you so much!!! Similar to your surprise, I never expected to get so much praise from my first launch of this game!
I've spent a lot of time trying to make all the mechanics work together, and making sure the game itself is fun. I called this a demo because I wanted to see if that core loop was fun enough to build the rest of the game, and I'm very glad it is!
Thank you for the feedback, and rest assured more is on the way!