Gameplay and art are very nice, the character designs are great, especially Yumi, the backgrounds are good, love the movement system and as somone who has dealt with both severe mental struggles and abuse in the past the cycle of strategic retreating and charging to manage mental energy is actually really well done and captures the feeling of fighting back against it, it's balanced very well too, and it has really good music.
I come at this game from I think a different angle than most since I have a massive phobia of mind control and mental manipulation, (I know those are content flagged, which I greatly appreciate, but I was in the headspace to deal with it and the description of it being about resisting the control rather than giving in compelled me) but being able to resist it in the way this game provides actually feels rather freeing, and I was really enjoying myself until it started to feel like the writing actually expects me to feel compassion towards the rapist which... that does really squick me out to be honest.
It feels extremely manipulative and victim-blamey to try to make the player feel sympathetic towards Erx because they suffered in the past, facing abuse and desperation, knowing how it feels, only to turn around and do similar, even worse things to another for your own benefit, is horrific beyond words. And then all of that gets orders of magnitude worse when having Yumi stay with Erx is presented as an actual option. Maybe it's intended as one last layer of control Yumi must get free of? But it seemed like the implication was that after the fight all of the control was broken completely so I don't know.
I get that there have to be options for giving in on purpose for the sake of the fantasy, and that Erx is trying to use sympathy as a weapon, but I guess my input is that the idea that leaving is somehow wrong should be more clearly the narrative being pushed "by Erx" not by the writing itself.
Honestly the most disturbing part for me is the large number other comments actually debating which ending is ethically correct, even going so far as to call Yumi "evil" for not staying with her captor and torturer. People are quick to say "it's just fiction" about this sort of thing but stories have always been how people have communicated emotions and values, and again if it was just "I have a mind control kink and think this is hot as a fantasy but horrific if it was real" that would be fine, but that's not what's happening. People are actually positing as an ethical standpoint that Yumi is evil for not staying with the person who abducted her, imprisoned her, violated her mind, her core self, and was planning on doing things to her mind and body that I really don't even want to think about in detail right now. Because... she was forced to appeal to their compassion to escape?!
Fantasy is not reality but when people take the fictional abuser's side in their real life opinions of what's right and wrong it's enraging and terrifying, I don't even know if it's actually any of the writing's fault, or just people being awful.
I do very much hope that the author keeps making games and art in general, and hope that my feedback about the implications of the writing aren't taken as accusations aimed towards them. I wish it wasn't somthing people had to be so careful about.
I don't know how to wrap this up really... I just needed to get my thoughts expressed, and the author did explicitly ask for feedback on the tone in the author's notes at the end.
I appreciate your detailed and thought-out response. I really feel I ought to have maybe made the content warnings more detailed and specific in future. Yeah, the mixed messaging is a problem stemming from me going back and forth in the “writing process” (2 weeks of mind wandering) and then having to cut out a lot of things that made sense leading to a weird stitched-together narrative that had one concept of a character doing a monstrous thing and another concept of the same character with a sympathetic background just not really clicking.
I have to be honest, more people were accepting of this than I expected, and I think when it comes to things like these people interact with a different headspace than reality. I don’t really want anyone to come away from this with a takeaway that I condone actual abuse of people, and this was in fact one of my biggest fears publishing this at all, uh, whoops
Again, as I think I’ve said before either on this page or in the jam submission page, so much of this would have been resolved if I had had any dialogue choices or other player influence over the ending beyond a simple win-loss condition in time for the deadline, but that was just not how things worked out, ugh.
I’m sorry this was harmful, though. I definitely need more specific content warnings in future.
You submitted a game to an adult game jam that had a hypnosis theme and got a comment from someone who stated to have a massive phobia of the theme of the game they very deliberately chose to play and got angry at people who enjoy the game.
I'm really sorry to butt in here but this guy is talking about me specifically and I do not appreciate the mischaracterization.
Your only "mistake" was to try and make a little bit more than just porn. Even if this game was giving us an unhealthy perspective, whoever comes to an adult game and thinks that the content should first and foremost be psychologically educational does not have the maturity to play such a game. There are games that go out of their way to show us the perspective of actual villains and even justify and glorify their motives and that is OKAY, we are not supposed to assemble our personality out of a variety of fictional characters we read about, such works are there to challenge our thinking.
Nobody will walk away from this game thinking "Oh, I really should have more empathy with my abusers, they surely have a good reason."
It's good to tell people exactly what they're getting into if you upload a game with sensitive content, but please don't let comments like this stifle you in the future.
Very enjoyable, challenging gameplay! Love it. Would love the ending to be a choice between saving or abandoning the enemy... I feel bad leaving them there after appealing to their mercy/compassion.
Hey there, I just wanted to let you know that this is a great game! I'm quite picky with games I pick up, so it is a pleasant surprise. I do hope to see more from this game very much. If you'd also like, I do have ideas you could potentially use regarding the game. If you would like, you can reach me on discord @ .darkfox.
This is really cool and unique! Really leaves me wanting more of this gameplay, story and the characters.
But I think the movement/energy system is a bit flawed. There is zero reason to ever use charge unless you are right in front of him and can push him back and it's too risky to approach because of kinetic shove and also he rarely steps more than one space away from his wall(Makes sense, it's just a bad move). EDIT: I AMEND MY CRITICISM A BIT after playing this game a dozen times because I can't stop, the movement system is cool! Yes, he can always undo the benefit you get from pushing him back, and you can stall the fight by pushing him into the wall, and it is risky to approach because of kinetic shove, but turns out you only really stay backed to the wall if you aren't confident in your moves and now that I am, I actually have him backed into his wall often and sometimes even use charge(although it's still rarely a good move).It's a very lame playstyle, but you can actually push him into his corner to wait for fall back cards and he can't do anything about it.
Ending is a bit depressing. He is clearly the villain, but he also only allowed this battle to happen as an act of mercy and then we break his will with "compassion", "understanding" and appeals to his humanity(?) only to leave him dying on the floor without looking back. He needs to be punished, but we are quite villainous about it as well. I wanna find a better way than that and repay his mercy... or am I advocating for Stockholm syndrome?
I don't think it's villainous to abandon him, but it does seem like since compassion is one of the key tools of resisting and overpowering him, Yuni should listen more to the part of herself that feels bad about abandoning him... especially if compassion ended high.
Yeah that's what I mean. On the surface, there is nothing villainous about leaving the guy on the ground who tried to use you as nothing but an incubator, but the thing is, we survived him purely by appealing to the humanity in him.
I feel like if we just go on without a hint of sympathy after all that, then everything we said was just empty words and whether it's Erx or Yuni doing it, coldly manipulating someone else's emotions(or your own) to get what you want is evil, I think.
And you know there's nothing wrong with telling a story like that, plenty of games make us play characters whose personalities don't align with ours and this is a game jam about hypnosis, mind control, so this is topical, but it feels nice when we can make our player character do things we agree with, helps with immersion and stuff.
de lo que entiendo viendo la galería del creador, el zorro negro es un sintético posiblemente creado por los mismos que criogenizaron a Yumi que es una especie que vive en zonas frías, se podría entender que el cuerpo del sintético (el zorro negro) esta fallando por algún motivo ( yo creo que de forma intencional de sus creadores ya que en las historias del creador en su galería los sintéticos son constantemente restringidos para que no se salgan de control) , necesitando un nuevo cuerpo para migrar, siendo Yumi una hembra compatible, pues ve en ella la forma de hacer un cuerpo nuevo sin el fallo letal,
The psychic combat gameplay was awesome, as was the dialogue. However, I wish there was a lewd ending for succeeding, too. Maybe it should require succeeding at high lust? Actually, I would recommend different endings for different ending stat states. This little game could support a lot of different endings, and because of that, I GREATLY hope you'll continue working on it after the jam.
hell yeah, this one seems rad as hell, and i hope you keep working on it after the jam, lol
my one suggestion is maybe having more hypnotic elements, like having your character achnowledge the changes to their mind more, but beyond that, phenominal 10 out of 10 game
God, this was fantastic. I think this is the first time I've felt drawn to leave a comment after several years of having this account, but I can't just let this game go unpraised.
Yes, the text speed is rather slow, but that nitpick is very much overshadowed by how good the writing is. I was content to hang on every word. I went out of my way to use every ability just to see the dialogue.
The music is wonderful, the art is gorgeous, and the gameplay itself is so goddamn cool. The focus on psychic combat has to be my favorite part of this game. Managing my own emotions while manipulating the enemy's as a battle was really intriguing, and I wish there was more.
I'll definitely be looking forward to anything else you make!
Main complaint is that there isn't a way - as far as i can tell - to speed up text, and it's quite slow. It feels like i have to make a choice between reading what it has to say and actually getting to play the game. Which is a shame, because the writing and gameplay are both good!
Ah yeah, text skip/speed was one of those things I just did not have the time and energy to get in before submission (along with volume settings). I did originally want to just have a next button but I thought that'd be too much tedious clicking on top of already selecting cards. I got feedback that the text was already playing a bit too fast to focus on both card choices and dialogue, so I erred on the side of too slow. Whoops!
Honestly I think both endings are pretty grim. Erx is not a good person, and I don't blame Yumi for leaving him to die, but he's pitiable, too. The writing is good, to be clear! The gameplay is too. It gets a bit repetitive after the first few playthroughs, but that's pretty normal for jam games.
If there's one thing I have to say, it's that having to spend two turns to get the one energy you need to play a card makes things feel slow.
I kind of want to be able to see a full list of all the dialogue, to see if there's anything I missed.
A surprisingly very pickup-able game, attractive characters, and a fairly good hook of a story! Hope you do more, whether it's games, or kinky hypno stuff. Both together would be a delight to see more of.
First, the music is *insanely good*. Goddamn, I was jamming out a ton.
Second, if this was to get updated, I'd love to see an end where Yuni and Erz figure things out. There's just enough inferred through dialogue to see that Erz has not had much time, maybe a computer program that jacked an organic body, and developed a fear of death so profound he felt he needed to do what he did, yet holds himself back.
Yuni, for her part, seems to have enough emotional intelligence and empathy to see what's wrong.
I have a barely updated gallery on FurAffinity (same name there as here) but I am duty bound to warn you it is riddled with excessive dark kink nonsense, fortunately they finally implemented a tag blacklist feature though
Dark, but I like it enough to be invested in what's going on. It seems like it would be too challenging if it were any harder, but I do find it to be a bit too easy. Even on my first run when I didn't know what I was doing till halfway through I didn't lose, and while repeat playthroughs have had closer victories than others I don't have a sense of danger. If possible, a version where you play on the Red Team would be nice. For players like me I'd get to earn the lewd end rather than throw the fight for it, and his position is just sympathetic enough to be tolerable taking the side of.
The mood is a bit grim and tense, but it's well-supported by the setup and works well with the themes. Once you get a hang of the gameplay, defensive play is relatively safe but also slow, so there's a bit of out-of-game willpower involved in whether you take risks for a faster victory.
I enjoyed seeing the unique dialogs for each played card. If this game saw further development, a history / dialog log would be a nice polishy feature-add, but isn't necessary.
Overall, I enjoyed winning and losing both. Thank you for publishing!
There IS a dialogue log button in the bottom right. Genius that I am, it's a blue button on top of a blue background. It blends in perfectly into the background. Things I'd like to change if I revisit...
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Gameplay and art are very nice, the character designs are great, especially Yumi, the backgrounds are good, love the movement system and as somone who has dealt with both severe mental struggles and abuse in the past the cycle of strategic retreating and charging to manage mental energy is actually really well done and captures the feeling of fighting back against it, it's balanced very well too, and it has really good music.
I come at this game from I think a different angle than most since I have a massive phobia of mind control and mental manipulation, (I know those are content flagged, which I greatly appreciate, but I was in the headspace to deal with it and the description of it being about resisting the control rather than giving in compelled me) but being able to resist it in the way this game provides actually feels rather freeing, and I was really enjoying myself until it started to feel like the writing actually expects me to feel compassion towards the rapist which... that does really squick me out to be honest.
It feels extremely manipulative and victim-blamey to try to make the player feel sympathetic towards Erx because they suffered in the past, facing abuse and desperation, knowing how it feels, only to turn around and do similar, even worse things to another for your own benefit, is horrific beyond words. And then all of that gets orders of magnitude worse when having Yumi stay with Erx is presented as an actual option. Maybe it's intended as one last layer of control Yumi must get free of? But it seemed like the implication was that after the fight all of the control was broken completely so I don't know.
I get that there have to be options for giving in on purpose for the sake of the fantasy, and that Erx is trying to use sympathy as a weapon, but I guess my input is that the idea that leaving is somehow wrong should be more clearly the narrative being pushed "by Erx" not by the writing itself.
Honestly the most disturbing part for me is the large number other comments actually debating which ending is ethically correct, even going so far as to call Yumi "evil" for not staying with her captor and torturer. People are quick to say "it's just fiction" about this sort of thing but stories have always been how people have communicated emotions and values, and again if it was just "I have a mind control kink and think this is hot as a fantasy but horrific if it was real" that would be fine, but that's not what's happening. People are actually positing as an ethical standpoint that Yumi is evil for not staying with the person who abducted her, imprisoned her, violated her mind, her core self, and was planning on doing things to her mind and body that I really don't even want to think about in detail right now. Because... she was forced to appeal to their compassion to escape?!
Fantasy is not reality but when people take the fictional abuser's side in their real life opinions of what's right and wrong it's enraging and terrifying, I don't even know if it's actually any of the writing's fault, or just people being awful.
I do very much hope that the author keeps making games and art in general, and hope that my feedback about the implications of the writing aren't taken as accusations aimed towards them. I wish it wasn't somthing people had to be so careful about.
I don't know how to wrap this up really... I just needed to get my thoughts expressed, and the author did explicitly ask for feedback on the tone in the author's notes at the end.
I appreciate your detailed and thought-out response. I really feel I ought to have maybe made the content warnings more detailed and specific in future. Yeah, the mixed messaging is a problem stemming from me going back and forth in the “writing process” (2 weeks of mind wandering) and then having to cut out a lot of things that made sense leading to a weird stitched-together narrative that had one concept of a character doing a monstrous thing and another concept of the same character with a sympathetic background just not really clicking.
I have to be honest, more people were accepting of this than I expected, and I think when it comes to things like these people interact with a different headspace than reality. I don’t really want anyone to come away from this with a takeaway that I condone actual abuse of people, and this was in fact one of my biggest fears publishing this at all, uh, whoops
Again, as I think I’ve said before either on this page or in the jam submission page, so much of this would have been resolved if I had had any dialogue choices or other player influence over the ending beyond a simple win-loss condition in time for the deadline, but that was just not how things worked out, ugh.
I’m sorry this was harmful, though. I definitely need more specific content warnings in future.
You submitted a game to an adult game jam that had a hypnosis theme and got a comment from someone who stated to have a massive phobia of the theme of the game they very deliberately chose to play and got angry at people who enjoy the game.
I'm really sorry to butt in here but this guy is talking about me specifically and I do not appreciate the mischaracterization.
Your only "mistake" was to try and make a little bit more than just porn.
Even if this game was giving us an unhealthy perspective,
whoever comes to an adult game and thinks that the content should first and foremost be psychologically educational does not have the maturity to play such a game.
There are games that go out of their way to show us the perspective of actual villains and even justify and glorify their motives and that is OKAY, we are not supposed to assemble our personality out of a variety of fictional characters we read about, such works are there to challenge our thinking.
Nobody will walk away from this game thinking "Oh, I really should have more empathy with my abusers, they surely have a good reason."
It's good to tell people exactly what they're getting into if you upload a game with sensitive content, but please don't let comments like this stifle you in the future.
Very enjoyable, challenging gameplay! Love it. Would love the ending to be a choice between saving or abandoning the enemy... I feel bad leaving them there after appealing to their mercy/compassion.
Hey there, I just wanted to let you know that this is a great game! I'm quite picky with games I pick up, so it is a pleasant surprise. I do hope to see more from this game very much. If you'd also like, I do have ideas you could potentially use regarding the game. If you would like, you can reach me on discord @ .darkfox.
really awesome game! I hope there are more endings / scenes available in the future
This is really cool and unique! Really leaves me wanting more of this gameplay, story and the characters.
But I think the movement/energy system is a bit flawed. There is zero reason to ever use charge unless you are right in front of him and can push him back
and it's too risky to approach because of kinetic shove and also he rarely steps more than one space away from his wall(Makes sense, it's just a bad move).
EDIT: I AMEND MY CRITICISM A BIT after playing this game a dozen times because I can't stop,the movement system is cool! Yes, he can always undo the benefit you get from pushing him back, and you can stall the fight by pushing him into the wall, and it is risky to approach because of kinetic shove, but turns out you only really stay backed to the wall if you aren't confident in your moves and now that I am, I actually have him backed into his wall often and sometimes even use charge(although it's still rarely a good move).It's a very lame playstyle, but you can actually push him into his corner to wait for fall back cards and he can't do anything about it.
Ending is a bit depressing.
He is clearly the villain, but he also only allowed this battle to happen as an act of mercy and then we break his will with "compassion", "understanding" and appeals to his humanity(?) only to leave him dying on the floor without looking back.
He needs to be punished, but we are quite villainous about it as well. I wanna find a better way than that and repay his mercy... or am I advocating for Stockholm syndrome?
I don't think it's villainous to abandon him, but it does seem like since compassion is one of the key tools of resisting and overpowering him, Yuni should listen more to the part of herself that feels bad about abandoning him... especially if compassion ended high.
Or lust.
Yeah that's what I mean. On the surface, there is nothing villainous about leaving the guy on the ground who tried to use you as nothing but an incubator, but the thing is, we survived him purely by appealing to the humanity in him.
I feel like if we just go on without a hint of sympathy after all that, then everything we said was just empty words and whether it's Erx or Yuni doing it, coldly manipulating someone else's emotions(or your own) to get what you want is evil, I think.
And you know there's nothing wrong with telling a story like that, plenty of games make us play characters whose personalities don't align with ours and this is a game jam about hypnosis, mind control, so this is topical, but it feels nice when we can make our player character do things we agree with, helps with immersion and stuff.
It isn't evil for a rape victim to tell their captor what they have to to break free.
You are right,
but I think you are projecting your experience onto others a bit too much and missing the point.
de lo que entiendo viendo la galería del creador, el zorro negro es un sintético posiblemente creado por los mismos que criogenizaron a Yumi que es una especie que vive en zonas frías, se podría entender que el cuerpo del sintético (el zorro negro) esta fallando por algún motivo ( yo creo que de forma intencional de sus creadores ya que en las historias del creador en su galería los sintéticos son constantemente restringidos para que no se salgan de control) , necesitando un nuevo cuerpo para migrar, siendo Yumi una hembra compatible, pues ve en ella la forma de hacer un cuerpo nuevo sin el fallo letal,
very cool gam
The psychic combat gameplay was awesome, as was the dialogue. However, I wish there was a lewd ending for succeeding, too. Maybe it should require succeeding at high lust? Actually, I would recommend different endings for different ending stat states. This little game could support a lot of different endings, and because of that, I GREATLY hope you'll continue working on it after the jam.
hell yeah, this one seems rad as hell, and i hope you keep working on it after the jam, lol
my one suggestion is maybe having more hypnotic elements, like having your character achnowledge the changes to their mind more, but beyond that, phenominal 10 out of 10 game
God, this was fantastic. I think this is the first time I've felt drawn to leave a comment after several years of having this account, but I can't just let this game go unpraised.
Yes, the text speed is rather slow, but that nitpick is very much overshadowed by how good the writing is. I was content to hang on every word. I went out of my way to use every ability just to see the dialogue.
The music is wonderful, the art is gorgeous, and the gameplay itself is so goddamn cool. The focus on psychic combat has to be my favorite part of this game. Managing my own emotions while manipulating the enemy's as a battle was really intriguing, and I wish there was more.
I'll definitely be looking forward to anything else you make!
Main complaint is that there isn't a way - as far as i can tell - to speed up text, and it's quite slow. It feels like i have to make a choice between reading what it has to say and actually getting to play the game. Which is a shame, because the writing and gameplay are both good!
Ah yeah, text skip/speed was one of those things I just did not have the time and energy to get in before submission (along with volume settings). I did originally want to just have a next button but I thought that'd be too much tedious clicking on top of already selecting cards. I got feedback that the text was already playing a bit too fast to focus on both card choices and dialogue, so I erred on the side of too slow. Whoops!
Honestly I think both endings are pretty grim. Erx is not a good person, and I don't blame Yumi for leaving him to die, but he's pitiable, too.
The writing is good, to be clear! The gameplay is too. It gets a bit repetitive after the first few playthroughs, but that's pretty normal for jam games.
If there's one thing I have to say, it's that having to spend two turns to get the one energy you need to play a card makes things feel slow.
I kind of want to be able to see a full list of all the dialogue, to see if there's anything I missed.
Holy crap this is good
A surprisingly very pickup-able game, attractive characters, and a fairly good hook of a story! Hope you do more, whether it's games, or kinky hypno stuff. Both together would be a delight to see more of.
First, the music is *insanely good*. Goddamn, I was jamming out a ton.
Second, if this was to get updated, I'd love to see an end where Yuni and Erz figure things out. There's just enough inferred through dialogue to see that Erz has not had much time, maybe a computer program that jacked an organic body, and developed a fear of death so profound he felt he needed to do what he did, yet holds himself back.
Yuni, for her part, seems to have enough emotional intelligence and empathy to see what's wrong.
I do love an enemies to lovers situation.
Goes without saying, this was *really good*.
This is pretty nice, does the artist have a gallery somewhere to see more?
I have a barely updated gallery on FurAffinity (same name there as here) but I am duty bound to warn you it is riddled with excessive dark kink nonsense, fortunately they finally implemented a tag blacklist feature though
Dark, but I like it enough to be invested in what's going on. It seems like it would be too challenging if it were any harder, but I do find it to be a bit too easy. Even on my first run when I didn't know what I was doing till halfway through I didn't lose, and while repeat playthroughs have had closer victories than others I don't have a sense of danger. If possible, a version where you play on the Red Team would be nice. For players like me I'd get to earn the lewd end rather than throw the fight for it, and his position is just sympathetic enough to be tolerable taking the side of.
I really enjoyed this!
The mood is a bit grim and tense, but it's well-supported by the setup and works well with the themes. Once you get a hang of the gameplay, defensive play is relatively safe but also slow, so there's a bit of out-of-game willpower involved in whether you take risks for a faster victory.
I enjoyed seeing the unique dialogs for each played card. If this game saw further development, a history / dialog log would be a nice polishy feature-add, but isn't necessary.
Overall, I enjoyed winning and losing both. Thank you for publishing!
There IS a dialogue log button in the bottom right. Genius that I am, it's a blue button on top of a blue background. It blends in perfectly into the background. Things I'd like to change if I revisit...
I'm a fool! If it helps, I saw it while playing, mentally registered it, and then *completely forgot* about it until just now.
Was confused at first how to play but got the hang of it, fun game.