Vacation
This Pico-8 game is a hypnosis session. It is designed to hypnotize the player. At any time past the initial "adults only" splash, you can hold X or Z to start an awakener.
Please read the content warning screen fully at the start of the game. The game includes hypnotic suggestions on every theme listed. It also includes "safety" suggestions before the really mindbending parts start, encouraging you to ignore suggestions you would not enjoy, and reminding you to use the awakener if you need it.
Vacation is a Pico-8 game for Strawberry Jam 8: a simple, chill, easy arcade game that is just a thin veneer for a hypnosis session that will turn you into an orca pooltoy! All hypnotic suggestions are dismissed in the awakener. It's designed both for people experienced with hypnosis and folks new to it.
It is currently complete! I finished it up with a luxurious 20 minutes to go before the end of Strawberry Jam 8. In the future I will add devlogs about the hypnotic suggestions I used, the hypnotic techniques I used, and how to mod it.
The game only uses the arrow keys for input (including to skip past the opening splashes, which you can do somewhat before it prompts you, but not instantly). The X and Z keys are used only to launch the awakener.
I don't plan to add more features to this, but I'm already thinking about alternate scripts I might write with the same engine, or the same text engine and some other simple arcade game that works well in the constraints of a hypnosis session. And you can of course write your own! If the documentation for modding it isn't in yet, uh, good luck, but you can find the script if you browse around in the code (near the bottom); look for "zonk_mode:ni" if you want to add more formatting prefixes or understand what the parser is doing with its config row (it's issuing callbacks).
Additional Credits:
- Font: Monogram, by Vinicius Menezio
- Music: An original composition by Ossie!
- Clouds: Designed and implemented by pyrex&nyeo!
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Development log
- Vacation is released! With clouds and fish!Mar 01, 2024
- Release candidate 2: Music!Feb 29, 2024
- Release candidate 1: two more sections!Feb 25, 2024
- Minor fixes 2024-02-19Feb 19, 2024
- First public beta!Feb 19, 2024
Comments
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I thought hypnosis was like a joke or a Hollywood movie trope... WTF happened to me... I went into this thinking it was one of those, "I can do magic" type hoxes, or like a strange rp thing.
At one point I couldn't move my arms to play the game and I just felt airy, I could feel my body swaying out of my control like when I was a little kid at the wave pool and didn't have the strength to go against the waves.
I didn't know hypnosis was real!? I am sorry for doubting you... That was f#ckin' wild.
Ooh, I get to check “convince a skeptic that hypnosis is real” off my list of goals I had for this thing! Sounds like you had quite the experience with it, it’s great to hear you responded so strongly.
Hypnosis is a real, well-studied effect, although the details are up for a lot of debate. There are a lot of ways to get hypnotic responses out of folks; nothing is reliable because it’s very dependent on how each individual person processes communication and information they receive, but to me it also feels like everything works, at least for someone, at least some of the time. Which is pretty consistent with the general consensus of current research – insofar as there is a consensus – which can be summarized as “everyone is alarmingly suggestible most of the time”.
Vacation uses a lot of conventional (and unconventional) techniques of suggestion. The primary thing that inspired it was realizing I could use the basic structure of an endless runner game to produce a “pattern break” structure. I also started thinking of how a game tutorial is a structure for getting folks to interactively follow instructions with the intent of learning how to automatically perform a task (to control a character in a game, you want to not be thinking about the controls all the time), and voluntary compliance is an important basis for rapport – so I wanted to see what I could build up from there.
It sounds like I built up quite the thing for you! I’m pretty sure that getting so hypnotized you can’t play the game is how you actually win, score be damned. I wanted to implement something to actually detect that and comment on it at the end-of-game screen but ran out of space in the Pico-8 cartridge and time in the game jam, although I should probably revisit it to see if I can cram it in anyway now that I’m not under time pressure.
This was actually my first time trying hypnosis, and man... did it feel good. I felt especially good being called a 'good toy' :3
Now I wonder... are you going to make more hypnosis things?
Hey, I’m glad to hear you had a good time with it! I love hearing when it’s effective for folks. Text hypnosis usually requires prior experience as a hypnotic subject to be effective; I wanted to see if I could use the participatory structure of a game to get stronger effects despite the medium, and it sounds like it worked for you.
I have ambitions to write a couple more things using the engine I developed for Vacation, but I’m still trying to work out more ways to adapt typical forms of suggestion to game mechanics. The arcade segments of Vacation were primarily an exercise in pattern breaking; still trying to figure out what else I can express within the constraints of Pico-8!
Reporting on it - only kinda worked (I do have various qualities that correlate with low hypnotic susceptibility), but it did give me a very heavy feeling in the chest while breathing in (as if I'm really full of air), and in the end (when being shown a count to 5 while being released from the suggestion), I had a tingly feeling in my head
Hi again! If you happen to see this, I've been thinking a lot recently about attempting to create my own project in a similar vain to this one. I have a pretty solid idea for a premise, script progression, and gameplay gimmick, but I'm pretty clueless when it comes to actually programming/creating things. Is there anywhere you'd be willing to chat about dev stuff? If not that's totally fine, I get it, but I think I've genuinely got a nice little idea that I'd like to attempt and create :)
sure! my Mastodon account is linked in my profile, and my Telegram and Discord username is the same as here. (I use Discord more.) You can contact me in any of those places. You can also email me – same username, gmail.com. I can’t promise to have all the right answers for you but I can talk about what I’ve implemented here and the hypnotic theory behind it! And we can talk about how to get started with game development, too.
Wow. Not really into TF or much hypno* but it's really impressive just how *steamy* a Pico-8 game about a shiny low resolution orca can get.
*outside of it being a really horny storytime that you play along with. Not unlike Blue's Clues.
Part of me wishes that it got naughtier but a lot of what impressed me was how horny it got without being sexually explicit. Pure unadulterated fetishism.
This is cool.
Neat. I actually felt a bit faint, but that might just be from the breathing exercises.
That’s something I was concerned about when developing the game, tbh – that the breathing rate would be wrong for someone to an extent that it makes them ill, especially if their breathing entrains to the breathing animation continuing after the explicit prompting has passed. (Which is an intended effect.)
In general, do you find yourself to run out of breath easily? Alternatively, do you have extraordinary cardiovascular endurance? I’m not sure if my implementation is more at risk for producing hyperventilation (in people who start taking very deep breaths) or hypoventilation (in people with restricted breathing, higher oxygen needs, or habitually shallow breathing).
I actually just recently had heart surgery and have a pacemaker. That is a result of getting electrocuted that made the alveoli in my lungs explode. So I don't think it is an error on your part. I do understand the concern though .
I'm so happy, my family is the ocean, my friends are the clouds, I'm such a good toyIIIII mean, uh, such a good game! yeah! I think this is my favorite of the jam, i dunno why tho haha
ha
Glad you’ve been enjoying it! It seems like it just might have gotten in your head a little, though~
Was taking a look at the final results for the recent jam and this game actually pushed me to make an itch account for interacting with 18+ content.
I've not had much interest in inflatable toys or TF really, but the hypnosis angle was awesome here and was done super well; everything being taken at a slow pace, the text sections featuring highlighted words, and the gameplay slowly introducing more suggestive words was really fun to see.
Even if I don't have much interest in TF stuff this was still super enjoyable and I hope you make more games in the same vain, even if you're not planning to add any more to this one :)
Hey, I’m flattered! And I’m glad to hear you had fun with it. I do already have plans to do more like this – the biggest puzzle is figuring out mechanics for the arcade segment that would work reasonably well, I think I used the easiest one this time and I’ll have to get more creative in the future.
This was really fun X3 The music, graphics and sound effects are cute, and the hypnotic prompts are very effective! This will be my go-to game whenever I need to sit back and relax.
A mood booster when you just need to relax is absolutely one of the vibes I was going for. I’m glad you’ve had a good time with it!
pretty cool game:)