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.