Something like that. In all of these you have to stumble into the hypnosis/mind control element first, which then changes the consequences of losing. Before that, you basically just get slaughtered in the traditional way. I like having an early area where the hypnosis doesn't exist at all, because it helps establish character and a baseline. This is what NORMAL is (Mezz blazing his way through a whole desert of hyenas) and this is what happens when a wrench is thrown into the mix.
And to be clear, there are always kind of three layers: No hypno, a middleground struggling with hypno, and then a nearly-conquered-by-hypno stage. That last one is slut mode. The middle one is just the mid-ground where most of the game happens.