Currently working on game mechanics for a walk and talk style adventure game where the player character is trying to navigate an environment where they often can't fully escape mind control style influences. Specifically looking for ways for a player to be controlled while still actively playing. If you have seen a good example or want to share an idea I would love to hear it.

So far I have:

In dialog choices, have them be limited to just one choice or have that one choice repeated in either the same or slightly different ways to emphasize the compulsion.

When moving have it be that no matter what direction the player tries to move the character always moves towards a set goal. Slight variation would be to reduce speed of travel in the wrong direction compared to correct and have that amplify over time.

Inject odd internal though rationalizations as blockers to prevent going against a compulsion. For example, trying to go in an opposing direction results in "I shouldn't go there... I feel like I'll miss something important."

Player makes a dialog choice but it comes out wrong. I feel like this one would be the most fun if the dialog alteration is very subtle, like just toggling the statement from negative to positive but leaving the rest of the phrasing intact.

Similar to the last one but for navigation, let the player move to and try to travel to where they want but no matter the door or path they end up going where they were compelled to.

Have a reveal that what they played was at least partially an illusion. The reveal plays back what actually happened. I feel like this only avoids being a complete removal of player interaction if what is played back is somewhat impacted by what they actually did.

I liked the way hypnosis of corruption did its scenes.
store.steampowered.com/app/3041810/Hypnosis_of_Corruption/

The main character would get hypnotized but all the player sees is the scene played out in blurry in short cuts and with the text censored.
Afterwards, the main character doesn't remember what occurred.

The full scene could be viewed in a scene recollection later.

It's like a paused VHS effect to imply lost time. The flashes of what happens is also a nice touch as long as they are vague. That's a good one. Would also be neat if you can't access the memory of what really happened until you actively try to figure it out and some information discovery triggers it. Actually feels kind of mandatory for a game with this focus.

Something I thought about implementing into my game is the mouse cursor slowly moving towards the "right" choice and performing a click once that choice is hovered over for long enough. There would be a chain of choices to lead to the bad end, each one increasing the strength of a screen effect by a subtle amount.

I like the way that implies that the player has to resist it. Effectively a more natural way to integrate a "break out of it before the timer runs out" kind of system.

I think there has to be a degree to which a player seeking success would be incentivized to engage with hypnosis. Tradeoffs, basically. If it's all bad ends, then playing the game is at odds with experiencing the fetish.
A simple way to do this is debuffs/status effects that confer some situational benefit. More generally, decisions where the player compromises between being hypnotized/losing agency and some particular gain from doing so.
If the player's already lost agency, I think that altering the outcome of choices made is a good mechanic, which you did mention.

I could counter by saying that people engage with the kink *because* it's morally bad. That's part of the fantasy.

This is a slightly different than the mechanics of playing while being controlled, but I agree that making it so that being controlled or not is a game choice is just as important.

I'm trying to keep the stats simple for the game. Really its just one: resolve/willpower. The player character is better than the typical person at resisting being controlled but resisting costs resolve. Getting it back isn't easy so a core part of the game is deciding when to use your resolve to resist and when to just go along with it and save the resolve for later.

This kind of setup does tend to bias things toward being controlled = bad. But I do have a few other scenarios worked into the story plan:

- Voluntarily wants to forget what they learned so they can return to their previously happy life.
- Wants protection from being controlled later (required to "win" actually).
- For fun on one romance path.
- To infiltrate a restricted area as a servant.

I think they're going for "bad end" as in failure states. To put it a different way, if you sit down to play a sexy hypnosis game and the only way to get sexy hypnosis scenes is to be bad at the main gameplay loop, something has gone wrong in the design process.

(EDIT: oops, took too long writing this post.)

...

If it's a 3D adventure game, there's always messing around with the camera. Imagine a "puzzle" where there's a hypno screen in the corner of the room that gradually turns the camera to face it if you catch a glimpse of it, so you have to figure out how to do whatever you're in the room to do without ending up staring directly at the screen.

Right, it's not the moral badness I'm opposed to, quite the opposite. I'm talking about the phenomena of 'bad ends' where, for example, losing a fight leads to a game over with some art and a couple paragraphs about the result. I've enjoyed those, but they're ultimately limiting. And they make it so that succeeding at playing the game is contrary to experiencing the fetish.

Makes sense. You play a game with the intent to win, but if winning means skipping over the content you actually want to see then it's self defeating.

I think my current plan does kind of address that since you win by letting yourself be controlled when you don't think it will matter to save up your resistance for the times that you think it will.

Sorry if my idea sucks!

Maybe implementing a secret randomized trigger word?

You could implement a list of trigger words that npcs use a lot and use a dice roll or something similar to determine what word the player gets, so it's different for everyone.

The list of words will also allow you to use other words as red herrings to trick the player.

Maybe the player obtains a list of the trigger words at some point so they can play detective to figure out what their trigger word is?

You can probably implement this idea with Filthy_F's idea to further trick the players if you want to

This seemed like a cool idea to me, not sure if it's actually good or not!

Either way, I wish you all of the luck on completing your game!

Thanks! I hadn't thought about trying to tie in a trigger word/phrase as a playable mechanic. I think it would work if there is a good reason for the player to want to discover their trigger word/phrase. Like if being aware of it allowed you to resist it or if allowed some skill to be used on demand once it was known.

A variation on this could be that the player gets to pick their trigger from a fixed set, which end up determining in what contexts they are triggered later.

Could also make puzzles out of trying to discover an NPCs trigger if they already have one or picking a trigger for an NPCs which also impacts events later.

I've thought of another option that may help with the "bad end" problem: All routes lead to hypnosis!

That is, the original motivation for the PC was furnished through hypnosis, though it could be through more therapeutic/self-affirming methods, so if the player does accomplish their original goal, it's thanks to suggestions that were already there. This would still allow for the regular moral dynamics while ensuring hypnosis remains central to the players' actions.