HypnoHub - [RPGMMZ] Ascendant Delusion

LoopGear

03/30/26 09:51AM

[RPGMMZ] Ascendant Delusion

Hello!

I'm mostly a lurker around here and I've been making a game for a while now after taking inspiration for some corruption games and I think I have finally finished what the game will eventually be. This game is heavily inspired by some atlus games, in special Etrian Odyssey and Shin Megami Tensei 4 so this game difficulty is quite challenging, but there's an easy mode or even a cheat weapon if you'd like to just get over it.
One of the game themes go around mind control since the main character has this special power that allows him to get into a place called Mind Plane, where all of humanity's consciousness is connected and you can affect people you know by changing the way they think. One of the ideas of the game will be shaping each character to try helping them out to get rid of their problems or change them slowly so they will be used by you. This will affect dialogue around the game, including some specific dialogue inside main quests, side quests and even affect their battle behavior. Right now the game only has nudity but we plan to add H-scenes eventually for those interested. If you don't like nudity or H-scenes at all, we have prepared censor sprites and when we do add H-scenes they will be removed. But yeah, this is a very ambitious game and I'd like support to keep working on it as I love doing dungeon crawling stuff and improving my writing. So please, do check it out if you're interested!

loopgear.itch.io/ascendant-delusion

KaiGra

03/30/26 06:26PM

It looks quite interesting. So I'll give it a try

averageguy17

03/31/26 07:30AM

So far, my main gripe with the game is that it lacks a "get rid of this thing in my inventory" button. I'll be in the middle of the dungeon and it just keeps going "hey you're full" next battle "hey you're full" and it's annoying. Either increase the inventory so each item is obtainable by a max of 10 or something?

Also I came across a bug that halted my progress, where I left the mind palace after the warning of "hey you might be making an important decision" to save, only to go back and the 2nd floor barrier was back saying "cannot go because impurities" but there were none.

LoopGear

03/31/26 11:22AM

averageguy17 said:
So far, my main gripe with the game is that it lacks a "get rid of this thing in my inventory" button. I'll be in the middle of the dungeon and it just keeps going "hey you're full" next battle "hey you're full" and it's annoying. Either increase the inventory so each item is obtainable by a max of 10 or something?

Also I came across a bug that halted my progress, where I left the mind palace after the warning of "hey you might be making an important decision" to save, only to go back and the 2nd floor barrier was back saying "cannot go because impurities" but there were none.

I apologize for the bug in the second floor, I forgot to change a event script that I used as a base in the first floor and that's why the barrier was coming back. This shouldn't happen now in the new version. For this fix update there's a new orb in the second floor that basically force resets the entire second floor and this time the barrier should not show up once you clear the floor. This orb will be removed eventually, this is just a way so you don't simply have a softlocked save file. I've also changed some of the enemy behavior that wasn't working in the first two battles of that floor and now it should all be good too. If anything else is still happening please let me know! The update with the fix was already uploaded at the itch page.

As for the way inventory works, I'll try to add an option to toss consumables or materials that you don't want to carry along with some other QoL features that will be added in the next content build. There is actually a way to upgrade your inventory and that is by increasing your guild rank. By becoming Rank D you'll have 10 additional slots to carry stuff around. For now this is not that useful since when you get to that rank you probably did most of the stuff that Build 0 has to offer, but these slots will be handy in future dungeons.

averageguy17

03/31/26 04:47PM

I realize when I posted that, I really only gave two negative aspects without providing any criticism.

Good:

- The world you've built is... intriguing. A lot of "hypnosis" games tend to take place in a more positive setting so I was surprised to see this kind of setting.

-Character art. The character art is really cool. (Though I haven't seen all the art of the MC based on the beginning choices) Mai is adorable and I can't wait to see more of her.

-Art (General) - Unique art all around was cool to see. Especially wasn't expecting to see a CG or two during the game.

-Gameplay- So far, I feel the level balance has been fair. Not too easy but not too hard either. (I did use the cheat gun to go back to where I got softlocked lol. The existence of a cheat gun is always funny to see)

- Story - I'm interested in where the story will go from here, especially since you only really make your first "change" to the party member near the end of the demo, so we don't get to see much of what that effects.

Now the (slightly) negative criticisms.

- Enemy encounter rate feels... high? I don't really know how to put this because I get that's just how these games are, so you can't just make it too low. But I feel like with how many times you go through old floors to get back to where you were prior, once you get to like floor 4, you start dreading having to trudge through all the prior floors (even with the shortcuts on some floors)

- Menuing - I'll be honest, this could just be a "me" thing, but I found some of the menuing while at the guild slightly annoying. It's fine for the most part, but I think what got me the most was the times where i'd go to do the mindscape thing and it'd be like "you need to rest' so i have to leave, go back to the guild and go rest and eat at the nursery instead. (I just don't get why resting at your dorm isn't an option. Feels like that would be the place you could also "rest" at without doing the eating?)

LoopGear

03/31/26 11:39PM

averageguy17 said:
I realize when I posted that, I really only gave two negative aspects without providing any criticism.

Good:

- The world you've built is... intriguing. A lot of "hypnosis" games tend to take place in a more positive setting so I was surprised to see this kind of setting.

-Character art. The character art is really cool. (Though I haven't seen all the art of the MC based on the beginning choices) Mai is adorable and I can't wait to see more of her.

-Art (General) - Unique art all around was cool to see. Especially wasn't expecting to see a CG or two during the game.

-Gameplay- So far, I feel the level balance has been fair. Not too easy but not too hard either. (I did use the cheat gun to go back to where I got softlocked lol. The existence of a cheat gun is always funny to see)

- Story - I'm interested in where the story will go from here, especially since you only really make your first "change" to the party member near the end of the demo, so we don't get to see much of what that effects.

Now the (slightly) negative criticisms.

- Enemy encounter rate feels... high? I don't really know how to put this because I get that's just how these games are, so you can't just make it too low. But I feel like with how many times you go through old floors to get back to where you were prior, once you get to like floor 4, you start dreading having to trudge through all the prior floors (even with the shortcuts on some floors)

- Menuing - I'll be honest, this could just be a "me" thing, but I found some of the menuing while at the guild slightly annoying. It's fine for the most part, but I think what got me the most was the times where i'd go to do the mindscape thing and it'd be like "you need to rest' so i have to leave, go back to the guild and go rest and eat at the nursery instead. (I just don't get why resting at your dorm isn't an option. Feels like that would be the place you could also "rest" at without doing the eating?)

Before anything else, thank you for trying out our very first build!
I'm glad overall you seemed to have a good experience with the game since I know it's kinda hard for everyone to enjoy this type of dungeon crawling gameplay, as I think most people enjoy the VN element more than anything and don't like these games that focus around grinding and such. I'm planning on making guides whenever I have the time so everyone can simply grab the cheat gun and rush to each story point (maybe eventually add a VN mode by itself, but that would require higher effort, something that I would only be able to invest at way later).
I'm glad you liked Mai! In the next build we have plans for at least a new Mai event and two or three Scully events, since right now she doesn't really have much going on.
For the enemy encounter rate, I set in the dungeon maps the standard encounter rate for RPG Maker. Maybe eventually, I'll add something similar to how weaker enemies work in SMT 5, where they run away from you. I'd probably make that a toggle in case someone would like to unlock some gear from lower floor levels. And for menuing... Yeah, that was one of my main concerns when creating The Guild event box, haha. I can add a recover option at the dorm too, I think that would make things fair quick for those who would like to go back to Mind Plane exploration. And maybe after returning from an exploration you get a message asking if you would like to heal and sell all the materials you gathered to spare a little bit of the player's time. I'll give it a try implementing this things in the game and if everything looks fine, I'll add these features along with the main content for whenever Build 1 is ready.

Anyways, thank you once again for giving the game a try!