there is no self, there is only you
A downloadable memory protocol
You sit down across from them at a table. They're blindfolded and restrained, of course, but not gagged. It's more fun to see them scramble, trying in vain to understand why they're here, why you've kidnapped them, what it is you want from them. What they're saying hardly even registers as words to you, honestly, panicked sounds serving instead as an accompaniment to the real focus of your attention: the blueprints for their future. Their memories laid out for you, examined with all the love and care a butcher gives to cuts of meat. As you leaf through your plans, giving non-answers here and there, the pleasing sound of their struggles pause.
"Wait— your voice. I know you. You— you couldn't, wouldn't do this to me."
You laugh to yourself. Can't? Won't? A darling thing, aren't they. Maybe you'll keep some of that credulity around when you're finished.
There is no self, there is only you is a game about taking a person apart and putting them back together again and the absence of any true, essential self in the face of such a power. Identity and memory become a means to an ends, and any resistance can be made into blissful acceptance with time. Whoever it is that undergoes this will not be the same person when it’s finished.
One player plays the Captor: they will modify the Subject's memories and model possible selves they could become if they cease their pointless struggling.
Another player plays the Subject: they are at the mercy of their Captor's whims, raw material to be made into someone new who can only struggle to hold onto who they were.
There is no self, there is only you is a hack of Avunvain's Pythia.
Interior art is by hexbomb.
Q: TINSTIOY seems like an awkward acronym
A: It's pronounced "tintoy".
Q: How does gameplay work?
A: After establishing the two central characters and their dynamics, play goes through a series of loops. During each loop, the Subject will have their memories modified, before and after which they will play out scenes with the Captor's player. Every round ends with the Subject reverting the most recent changes on a single memory, and assigning Hold in an attempt to protect what little they can of their memories against their Captor. Play continues until either player invokes one of two ending scenarios, bringing about the endgame.
This game can be played live or asynchronously over text; a live game can be expected to run for about five or so hours and contain 4-6 loops, though experiences may always vary.
Q: This seems like it could get pretty heavy; what kind of content can I expect?
A: By its nature, the game is about memory loss, revision, and manipulation; gaslighting; and a strong power imbalance that can only be rectified by bringing about the end of play. All scenarios involve dubious consent at absolute best and more typically resemble something non-consensual. Discretion is advised.
Q: This seems cool and all, but I'm having trouble coming up with an idea to actually play, want something off the wall to bounce around with my co-player, or am a freak who wants to generate a bunch of horny scenarios on the go for my own reasons
A: The tintoy scenario generator is a free, browser-based tool for coming up with scenarios on the fly. The code is also provided if you wish to run it locally or assemble tables that make use of exotic dice such as the d99, d66, or d46.
Purchase
In order to download this memory protocol you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $9 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
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community copies
Can't afford $10? Desperate to violate and modify a friend's memories? This is for you
Comments
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This is so hot. I would kill to play this with somebody. Great job!
Nice 🥺
My playthrough (in conversation with the work of Riwhi Kenny),
Imagine a square, place a skull and the rest of a person in the middle of the square, in a throne, elevated to height the word satisfying sits with. You should have bones and throne in frame. Asset strip npc pathing code and train a model on that. Seed the model with a prompt by ...naming the prompt field something people will understand (e.g. the breath of life); ...seeding this field a demeanor, ...and harvest what you recognize from your result. Each season, you should have one new pathing code. Create new seasons for parallelizing path generation. Give each path an entity, name this something people will understand (e.g. River), and give River the pathing.
Make a bunch of rivers. See this example:
[hydrological map of turtle island]
See how the spaces between are everywhere River is not? Let this receive the light of the skull throne. Set Skull throne luminosity to some amount between 0 and 1 (see hands for details), and give ray tracing one of the paths you generate, and then populate that an arbitrary amount of time. Distribute this across all of space river isn't by setting this space into a sphere:
[naïve spheriod filter of the previous hydrology projected all to hell on a sphere with settings provided]
Let where River paths cross thrown carry aways one of the generated paths of light - you should have two paths: the light path and the water path. Water faggots have demeanors that start with special characters (e.g.: ҉faggot), light faggots have demeanors that start with alphanumeric characters (e.g.: Sky).
Until skull throne collapses, watch how light faggots stab the skull throne. Feel free to say the light has formed games for it, such as:
Knife Throne
You have two stats, etc.
Say, light paths like the Righteous feel the way to stab the treatrous correctly is: through. We may understand that bones only glow when you stab them with light, transfixing other light paths, which might give their light elsewhere, to give their light, instead to stabbing the bones as the elipsis in the sphere of 0.99...9 illumination grows and grows, letting there be light. As light passes through this sphere and radiates out, it falls in random directions. Let's call this direction something we will remember (e.g. straight "|" not cishet), and is a function.
Functions, you well understand, a refresher: fuctions are the directions of fields of view. Each field is made up of points of light. These are called by their name, like Sky, above. As River illumination grows from the path of light, it forms stone. Stone settle to River's bottom. Name each stone as it forms (e.g. Word "⌒" not what). As an aligning of a name is inherently a longer process than the direct path of light, some stones are still to be named by a River as is made evident by all of the ripples in a River. To each stone refer to what is the word.
Continue in this way until all Rivers are stone. The next section will cover known bugs. These arise in times such as the shadow of a name, where a River is displaced, forming a shape like cupped hands. Where this shadow is cast in a loop, name the loop something memorable (e.g. moss "🦠" not mitochodria) and get back to throwing stones names. Loops that harmonize are known to form. Name this something memorable and move on (e.g.: spit "ꜛ" not dead). Untl harmonic loops die, they will be animated, describe their pattern, name them something that recognizes them all (e.g.: discovery "ʔ" not capture) and hopefully the way we allow ourselves to be discovered leaves your attention wild, free to do something other than stare at what attention sumLight has destroyed.
Other known bugs may be found in any comments below. Thank you for being
-c.
/end playthrough -- thank you for the lovely game!
Been so excited for this release. This one's for the hypno freaks