I really like this game, well worth the $5 I spent, I see myself playing it more. The semi-robotic voice didn't quite do it for me on my first playthrough, but now that I've played it a few times I find the game can drop me into trance pretty well. The suggestions seem to work fairly well for me to. I've been skeptical of memory play actually working on me but was surprised that it seemed to have an effect. I felt like I could still kind of remember stuff but only kind of, like the first part of names or a glimpse of the answer coming in and out of focus. Not completely blank but way more than I expected!
However, I do have some small (hopefully constructive) criticisms; the game says it's meant to make you worse at math, and while that is true (at least for me) the scores and commentary don't often reflect that. I have found that when my brain is either mush or when I'm forced to use numbers I no longer know that I just string numbers along until I eventually get a multiple of 8, which gives a high combo. I might go so far as to say that really high combos are actually a sign of you being bad at math and the dialogue when you 'do well' in such a situation takes me a bit out of the experience.
Given how old the game now is, I doubt you'll change the core mechanics, but maybe you will or you'll make fraction 8x2 (or maybe a new track that works differently). If I had to make suggestions on how to make the gameplay feel more in line with the stated goal, I'd suggest one of three things. Either:
1. Flip it, your goal is to get to 8. You score the max combo at 8, multiples of 8 cash out but every multiple of 8 gives you a smaller combo. Or keep the current system but make high scores bad, golf rules so to speak.
2. You could also make it subtraction rather than addition. Either from a fixed point such as 60, where your goal is to get multiples of 8 and the score is higher the closer to 8 you get without going negative. You could also do evil things like have the starting number change between rounds or make it random so you always have to do math and can't rely on route memory.
3. You keep the current system but add more mechanics to prevent stringing cards together until you get a combo. Maybe you have a card limit until you cash out, maybe you don't score past a certain multiple of 8, maybe there is a ceiling that ends the combo if you hit it. I don't know what would work best, but this at least would reduce the effectiveness of stringing numbers together.
Regardless, another thing I might suggest is that the combo score is modified by the time it took to reach, right now an answer that took you 3 minutes to find scores the same as if it took you 3 seconds, even though you are clearly worse at math in the first scenario. This would make people feel like they are getting worse as their score dwindles as they get more fuzzy headed.
A couple final points. It would be nice if the game had a final score screen. I know the real point of the game is to be hypnotized and not actually do well but given that the point of the game ostensibly is to score a high point total it feels weird that we don't get to see how we did. It might also be fun to play in a group and compare how people did, which the game over screen without scores makes slightly more challenging.
Finally, I appreciate all the safeties built into the game. I respect hypnotists who try to be safe with the people they trance. However, I feel like the game may go a little bit overboard. In particular, the safeties right before installing the suggestions in the opening hypnosis feel out of place, they don't flow naturally like some of the others do and it feels like it disrupts the flow and takes the player a bit out of the experience. My suggestion wouldn't be to remove them, but maybe include a setting which the player could toggle to skip those (and only those) safeties.
Despite these criticism I really do enjoy the game and will keep playing it! Sorry for the wall of text. Game design is a passion of mine and I'm super excited whenever I see something that combines two of my passions. Keep up the good work!