TETHER: Free Demo
Free demo
The free demo covers Days 1–3. Your save code carries over, so the full game picks up right where you left off, on Day 4.
Welcome to the town of Shoreside Shoals, where strange things are happening. You are the night shift janitor in Dr. Lisa's lab, and tonight she's left a prototype device out on her work table. The Tether.
You've been here for two years, and yet no one remembers your name. They all look over the night guy who mops the floors. But all of that is about to change. Because tonight, you're going to test the device on yourself.
The weird filament crawls into your arm, and you black out, coming to with the red-haired desk girl, Ellen, standing over you. After punching out early, you fall asleep, waking up with the ability to sense the minds of those in the town. Only your abilities go far beyond just sensing. If you train your new powers enough, you can bend others to your will.
The Tether is my first "dating" sim, but in this story, you're not trying to win the affection of the women in town. You're influencing their thoughts and turning them into your devoted and corrupted toys.
Choose your powers through the skill tree to develop them in a way that suits your style. Will your voice creep into their thoughts and make them wet in the cunt? Will your gaze and your will be enough to bring them to your bed? Will you invade their dreams and leave them unable to think of anything but your cock? The choice is yours.
Five characters from past stories await your commands. Each woman has her own goal. As the town's resident mind-manipulator, you can Lift them up and help them achieve it, creating a loving harem of devoted enamored love slaves. Or will you let the shadow consume you and Bend each of them to your will, making them forsake their own desires and fully submit to you?
Jessie wants to be a popular streamer. Sophie wants to open her own Yoga studio. Ellen's office rival is using her work to get ahead at the lab. Sara and Diana are in competition for Head Flyer on the cheer squad. And Dr. Lisa wants to keep her research out of the hands of the board. Whether they succeed is up to you.
You can also check out the 5-issue graphic novel series starting with Issue #1: Sara
5 women to control
16 different endings, including 2 full harem paths. Balance your powers and play to attain the most difficult endings.
Get each woman to "Toy" rank and then further corrupt them to reach their final form.
Multiple outfits and accessories to dress your conquests in anything from sexy, to slutty, to collared, nude, and drooling in public.
Text your toys to meet you and show them off in public, proving your control over them to the whole town.
Use their holes at your will.
Engage in sidequests for the town's residents, furthering your own corruption or benevolance.
Tether is best played as a fullscreen experience. Play it in the browser or get your own copy for Windows or Mac in the shop.
How to Play
TETHER — How to Play
Adults only (18+).
The premise
You're Danny (rename him if you like), a senior at Shoreside Shoals State who pays tuition working nights as a lab tech at Vireo Neurolabs. One night you test Dr. Lisa's prototype neural implant, the Tether, on yourself, and it bonds to your nervous system. Now you can feel other people's thoughts, and with effort you can push them. Five women are in reach: Jessie, Sophie, Sara, Ellen, and Dr. Lisa herself. Each has something she wants. You can help her get it, or bend her into wanting you. Meanwhile Vireo is hunting for its missing prototype. Use it for good or ill. The Tether doesn't care which.
The clock
The full game runs 21 days. Each day has four slots: Morning, Afternoon, Evening and Night. Every trip on the city map uses one slot, so the calendar is your scarcest resource. You can get through each woman's story in time, but not if you waste days.
From Sunday to Thursday you work Vireo's night shift (11 p.m. to 6 a.m.). You get paid, and the shift gives you chances to wipe logs, snoop around and raid the lab fridge. Afterward, either sleep two hours and keep your Morning, or sleep till noon for full Focus. Calling out earns a strike, and three strikes gets you fired. You can win the job back once. Friday and Saturday nights are yours.
Your resources
Focus ⚡ pays for every power. Sleep refills it, and coffee, energy drinks, protein shakes and Neuro-shots top it up. You can use up to four Focus items a day, and not while Focus is already full. Your maximum grows as your link with the Tether levels up.
Trace is Vireo closing in on you. It starts creeping up after the first audit and speeds up later in the month. Bending people in public, misfiring, stealing from the lab and going on risky outings all raise it. Wiping logs on shift, working an ordinary café job and making allies bring it down. If Trace hits 100, you're caught. A careful run usually sits between about 25 and 50.
Shadow measures what the power is doing to you. Bending, overdraws and Overdrive raise it. Lifting doesn't.
Strain is shown on your HUD. If you cast without enough Focus (an overdraw), the cast always misfires, adds Shadow +5 and adds 1 Strain. Overdrive casts add Strain too. Once a day, a walk along the harbor from Lakeside Café takes off 1 Strain and 1 Shadow.
Cash comes from night shifts, barista shifts at the café, side quests, or nudging strangers to hand you money. The nudging is quick, dark and gets riskier every time. Spend it on Focus items and on outfits and accessories at Velvet Lane.
The women, and her stages
Each woman has a card on your handset with her Will, Desire, Trust and Suspicion. As you work on her, her Will falls and her Desire rises. If you push too hard, push in public, or misfire, her Suspicion climbs, and at 100 she reports you.
Every relationship moves through Stages 0 to 5. A new stage unlocks when she meets the checklist on her card (look for the ★ on the map). Each stage has a ceiling. Once you hit it, extra effort isn't wasted: it carries over and lands when her next scene plays. Her stage scenes are spaced out, so you can't rush one woman through in an afternoon. Plan around everyone.
How you treat her decides who she becomes:
✦ Lift builds Trust and advances her own goal, leading to the Bloom path.
◆ Bend pulls her toward you fast, leading to the Corrupt path, but it feeds your Shadow.
If you mix the two, she ends up Tangled.
Her card always shows which way she's heading. From Stage 4 on, she gets a Wardrobe, with outfits, collars, charms and jewelry from Velvet Lane.
What you can do
Travel around the city: the Marlowe, Lakeside Café, Ironline gym, campus, Vireo, Patel's shop and the Velvet Lane boutique. Each place has its own activities, like listening in on conversations, practicing on strangers and shopping.
Talk, give gifts and help with her goal when you find one of the women.
Cast Tether powers on her, up to four casts per woman per visit. There are five branches: Voice, Gaze, Read, Nerve and Signal. Early powers are small nudges and flushes, and later ones go much deeper. Every cast has a success chance. Using a power more improves its mastery, and misfires get rarer.
Learn new skills as your link levels up. The top of each branch holds a capstone, such as Broadcast, Bind or Overdrive.
Run side quests around town. Each one can be helped or exploited.
Risk and failure
Two things end a run early:
Exposed: Trace reaches 100.
Consumed: Strain 3 while Shadow is 90 or higher.
The HUD warns you as you get close. Keep your Focus up, go easy on Overdrive, and take that harbor walk.
How to win
TETHER has 16 endings, and the gallery tracks the ones you've found. Very broadly:
One woman. Win a single relationship, on her terms or yours.
All five. Bring every woman to Stage 5 and bind them into one household. Whether that household is benevolent or something darker depends on how you got there. This is the hardest goal in the game and needs a planned, efficient run.
Fully yours. Corrupt a woman completely and a new loop opens up: outings, outfits and scenes that end in her Final Form.
Dr. Lisa is hunting her device the whole time. Don't let her get ahead of you.
Saves
Use Menu ▸ Save code & file often. A save code is a block of text you can paste back in later, and it's the reliable way to keep a run or move it between devices. Browser saves can get lost if you play inside a website. The desktop apps keep their own saves, separate from the browser, so use a save code to bring a run across.
Installing the desktop versions
The Windows and Mac apps aren't signed yet, so your computer will ask once before opening them:
Windows: at "Windows protected your PC," click More info, then Run anyway.
Mac: Control-click (or right-click) the app, choose Open, then Open again. On macOS 15 and later, if there's no Open button, go to System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
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