Build 0.3 is here, finally! It took us two more months than expected and it's three times bigger than we planned but it's here. It adds Chapter 9, 10, 11 and 12, at a total of 92.000 words of story content and 6.000 words of additional in-game documents, which more than doubles the amount of content in-game.

This time we did something we had been meaning to since the beginning — we added the staff management mechanic, which significantly expanded the number of ways a playthrough can go. As such, this build was designed from the ground up to add replayability to Minotaur Hotel. You will need to play through the game a few times to see it all, and you can be sure we added a lot of hand-crafted content to make each playthrough reveal different bits and pieces of the story and characters.

Here are a few highlights of how things can go this time around, as far as variations go:

• As of the current build the story evolves into three different "branches." The specifics of which actions lead to which can get a bit complicated, but here's the summary of it:
  • "The Good Master": Treat Asterion particularly well and don't send him out to the valley.
  • "The Friendly Master": Don't send Asterion to the valley, but don't go out of your way to treat him well.
  • "The Ruthless Master": Send Asterion to the valley.
    • There is yet more variation on the "Ruthless" branch, based on whether the player sent Asterion out only once or more times (you can send him out again on Build 0.3).
• Based on previous choices you will either have Kota or Luke as the lounge's manager. Each option brings a number of unique scenes which contain backstory on both characters. Even if you have a favorite you might want to replay the game with the other option to see everything there is about your preferred boy.
• Argos makes a return! He has unique scenes depending on how your confrontation with him ended on Build 0.1 — that means there are five ways it can go on Build 0.3, based on the following outcomes:
  • The player signed the contract without contesting it;
  • The player contested the contract, but did not pick the right article;
  • The player contested the contract and got it right;
  • The player tricked Argos some other way (exclusive to Humanities and Leader backgrounds), and
  • The player has the Speedrunner background, in which case he signs the contract to "save frames."
• Build 0.3 adds the staff management mechanic! You'll have to send your staff members to Research & Development (R&D) or Exploration to accomplish time-sensitive tasks. You can fail and succeed in a number of ways, and for the most complex of the tasks there are in total 7 possible outcomes.
• On top of that, while exploring the valley you can find old items. For now they take the form of fragmentary writings about Asterion's life over the centuries. There is both strategy and randomness in this process — certain choices will bring you more loot, at a price. There are 25 items to find right now, 18 of which make up a whole plotline when put together. As of this moment you cannot find them all in a single playthrough, which means you'll have to either play it more than once or get together with more people to piece it all together.
• There are three accessories you can get in-game, which we picked based on a community consultation we did some weeks ago. One of them is exclusive to the Speedrunner background.
• The player will talk about the Internet with Asterion, the contents of the conversation depend on the background you picked at the start of the game.

And that's about it as far as new content goes. Again, you'll get more out of Build 0.3 if you replay it.

Beyond that, here are a few general changes:

• It turns out the game was setup to automatically pick the maximum text speed — infinite. Text was instantly being put on-screen, which is not recommended. We actually have been spending some time trying to set up little flags so the text stops here and there, when it would fit the dialogue, and that kinda spoils it. We changed the default speed to a more reasonable one — but remember you can change it by going to the Options menu.
• Build-a-Moo has been tweaked, which is something you can access by finding the secret VIP Room. Now when fully healed, Asterion can wear jeans while shirtless — previously the jeans were in a package with the modern shirt. This way, eventually, people will be able to mix and match jeans with upper body clothes and accessories without a shirt.
• Added a files screen to browse contracts and items obtained through exploration and research.
• A new screen was made for the first encounter with Argos so players can read the full contract while choosing what term to contest.
• The field of flowers outside the lounge now has an appropriate background.

It is also good to add that we introduced a number of changes when we released what we called Build 0.2.5 — you can find the changelog to that here. Most notably it had a changes in worldbuilding.

...And if you want to know when Build 0.4 comes out — we don't know yet. Second semester of 2020 is our best estimate.

Wew, that was a long release DevLog! So yeah, without further ado, Build 0.3 is out. Have fun!