Hello! It's been a while, but here we are with some juicy news about the upcoming Build 0.7. On top of that, we also have a poll we'd like you to fill out to help us on some stuff involving side projects we might work on, though let's focus on Minotaur Hotel first. Let's get to it!

An Overview

Let's take a step back and look at the game as a whole for a second.

Once the MC arrives at the hotel and finds Asterion, we see them gradually building trust while rebuilding the hotel and attracting the first few staff members. During this part of the story Asterion is extremely apprehensive, as one would expect from someone who went through what he did, but things take a turn for the better after the MC shows he's serious by signing the contract that creates Asterion's laurel wreath.

This constitutes the first part of Minotaur Hotel, which transitions to the second by using Chapter 13, the laurel wreath, as a bridge.

From that point onward, their relation evolves in a deeper way. Even if many aspects of his imprisonment are immutable, the human reality around them is malleable. Bit by bit, Asterion starts seeing himself as an equal, they become increasingly more emotionally intimate and their affection for each other grows. Then we have the big moment, the MC and Asterion confessing their feelings for each other in Chapter 18.

Following the same principle as the one we used for Chapter 13, Build 0.7 kickstarts the last third of Minotaur Hotel's main story. It bridges the gap and sets the stage for what's to come. Getting it right is immensely important — it just will save a lot of work later, and mistakes here can roll downhill and turn into huge snowballs.

Chapter 19

Chapter 19 narrates the aftermath of Chapter 18's events. The MC and Asterion try to make sense of Hermes' crashing their party while dealing with their three new guests — Argos, P and Storm. Many things come to light, both setting the stage for what's to come and unequivocally answering some questions. Of course, some of those answers might come as no surprise to those who played Minotaur Hotel as a detective game, and I hope they'll be proud of their investigative and archaeological skills.

Chapter 19 contains is planned to have 10 scenes, of which 7 are fully written and edited. Of the remaining 3, one is written and being edited as I write this, one is an extremely complex scene with an immense amount of variation that's coming along very nicely, and the last one is yet to be written. Kangarube is taking care of the editing while Nemo is wrestling with the last two scenes, which means that I going forward my attention is going to Chapter 20.

As a little side note, of those three scenes I mentioned, two were late additions. Once the chapter was coming together it became clear that it was very plot heavy, so we agreed it'd be good if we added a bit of levity, and I'm hopeful we'll get a few laughs out of you.

Chapter 20

Plot is great and all, but now that the MC and Asterion have confessed their feelings for each other, I'd say they deserve some time to explore their emotions and relationship. This, of course, includes what everyone's been looking forward to: their first scene of sexual intimacy. That's what Chapter 20 is all about.

Instead of breaking it down into scenes, it's more useful thinking of it as 4 blocks containing a few scenes each.

• Block 1 is fully written and edited.
• Block 2 is approximately 75% written and edited. There are a few blanks that need filling, and there's one complicated scene left to write, but it is in a very advanced stage of completion nonetheless.
• Block 3 is mostly written, though in a rough state. It's very difficult giving it a percentage of completion, but it's definitely past the halfway point in terms of writing.
• Block 4, which contains the sex scene, is yet to be written.

My current plan is working on Blocks 2 and 3 more or less simultaneously. They have a lot of character development so it takes a while to get it right. Once I feel satisfied with them I will proceed to the titanic challenge that will be writing an incredibly self-indulgent sex scene with obscene amounts of kissing and hand holding.

Another highlight of Chapter 20 is that we will learn more about Asterion's lyre, with the MC even getting a chance to play it. I've been learning to play the lyre myself so I've been having a lot of fun with that, and I might write a whole DevLog about this aspect in particular.

After that there is all the coding and art work, which will take a while.

And What Comes After That?

As I said, Chapters 19 and 20 kickstart the last third of Minotaur Hotel. That's vague, however, and it's understandable if people don't quite get what we mean by this. After some thinking, we decided to show an extremely simplified and spoiler-free look at what the game's outline is like.

Naturally, what we are about to show is subject to change and I'm omitting the last few chapters, to keep up the suspense.

That looks like a lot — and it is. But most of these chapters don't have to be as long as the ones that came before and, in fact, starting with Chapter 21 we will be focusing on writing that hits harder on a shorter word count. We won't be holding back anymore, we will use all the arsenal of things we set up previously and hadn't used up yet.

What we know for sure is that the next chapters should, as a rule of thumb, be quicker to write than Chapters 19 and 20, because those two are shouldering the burden of many plot threads and character moments at the same time. We are dealing with that complexity now so things are simpler and quicker later.

This is for the main story, of course. There's the side content — which warrants its own DevLog at a future date — but as much as possible I'll be focusing on the main content going forward.

Now, before we close this off I have one last topic to bring up.

We Need Your Input

Sometimes we get overwhelmed with writing Minotaur Hotel and need to take some time doing something else to air out our heads. It's a very big and complex project, after all, and everything has to be carefully thought out for consistency... But, you know, sometimes making something short and simple gives you a boost of the good chemicals, which benefits Minotaur Hotel in the long run.

We'd like to get some input from you so that we can use it on these little side projects, so that they can be very enjoyable to you as well. After some thinking we decided that we will do two polls.

• The first poll is just a short series of free form questions, meant to try and understand what you guys would like to see from us in the broadest of terms.
• The second poll will be a long form one with multiple choice questions, meant to figure out what the majority thinks about things. Think of it as refining and verifying the input we got from the first poll.

The first poll is already available. You can fill it below or, if you have any issues, just click this link.

EDIT: THE POLL IS CLOSED! THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO FILLED IT.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, we still cannot give an estimate for a release date at this time; it will be ready when it's ready, and we'll be sure to notify everyone of the date when we're ready to release.

But be reassured that good things are coming. Be patient, it takes time. I sincerely hope you will have an unforgettable experience with Build 0.7, and that you'll be able to look back and say the wait was worth it.