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I've deliberated wether to ask more since I feel like I've bothered you plenty. ...Buuuuut you said to "feel free to post below" so LET'S GO.

1. Any plan or intention to make Minoh into a "brand" with multiple projects and the like, similarly to other Furry VN producers? (I'm not sure how clear are we for naming VNs/producers so I'll omit that for now) Either yes or no what does that mean for the projects already largely promoted by the MinoHotel account? Are they EVEN connected in that substantial a way?

2. Aside from the R&D & Exploration systems, did any of you expect Game Design to play a big role in the production of the VN? 

3. What kind of music if any do you listen to while working?

4. In some games once you get the guy in a romantic relationship, the scenes involving the MC and the love interest become a smutfest (not exactly a complaint just somthing I've noticed). Has the pace of the  sexual relationship between the Master and Asterion been a great concern? Or were yall satisfied with it from the get-go?

Feel free to disgard any of these. I'm grateful that you took the time to answer any of my previous questions Thanks!

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It's not a problem dude, thanks a lot for your interest.

1.Any plan or intention to make Minoh into a "brand" with multiple projects and the like? Are they EVEN connected in that substantial a way?

I feel like MinoH has plenty of spin-off or prequel potential. I can imagine side stories featuring the cast of characters, or someone in the past bumping into the hotel and getting into adventures, maybe meeting some of the old Masters. But that could be creatively stagnant, not to mention it could get a little tiresome to work with the same setting for years. We can't all be Brandon Sanderson.
As for whether the other projects are connected, no, not really.

2. Did any of you expect Game Design to play a big role in the production of the VN?
Minotaur Hotel started as a quest on 4chan where Minoanon would ask other people in the thread what to do, they would reply, and he'd write the story based on what they wanted to do. There were a bunch of mysteries that were up to the posters to figure out.
That's a lot harder to do from a game design perspective. What do you do to emulate this? Give players a text input for them to type what they think is the answer? How do you validate that or reply to the infinite amount of wrong responses? Do you give them multiple choices, where they'd inevitably see the solution?

I came up with the player backgrounds as a solution for this, where it would instead boil down to a skill check of sorts. Like a pen and paper RPG. Then the other gameplay systems started emerging from there.
So yeah the moment I started implementing these systems I figured they'd become a big part of the VN because of how they can compliment the story- such as the R&D quests in 0.3, where the easiest solution to getting everything done is sending Asterion to the valley. I've always liked moments in games like Metal Gear or the old Fallout games, where there's specific lines of dialogue reacting to the player solving a quest in a creative way or having an interesting build or siding wtih a specific faction,  or messing with the game's systems to try amusing scenarios. It adds verosimilitude to the game, and rewards players' curiosity. I wanted to emulate that, it makes my day when I see people say "wait holy shit you can do that in MinoH?"

3. What kind of music if any do you listen to while working?

Podcasts and long form video essays are fantastic background noise. As for actual music, 70s hard rock, NWOBHM, jazz fusion, new wave, and prog.

4.Has the pace of the  sexual relationship between the Master and Asterion been a great concern? Or were yall satisfied with it from the get-go?

I feel like we're keeping a good pace right now and the MC and Asterion are building a relationship slowly, I don't think there's gonna be a switch where right after that it's all about sex with the minotaur 24/7. It's all going to be very gradual.

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Any plan or intention to make Minoh into a "brand" with multiple projects and the like, similarly to other Furry VN producers? (I'm not sure how clear are we for naming VNs/producers so I'll omit that for now) Either yes or no what does that mean for the projects already largely promoted by the MinoHotel account? Are they EVEN connected in that substantial a way?

That's a tough question. I don't really know where to start but, eh, I guess the best place I could point is that... Speaking for myself, a writer, I spent years writing without an audience. I was off chasing my wacky ideas with little to no success, and one day I just happened to write something people really liked. Then we made a group (that's Awoo, Nemo, nanoff and I) and we turned it into a visual novel.

And, you know, that opened a whole Pandora's Box. Very quickly we had an actual audience (something which most writers don't think is ever possible in any shape or form), and... Well, each one of us has a bunch of ideas for projects, so one day I basically asked myself "would the people who like Minotaur Hotel enjoy our other wacky ideas?"

That's basically how we started publishing other projects like Boomer's Big Date and Orc Breeding. It wasn't a brand or business sort of thing, it was more like "we have an audience that likes the way we think, let's not be afraid of pushing out the fun, creative ideas we'd like to explore." In other words our modus operandi is all creativity-driven.

Take Orc Breeding for example. Nemo had written the these stories on his own and they were very well-liked by a number of people. They were not written with a commercial perspective in mind, in fact they are very uncompromising pieces of erotica with little care for a wider audience. While working on how we'd publish them on Itch we specifically chose not to tone them down in any shape or form. We could have done it and gone for a broader appeal but that'd be missing the whole point.

The same applies for Boomer's Big Date. That's nanoff's project, it's his vision, he started it as an exercise to improve himself as an artist. The whole creation process was creativity-driven.

This modus operandi goes down to how we manage these projects on the platform too. What I'm about to say isn't very evident to most but if you check Boomer or OB you'll find their URLs use nanoff's and Nemo's accounts because they are the primary admins of the projects, while this account is the secondary. This means each one of us holds ultimate control on how to manage the project.

In that sense, "Minoh Workshop" will most likely keep on publishing more projects, yes. But it won't be a brand. It'll be us chasing our wacky ideas. Some of those may have a commercial aspect (Nemo takes donations and commissions, nanoff opened a Patreon) but they are first and foremost creative explorations.

If your question was about Minotaur Hotel as a game becoming a brand, no, we don't plan on doing that either. I don't like the idea of working on sequels. I suppose if I was taken by a breath of inspiration I could see myself doing it but I'm not counting on it, I want Minotaur Hotel's ending to fully satisfactory.

Now, you mentioned that we promote some projects. I assume you mean Nerus, Pervader, Killigan's Treasure and Beyond the Harbor, which are linked on Mino Hotel's page.

So here's what happened. Back when I was tinkering with the game's page for the SFW Mode release I stumbled on how to make the little boxes that link to other games. Those are usually meant to be used in other websites to link people to Itch but it clicked with me that, you know, we could use it inside Itch too.

I did a little test run where the Minoh projects linked to each other (Mino Hotel Original and SFW, Orc Breeding and Boomer's Big Date) and we saw that it was working, people were clicking. That was nice. From that we just naturally drifted into using this to help out some of the devs we are friends with.

So... The relation we have with the projects we link boils down to "we are friends, check out their games."


Aside from the R&D & Exploration systems, did any of you expect Game Design to play a big role in the production of the VN? 

I think nanoff will want to answer this one.


What kind of music if any do you listen to while working?

Ancient music for Asterion's content, but I end up listening to more modern songs while working on other characters.


In some games once you get the guy in a romantic relationship, the scenes involving the MC and the love interest become a smutfest (not exactly a complaint just somthing I've noticed). Has the pace of the  sexual relationship between the Master and Asterion been a great concern? Or were yall satisfied with it from the get-go?

It hasn't been much of a concern, no, aside from general considerations regarding how the pacing of the game should be like.

It isn't very apparent just yet but as the story progresses we will have a thicker plot. Besides that we want Asterion's NSFW scenes to closely tie to his character development. All of this put together means this is not a story that can really devolve into a smutfest.

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Since it seems I have caused confusion with that first question, I'll clarify. What I meant to say as "brand" is the kind of stuff that (screw it, I'm just gonna say it) Echo Project and Wolfbite Interactive do; where they have multiple projects but it's all clearly labeled as part of "their brand", if that makes sense. 

From the replies it seems that won't be the case (?). The projects are independent and are being merely promoted by this account as opposed to being part of a clear united "brand" (sorry I keep using that, I don't what else to call it). 

I don't and didn't mean to come off as scolding whatever desicion you guys make going foward. Nor was it my intention to try to convince to commercialize this or any project. 

At any rate, I ought to let you guys rest. Thank you deeply for answering. See ya on the 19th!

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No reason to worry, you didn't come across as scolding at all!