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.