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.