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the contrast between this and the reply immediately above lmfao

but yeah, woof. there's a reason we're all here

I like this question! I think it's clear that Asterion has feelings for MC, but I find it difficult to answer the question "could an immortal being form a meaningful relationship with a human who will inevitably pass away?" in general. As you mentioned, it might be difficult to see someone on the same level as you intellectually if you've lived hundreds as many times longer than them. I also wonder how much it would wear on someone to see their loved ones grow old and pass away over and over. Would that make it more painful to form connections, and would they wind up avoiding such connections to avoid the hurt?

I don't see either of these being a problem for Asterion, however. He has plenty to learn about modern society from MC, and plenty to share from his own experiences, which lets them see each other as equals. He has also had few former masters that have treated him well, so he hasn't become hardened by losing generations upon generations of loved ones. He clearly wants to get to know MC and isn't apathetic to the attention given to him.

As a last note, I just finished rereading Circe by Madeline Miller, and that book grapples heavily with the relationships between gods and humans; some gods are clearly hardened by their divinity and don't spare a second thought to humans, and some are intrigued by the imperfections that humans have. I really enjoyed it, and you might, too! (Not to mention that the legend of the Minotaur of Crete is a big event in the book :) I got a kick out of rereading that part after having played Minotaur Hotel!)

Spoilers for the achievement below:

I did a little bit of digging into the code to see what the locked achievement is and it has the internal name 'all_hinterlands'. As far as I can tell, it is supposed to be unlocked when you have visited all of the locations in the hinterlands across all runs, but it fails to unlock because it checks if you have visited as many locations as there are total locations, but there are two unused (?) locations in the game files, the "Strange shack" and the "Truck stop" (which was mentioned to have been scrapped in another thread).

So it doesn't seem like a lore achievement, I think all of the main paths in the new content have been found and discussed here!

I think I ended up at the same spot as you. Since the tapir god's salt is what lets Storm purify the tree, my last idea was that it would also let him exorcise/cleanse the ex-husband, but no dice. I also have no idea what's up with the slug. What even is the trigger for that? I only got it once, and it seemed like it came from re-visiting the colonel's estate before going to the tree but I'm not certain. And what would the significance of the slug be? afaik, you can only visit the tree on the last day so there's nothing to do with the slug after you get it because there is no "after." Hm.

Thanks for the response, I love to read things like this from creators.

As for something completely different, is there a standard way to submit bugs? I noticed you can manually progress the scrolling credits after completing the ruthless route with enter/spacebar which I assume is unintentional. I also understand if an oversight like this is small and benign enough that you don't really care to focus on it over more game-breaking problems. Just wondering if there was a specific spot to mention things like this since I didn't see a bug report thread or anything ^^

How much of the story of Minotaur Hotel was planned before you started trying to formally create the game?

I guess for a more precise question:  did you plan for the story to focus almost completely on Asterion and the hotel, or did you plan to include other aspects like the Hinterlands from the beginning? I am always daunted and impressed by projects as large as this and I wonder if creators have a vision of what they want to create ahead of time or whether these things feel more like happy accidents.

Thank you for creating this game, it's been a delight to play! Looking forward future updates :)