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Hinterlands Expansion (Build 0.6.2) Q&A Session

A topic by Minoh Workshop created Oct 08, 2022 Views: 4,153 Replies: 66
Viewing posts 1 to 24
Developer(+6)

You know the drill! Send us your questions and we'll answer them. They can be about the game, production, funny things but overall it'd be neat if the questions tend towards the Hinterlands Expansion.

Have fun!


(+4)

I don't have any questions about the update as I'd rather go in as blind as possible, but I just wanna say how incredibly excited I am for it! The story of Storm and P is by far the second most interesting and captivating part of Minotaur Hotel for me and I love them as characters, so complex.


Thank you and everyone on the dev team for making my favourite piece of literature.

Developer(+4)

Thank you for your kind words. I hope you'll enjoy what we have in store.

(+1)

Hello there, how you do?

Will the expansion feature a new mystery or a new "quest"? 

Does it gives more hints towards the puzzles that were already present? 

Is the conclusion towards the secret shed going to be added on a later update still? If so, does that means we will still revisit the hinterlands after ch 18? Perhaps involving the other guests to the hotel?

I've realized later that Pedro's feathers have displayed more magical powers than most of the cast, being able to remotely monitor and pass down memories. Beyond physical attributes, we only got hints of Asterion/Storm affinity to water and Khembish's bad luck. How capable at magic are each of the characters? and are there other powers that have been shown already, even if subtetly, beyond the ones i mentioned?

How did you came about deciding Pedro's species as a peacock? I understand the correlation that it would have with his true identity revealed later on. Still, i'm curious about how the process went down.

The previous side updates all had some naughty content included. Will this one too?

Considering how the original hinterlands would change certain aspects to the places you visited depending on what you found out before, will this principle apply to the new locations?

Is ThE aNt HiLl based of a real thing?

Developer(+4)
Will the expansion feature a new mystery or a new "quest"? Does it gives more hints towards the puzzles that were already present?

It takes the mysteries that were already there to the conclusion we envisioned, which does involve showing off things we couldn't before. In practice it should feel like it adds a good handful of mysteries that are connected to the ones you already looked into. And yes, it does add a quest that has its own puzzles. Yes, plural. The puzzles that were already there should feel more fleshed out now, too.

Is the conclusion towards the secret shed going to be added on a later update still? If so, does that means we will still revisit the hinterlands after ch 18? Perhaps involving the other guests to the hotel?

The conclusion to the shed will come in a later update and I'm very excited to show that off. I've been joking for a while now that we'll have "Pedro's Return to the Hinterlands" someday. However, the content we're adding in this update is a "thematic continuation" of the shed, and in fact accessing it is one of the pre-requisites (more specifically, unlocking an achievement tied to it that we're implementing with the update) for the expansion scenes to pop up.

On some aspects The Feathered Line is a follow-up to the shed and many of its scenes assume you read and thought about it. The more you were fascinated by the shed, the more the expansion will interest you.

I've realized later that Pedro's feathers have displayed more magical powers than most of the cast, being able to remotely monitor and pass down memories. Beyond physical attributes, we only got hints of Asterion/Storm affinity to water and Khembish's bad luck. How capable at magic are each of the characters? and are there other powers that have been shown already, even if subtetly, beyond the ones i mentioned?

Magic in this universe is unfair and not everyone has a strong affinity to it, or they don't have innate talents that are useful. Some have it better, others have it worse. And when someone has magical properties to them, it isn't always visible, or they might affect people differently depending on gender. To name a few:

Luke is nearly indestructible, to such an extent he could take a grenade blast to the face and shrug it off like it was nothing. Kota is a small river deity and he used to enjoy all the powers you'd expect out of a kami from Shinto tradition, though he's lost much of it, and he's learned some rites over the years. Khenbish is cursed with bad luck and has no powers, but his sisters enjoy incredible fertility and aren't affected by the curse. And Robert can see souls.

There are more discreet powers/magical properties in the story, but noticing they are there is part of the experience, so I won't you help with that.

Speaking of rites in particular, though, they are a dying art. Few people learn them nowadays because they just aren't that useful compared to the time it takes to get good at them. Not only that, different traditions require different things out of their ritemasters so you might have been born in a culture whose rites require something you don't have. In this sense Pedro is lucky because his feathers are sacrifices of the highest quality for the Latin tradition.

How did you came about deciding Pedro's species as a peacock? I understand the correlation that it would have with his true identity revealed later on. Still, i'm curious about how the process went down.

First and foremost was the association between peacocks and the mythological Argos, which led to the magical feathers and all the ways we used them in the story (the ones in the bedrock, for starters). The feathers really were a great plot device, and you'll see more of them in The Feathered Line. We also liked that peacocks are birds, as it adds some diversity to the cast both in species and in body type (P is shorter, thinner, almost twink-ish, and only really muscular on his chest.)

But, on top of that, the peacock has always been something I associate with the real life hinterlands. When I was a kid I visited my family there and they had peacocks in their farm. Their colors evidently match Brazil's flag, too. But perhaps the most important thing is that I associated the hinterlands with a story my father used to tell me, a little folklore short story called "The Romance of the Mysterious Peacock".

It was a storm of perfect elements, all leading up to the peacock becoming to me the most appropriate symbol of what I wanted to portray. Usually I like it when we can wrap multiple things like that in a single design choice.

The previous side updates all had some naughty content included. Will this one too?

In true Latin American magical realism fashion, sex will be mentioned but it won't involve the Pedro or Oscar and it isn't titillating. It's part of plot things.

Considering how the original hinterlands would change certain aspects to the places you visited depending on what you found out before, will this principle apply to the new locations?

Yes, and we took it a few steps further. In fact we took it as far as it was mathematically possible to. It was very funny when we had to cut some variations because their pre-requisites were impossible to achieve in the time the player has.

If you want to see ALL of the lines in the expansion that will require a few playthroughs, there's a lot of unique text. But we don't expect people to do it all on their own, this is why we have this forum.

Is ThE aNt HiLl based of a real thing?

Maybe the real anthill was the roadside pee breaks  the friends we made along the way.

(1 edit) (+2)

Oh, nice. I'm glad it seems all these ideas have been thought of during the writing of this update. Just goes to show how dedicated you are to this project.

With so many more new places to explore in the Hinterlands, would you consider maybe adding a cheat button that allows us to explore the Hinterlands for more than 7 days? Maybe even exclusively in the speed runner route?

Developer(+3)

Sadly, that would require more work than it it seems. The Hinterlands as a game is tied together by the limitation of there only being seven days and some scenes really would break down if you came into them with "impossible variables." To put it concretely, we structured and wrote many scenes with the assurance that some things are impossible to happen in the game, so we didn't have to account for these possibilities and the game could bug out if they happened.

Though as someone who's had to play the Hinterlands more than anyone else, after your first and second playthrough you can breeze through the content you already saw by using the text skip function. Playing through it like that usually only takes a few minutes.

However, I did take notice of how many players would prefer it if they didn't have to restart the whole thing to see more of it. It's too late to apply that to the Hinterlands but if I revisit this mechanic someday in a different game I'll be taking that into account.

Am I understanding correctly that this just expands the Hinterlands, it does not proceed onward beyond the current To Be Continued in the main story?

Secondly, will this be compatible with old Hinterlands saves? If you've had something count as "done" for the P's notebook skip scene previously, will it still count as "done?"

Developer(+1)

It only expands the Hinterlands, it doesn't add content to the main story. HOWEVER, the next update will be main story related.

It's compatible with old saves, yes.

Will what happens in the Hinterlands greatly affect the future story? Part of me is worried about it in a, it feels difficult to do the right thing for Storm and the right thing for P in the amount of time given... As cool as it would be to have different outcomes for it, making a hard to get Good Ending also seems difficult without a guide?

Which, speaking of: would you consider releasing a spoiler free guide to the Hinterlands at some point? There seems like a LOT I'm missing to it, aspects hinted at and puzzles I'm apparently terrible at solving, though I have a few vague ideas... Y'all are excellent horror writers on top of the main stories writing style, which is great in a style I don't know the word for!

Developer
Will what happens in the Hinterlands greatly affect the future story?

It will affect a few things, which should be very remarkable if you enjoyed the Hinterlands but ultimately won't play a very impactful role in the larger narrative of Minotaur Hotel. It will be one of the many variables players dealt with during the game.

However, the Hinterlands expansion won't really change much of what comes next. You can still get all the outcomes from just playing the base version of it. At most there'll be a few flavor differences in a specific moment down the road, but again nothing that makes a serious difference.

However, the Hinterlands is all about following your moral compass and what you think is right. Don't think too much about what is objectively right, focus instead on what you think is right and why.

And there's a spoiler-free guide to the Hinterlands on the Wiki, I believe. We will also give a spoiler-free guide on how to access the expansion.

(2 edits)

Is the next chapter going to be released with this update? chapter after Hermes leaves?

Developer(+1)

No, but they are the next after this one. Chapters 19 and 20 will come out together.

so this means the next update will be the complete full circle of asterion's plot?

Developer

It will continue Asterion's story. We're about two thirds of the way through, there's still some stuff to cover. You can think of it as the beginning of the final stretch of the game.

(-2)

When will the chapters  19 and 20 be released out of curiosity, roughly?

Developer(+5)

When they're done.

how many achievements did u add for this update?  does it correlate to the complete progression of hinterlands chapter? like will there be an achivement that can tell u have finished the plot of the hinterlands? i want to have achievements  like these to help know that i have fully experience the whole chapter of the vn...

Developer

I think we added 3 or 4, not sure.
There's an achievement that tells you that you did the main things, but it's not a 100% thing strictly speaking. You'll be able to track how close you're to 100%'ing the expansion by different means, though. There's a set of loot drops you unlock, which will surely get added to the wiki, and when you get them all you can be sure you did everything there is to do.

(+3)

is he a cow boy?

Developer(+3)

Proudly so.

(+1)

Will there more references to Brazilian folklore in later on? I'd enjoy seeing more references to things that may not be well known such as the cabra cabriola. Googling cabra cabriola primarily gives me Portugues results and translated results. To me, it seems interesting that some legends and folklores are still mostly unheard of by English speaking people. (A goat boogeyman more or less?)

Speaking of the cabra cabriola, will there be an eventual resolution to the missing children of the Hinterlands mystery or will that mystery be brought up again?

And for a fun question: if Minotaur Hotel got picked up for an adaptation episodic series (singles season adaptation from beginning to end) on a streaming service, what kind of medium would you all like to see it in, animation or live action? If animation, what kind of style? If live action, would the mythicals be mostly practical costumes and effects or CGI?

Developer (1 edit) (+3)

You'll get a bit more Brazilian folklore with this update, but I won't give any details at this moment. You'll have to find it out for yourself :) As for the children's plotline, I'll just tell you to play the update as a detective.

And for a fun question: if Minotaur Hotel got picked up for an adaptation episodic series (singles season adaptation from beginning to end) on a streaming service, what kind of medium would you all like to see it in, animation or live action?

Oof, that's a tough one. I like practical costumes but it'd require a special kind of horny gremlin to translate the characters and their sex appeal to them, and finding that sort of talent would be maybe too difficult.  Animation would probably be the best option, I imagine there are plenty of animators who can get it. As for style, I'd like something that sticks to an aesthetic that's attractive to the gay crowd, while still having some cartoonish-ness to keep things a bit lighthearted.

The human characters like Greta should at times be portrayed in unsettling, photo-realistic ways and with a very ominous, almost Eldritch aura :) Of course, the MC shouldn't get that treatment.

(+3)

Human characters with Eldritch auras you say?

(Sorry for the shitty image, using google images is not what it used to be)

What is something you would have loved/planned to add but can't due to restraints or technical difficulty?

Once you finish MinoH, do you guys have plans for something else in the world of the game? 

Developer(+4)

One of the first locations we wrote for the original Hinterlands was "The Truck Stop". I wrote it mainly to get a feel for how P's first person narration should go, but halfway through I had an idea of injecting a funny thing I saw a few times when I visited the real life hinterlands and it became a really special event in my mind.

However, in the end we decided not to put it in because we didn't want to bloat the map any further. In the expansion you'll see that this concern was still hanging over us, because most of the new events we added actually happen by visiting already-established location under specific circumstances, and those that don't only become available in the map after the player visits some places.

We could have tried implementing as some kind of event that would trigger on the way to another place but we decided against that too. It didn't add enough to justify it.

Knowing that it will never get implemented, I suppose there's no harm in posting it here.




Once you finish MinoH, do you guys have plans for something else in the world of the game? 

I actually have a few side projects I haven't announced yet. It's safe to say I'll be staying, but I highly doubt I'll do a project as big as Minotaur Hotel again. This size worked for the story we had in mind but it's way too intensive to keep going forever. Some of them will be NSFW, others will be SFW, but you can expect that they won't be very usual and typical as far as VNs go.

nanoff has some ideas for a few projects of his own, too, but I'll leave it up to him how much he wants to share.

oh yeah im not sure but when the time when asterions hum in the early chapters, who was humming in that tune wasit one of u  devs or some other entity?

Developer(+3)

It was Kangarube! He's part of the team as both a writer and editor. You have him to thank for the prose being polished like it is and for the builds not taking even longer to come out. Nowadays pretty much every main story scene is written by him and I together.

(+6)

This is not a question per se, sorry about that, but I'd like to express my gratitude for introducing me to the works of Anne Carson. You mentioned her in one of your previous posts a while ago ...either here or on reddit (I forgot). Regardless, it's always a joy to hear more from you, the authors, and to get to experience more of MinoH. Thank you

Developer(+3)

I'm glad we got someone to read Anne Carson, she's such a joy. Hopefully reading Autobiography of Red added something to reading Minotaur Hotel, too.

(+2)

I practically inhaled Autobiography of Red, reading it really felt like a moment that was the opposite of blindness. Read Red Doc> soon after. Then went after If Not, Winter, and so on. I'm slowly, but surely, hoarding up her books, too bad I need to order 'em from amazon, but that's what I get from living in the middle of European nowhere. Sorry, rambling

Developer(+3)

It's always a joy to hear that reading MinoH gets people to go check out literary fiction. Very glad you enjoyed it.

(1 edit) (+1)

Hey, This is mostly an visual question about Storms sprite rework, I noticed that the ear piercing is going to be much bigger than before in this version and was wondering if there would be extra head sprite art to keep the piercing in his left ear when flipped because in the current art it changes ear depending on what side Storm is facing.


(I could easily code it if I had the correct asset for it if additional coding would cause time issues)

Developer

Hey Kenta, I haven't made assets or code to account for symmetry unfortunately.

As I didn't notice any mention of it in the 0.6.2 release announcement (not to mention that I'm probably one of - if not the only person who really cares one way or the other) I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this... But I figure it can't hurt to ask about this, regardless.


With this new expansion to Hinterlands III, will there be any changes to how the time spent there affects P and Storm in later chapters? Specifically with how P's relationship to Storm (i.e. whether P and Storm progress towards a romantic or familial relationship after Hinterlands III) and whether P will be recruitable in chapter 19 are determined?


I've always enjoyed P and Storm's story arc(s) well enough, but I always preferred the idea of them having a platonic or familial relationship as opposed to a romantic one... So I never particularly liked how P developing romantic feelings for Storm and P's "good" ending in Chapter 18 (the one that'll lead to him being recruited) were both strictly tied to the same variable - that being how much time P spends with Storm during Hinterlands III...

As I said, I'm probably one of the only people who particularly cares either way about this... But it'd be nice if there was a distinction between what determines P and Storm's relationship and what determines whether P can be recruited later; like, if the amount of time P spends with Storm during Hinterlands III determines whether P can be recruited while specific choices during those interactions determine how their relationship progresses? Something like that, I guess...

Whenever I see P's "bad" ending in Chapter 18, it always just felt like the game was saying that P having a familial relationship with Storm was, well, the bad ending; like P's life is objectively lesser - less fulfilling or meaningful or something - if he and Storm aren't romantically interested in one another. That's the kind of vibe I always feel from it, at least.


I'm probably just over-analyzing, though... Really, I'd just like a timeline where P can work in the hotel without his relationship with Storm being the determining factor...




This was a lot of text... My apologies for the essay; I didn't intend for this inquiry to be this long...

Regardless, I still love Mino Hotel and look forward to whatever else comes in the future!

Developer(+2)

I'd have to check with nanoff to see exactly how the variables work, but from what I remember from when we were designing it we did take this into account. It's still very possible to recruit P into the hotel even if you don't go for the "romance route". Particularly if you don't solve Argos' puzzles, but even if you do it should still be possible to get P because if their "scores" are too close you'll get to pick which one stays.

For now it may look like that the romance route is the best one but just wait. Particularly with Chapter 20 the familial route will have a lot going on, and I'm quite sure there'll be remarkable moments where that route will feel stronger than the romance one.

Whichever route you go, I'm trying to make the experience feel very right regardless.

Developer(+2)

Hi M3tav0X, that is a valid concern! I'm with you there that Pedro's story should be able to have a happy ending regardless of the nature of his and Oscar's relationship, so worry not. Seconding what Minoanon said, you will still be able to get Pedro to join the hotel after chapter 18 even if he and Storm don't end up in a romantic relationship. Spending time together during Hinterlands III is one of the factors that nudges him in that direction but it's not the only one, your performance in the other quests also has an effect on this.

In fact Pedro joining instead of Nikos will be the most likely outcome (I expect most players to not have Nikos join on their first playthrough since the method to get him is a lot more complicated).

(+1)

I'm still not really clear on something. 

Will the determining factor for how P and Storm's relationship develops be the amount of time P spends interacting with and doing nice things for Storm (buying Storm clothes, going to P's grandfather's home, visiting Storm's mother, etc)? Or will there be another, more specific factor(s) that determines P and Storm's relationship?

I guess what I'm really trying to ask is -

Will I be able to explore P and Storm's various plot threads on the Hinterlands - and thus, the resulting scenes and interactions between them - without locking them into a romantic relationship?

Will I be able to see P buying Storm clothes, exploring the town with Storm, sharing a cigar with Storm on his grandfather's porch, taking Storm to visit his mother and all those meaningful scenes and interactions without Storm and P becoming romantic? Or will I still need to avoid letting P and Storm have too many of those interactions for them to be familial?


Despite being completely optional, a lot of those scenes and interactions are really good at developing P and Storm's characters and their dynamic; they really help the player to build a clearer picture of these characters. But despite how very few - if any - of these scenes and interactions appear to have any distinctly romantic connotations, up to this point seeing too many of them always locked P and Storm into a romantic relationship; after a certain point, if the player wants P and Storm to have a non-romantic relationship, they have to stop pursuing these interactions between P and Storm regardless of whatever else they have to do in the Hinterlands...

Developer(+2)

We discussed this with the team and it's a really good point, in hindsight it would have been a good idea to add a choice for Pedro to make where even if he meets the requirements, he doesn't pursue a romantic relationship with Oscar.

Unfortunately we put a lot of work into writing dialogue variations that apply depending on how much time Pedro and Storm hung out together and we'd have to go over all of them to account for this, we planned the rest of the game around this, and there's the matter that people with old saves won't have these options set up... it's a good idea, but to be honest we would prefer the time and effort that would go into course correcting and implementing it to instead go into chapters 19 and 20. We have a game to finish, I think we've spent too much time tinkering with the Hinterlands chapter alone, wouldn't you agree?

We will keep this in mind for the rest of the game though, so thank you for bringing it up.

(+1)

Yeah, I get it; you have to draw a line somewhere with this sort of thing and unfortunately, not every idea can get included all the time. It's just kinda disappointing to think that such valuable content as the interactions between P and Storm is essentially exclusive to a romantic relationship between them.

I don't personally know how difficult it would be to rework this stuff to accommodate that choice - I imagine it can be quite difficult and time consuming, depending on how in-depth it went - but I do imagine it would be easier to implement that sort of thing now, while the Hinterlands are still something of a chief focus, than later on when there would be even more content to recode and whatnot. Not to mention that, as I imagine, most people will be either starting new saves or at least restarting from saves before Hinterlands III for the new content.

In the end, however, I'll trust the judgment of you guys that are actually making the game; if you think there's been too much focus on refining Hinterlands III and you just want to move on, you guys should go with what you think is best...

... That said, I can't imagine anyone would be upset with you guys for trading more time to provide more options for your players to explore the story in a way that's satisfying for them... I definitely wouldn't, at least...

But as I said, I'll defer to your judgement about this. I'm just one person who's suddenly voicing an arbitrary complaint; I understand that the wants of one person can't - and likely shouldn't - be allowed to completely shift your priorities or plans. In the end, all I want is see Minotaur Hotel become the best possible story that it can. All I can ever hope for is that my words be seen as the helpful and well-intentioned input I intended them to be; and if they have some positive impact on the trajectory of development, all the better.

Whatever you decide is the best course of action, I and every other fan of this project will still be here to experience this wonderful story you guys are creating! Keep up the great work you guys do with this project!

(+1)

Is it too late to implement this split in Ch19? They could have a moment to talk about if they really want to pursue a romantic relationship over a familial one now that they  completed the goal of finding the hotel, it could be a reasonable time for them to rethink what they want to do. I don't fully remember the dialogues they had by the end of it, but it's still possible for people to realize that they can have romantic feelings for one another and decide that's best for them to not be in a relationship.

I know it's been almost three weeks but I just thought of something.


While the Hinterlands chapter - and by extension, P and Storm - is still fresh in everyone's minds and there's a minimum amount of implemented content you guys would have to rework, why not reach out to the fanbase on the matter? Like what you guys did with getting the fans' ideas and such regarding Asterion r18 content, it even just a poll on Twitter?


I understand that you guys probably just want to move on with the project by this point, but if bringing this up to you guys was enough that you'd actively keep it in mind for the rest of the project, as you said, shouldn't it be important enough to see what the fanbase thinks about it, too?

You guys have put a lot of time and effort into the Hinterlands already, I get it. But all the same, there's bound to be people who are strictly opposed to P and Storm being romantic or are only interested in them being familial; such players are then forced to completely pass-up on a not-insignificant about of content from the Hinterlands in the form of P and Storm hanging out together. Likewise, assuming that "course correcting" means anything like "giving the player a choice later for P to take back what he says to Storm in Chapter 18" if P and Storm end up romantic, such a scene would likely come across as needlessly cruel to Storm regardless of how it was written.

Getting an idea of what the fans would want might be a good idea here. But at the end of the day, it'd be your choice as the devs. I'm not saying that this has to or even necessarily should be what you guys do, just that it wouldn't hurt to consider doing it while it's not unreasonably difficult to handle...

Again, it's your choice, though. Just wanted to bring this up.

1 How much of this  update was stuff you had wanted to do previously but didn't do to time, and how much emerged for the first time ?

Developer

Pretty much all of it was stuff I wanted to do from the start. You can check the Hinterlands Postmortem, in the Cut Content section, and you'll see that three of the five new events we added were explicitly mentioned there. I already had a very solid idea of what should happen in these scenes and how it connected to the larger narrative. I felt very strongly that without them the story of the Hinterlands wasn't as much of a "fair play" detective story as I wanted it to be.

The other two (The Cemetery and The Parade) were already on my mind but not as concretely. Still you can see some of the ideas were already there. The idea that stores close down on the last day (September 7th, the Independence Day holiday) was tied with the idea of letting P and Storm watch the parade going through town, which would give a nice capstone to the bond the two created with each other.


As for the Cemetery... Well, I actually managed to put in a hint about what my idea was for it in T̸̢̳̦̲͕̳̳͛̈́̂̈͒̀̈́͗͆̀̀͝H̸͇̘̭̟͛͂̋̕͝͠Ȩ̸̗̞̗̲͉̤̝̝̒̏̋̌̈́͛͒̾͝ ̴̧̨̛̟̲͓͕̗͈͕̀̍̾̍̓͝ͅÁ̷̟̪͔͖̆́̍͌́̚͘̚͘͝͝N̴̢̡̢̰̍͛͐̄̀̂̀̆͐̇̂͆̀͊̂T̷̛̜͋̓̀̇̔͑̊̉̌̕H̸̪̥͕̯͔̦̖͙̬͇̙̲̫͎̒̾́I̶͇̭͖̥̱͎͇̽̑Ľ̴̞̹̠͂̆̾̽̽̂̓̈́́͠L̸̫̜̙̰̝̫̥̔̋̃̽̀̓ of all places. I already had an idea of what I wanted but, seeing as I didn't have time to put it in, I was a cheeky little shit and slipped it there. Both as a hint and as a reminder for myself about what I thought was a neat idea.

The stuff that really emerged during production were some of the loot drops you can find in the expansion. For a few of them I was already 100% sure what I wanted them to be, but for the most part I developed what they were about quite late in development, sort of as a cherry on top.

Another thing that came up during development was me writing down the history and some of the rites of the Latin tradition. I didn't put that into the game, it would have been very unnecessary and bloated, but that was a late thing that helped with figuring out what I wanted out of the loot drops.

Developer

Addendum:

I just want to establish here that, yes, pretty much all of the events of The Feathered Line were things I had thought of before the original Hinterlands came out.

You people will play the expansion and then cower as you realize that all of those things were all cooked into the original all along, even if we couldn't get them in.

And yes, I planned to use this video when the day came. Behold, a Paleblood sky Bloodborne reference a year in the making!
(+1)

How do you ensure that you get that, I'm not sure if this is the proper term or what, right "Brazillian spirit" into Minotaur Hotel, specifically, the Hinterlands. Whenever I write something, I worry that it's not emitting the spirit of the cultures it represents. I read your postmortem about the Hinterlands and I read how you based them on your own experiences with Brazil and also based on your love of Latin Literature. But what about someone who only has vague memories of their own experiences with their own cultures and may not be familiar with the fiction of those cultures? I know this is a weird question but I thought I should ask you.

Developer(+1)

Let's say I was about to start a fresh story that's meant to portray my culture. To do so, I'm going to pull what I can, what was most remarkable, from my experiences of all kinds.

For me, this involves the books I've read, the stories I was told. For another person it might involve the music they heard, the instruments used here, the lyrics, the styles of past musicians. For yet another person it could mean the sceneries, the landscapes, descriptions of what it feels like to be there. For another person it could be something far more specific, like capturing what it was like to grow there, how life was like as a child in this particular environment, what their home was like. Or, while talking about a place, you can also talk about other places and how they compare to it, exploring your experience in only having live in the first one for a limited time.

I believe that creating art about a culture, your culture, is not the kind of thing you can follow a recipe for. I think you should approach it as a bit of an improvisational exercise, using what you have on hand and what is most meaningful to you. In your case, going only from what you told me in your question, I'd suggest you try and remember as much as you can about the time you spent immersed in your culture and write it down as bullet points. Don't worry about not remembering big and important things. Instead, take note of what daily life was life. How food tasted, how people talked, the sounds of your home, what school was like, what friends (or lack of them) were like, what media you were exposed to, whether you felt like you were fitting in or not, your insecurities and your happiest moments, so on.

Take note of all those things which are very particularly yours, which meant something to you, then take a step back. Look at all of it from a distance and then let yourself feel which ones you'd like to explore the most.

To bring a very real comparison, the idea for the flooded town in the hinterlands came from watching a movie when I was 9 or 10 in school. I couldn't even remember what the movie was called, I couldn't find it, but that was a spark that led me to adding that element to the story. The idea of the hinterlands being infested by butterflies came from my father having to drive through many swarms of them when we went there on a trip. Moths bringing good luck is a superstition my mom told me about.

If I had to make a list of the most important things in the real life hinterlands, none of those things would be there. But they were remarkable to me, and I could extract meaning out of them.

You can do the same. Gather your ideas, then select which ones feel the most resonant and dive deeper into them. Do some research on those points in particular. Be emotionally honest with yourself and see how those things, including the brief time you spent in your culture, make you feel. Take note of what insecurities pop up, what makes you uncomfortable, and try to be your own therapist in order to crack what's going on. Gather all of those things, the good, the bad and the personal, and make your collage of your culture.

It doesn't have to be a 1:1 representation of reality. What matters the most is making it meaningful and very intellectually honest. Writers can only do so much to capture a complex reality in writing, and people can rightfully criticize us for not getting things right, but that doesn't matter so much when there's a great deal of honesty there. It speaks louder.

(+1)

That's very insightful. Thank you Minoh for giving me such a response! I'll definitely keep all of those things you mentioned in mind.

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 :)

Developer(+1)

I had a whole draft of the story in short format written down before we started work on the game. I knew where the story started and where it'd end, and what were the important points we had to touch on the way. Many of the side characters were there, like Luke, Kota and Robert. Some were more or less planned but not yet implemented, like Khenbish (who then we called Zhu). There were even characters we haven't introduced yet (like Kota's brother and the hydra.)

The story was always about Asterion, with the side cast coming in to get the point across about creating a community and to introduce their own plots to break the monotony of what was a rather chill love story. They also provided levity, comic relief, and moments of honesty. The story as a whole would be very depressing without them.

Oscar was there too, though a bit different. In the original draft he showed up on the final stretch, when 95% of Asterion's character arc was completed. He was more like a cherry on top, and he'd arrive already having gone through a lot of the story arc we see in the game. You could say that Oscar arrived having already gone through his jump into full adulthood, while in the game we follow that process through Pedro's eyes.

Now, before I continue... While Oscar was introduced at the end of the first draft, chronologically he's one of the oldest characters I've had floating in my head. Originally Oscar and Pedro were the protagonists of a novel I was meaning to write someday — a detective story about an ex-police officer from the city coming to the hinterlands to investigate a suspicious death of a colonel, where he'd meet a young man who was born with horns.

Now, back to Minotaur Hotel. As the story progressed I decided to bring Oscar over from that idea to the Minotaur Hotel universe because it would be a very strong point in the story. That was a rather late decision, so introducing Oscar at the end made sense for the original draft. While translating it to the game, however, we saw that it was important to tweak with some things and that led to the conclusion that Oscar was too strong a concept to leave to the end of the story.

In choosing to bring Oscar into the story earlier (introduce him at the end of the first act and have him arrive at the end of the second) that gave us the opportunity to tell a story with it. It was actually important that we give him a solid story, and if we played our cards right we could construct it as an interlude to shake things up and keep the tension in the story moving.

We could also not give him that big of a story, of course, but in the end we went with it. This gave the chance to bring in the detective character too, who fit in like a glove once we gave him the backstory of descending from an ex-employee of the hotel.

All of this thinking happened over a few months, things weren't as perfectly structured as I'm making it sound like. However, to be more precise with the timeline of events... Back when we released the very first build of Minotaur Hotel I already had many of those ideas floating in my head, so much so that we were extremely deliberate with the decision of showing on-screen the passports you find before meeting Asterion. One of them is Brazilian, and that was already a way to foreshadow what we could do, maybe, if we felt like it was worth it later down the road.

Now, when it comes to the specifics of the Hinterlands itself like the plotlines and mysteries, that really only came much later. I figured it out as I went, actually. I actually do that a lot, lay a plan to follow but figure out the minor details as I go along, always trying to keep things thematically consistent.

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 ^^

so tomorrow is the big day, which of the new locations you are most excited to see everyone's reaction to?

Developer(+3)

The Cemetery. It's the Bloodborne: Old Hunters of the Hinterlands, which in turn is the Bloodborne of Minotaur Hotel, which sadly is not the Dark Souls of furry games because Dawn of Corruption holds the title in virtue of its retrieval and combat mechanics.

For a non-meme answer, it's because The Cemetery varies wildly depending on what you did before it so everyone should come out of it with their own experience.

Dear author, when I unzipped, I saw the red dragon that Kota wanted to find, but I haven't found how to unlock the red dragon. Please tell me how to unlock the red dragon in detail. Thank you

Developer

You can't unlock him yet. Those are only placeholder assets.

now i'm imagining MC telling Kota he found his brother. "yeah, yeah, i've found him in the game files" ;p

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Developer

Yes. The law you are referring to is the First Law of Thermodynamics. When Greta mentions "thermodynamics" she is referring to it and to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, relating to the entropy of system where energy can be created spontaneously from nothing.

technically, physics is an umbrella term which covers thermodynamics. they are interchangeable and both correct for this case

Developer(+1)

They are both correct, but Greta was alluding to something more specific than "laws of physics" in general.

Someone like her, who very openly and wholeheartedly cares about scientific research and the advancement of mankind, would be very specifically fixated on the potential of the hotel to break the laws of thermodynamics. I don't want to spell everything out but the use of "thermodynamics" was very purposeful at that point. Think like an engineer and ask yourself what you'd do if you had access to this space where you can break the laws of thermodynamics, and you just established that both matter and information can be sent to and from it.

yes, i caught up on that. writing is deliberate, the use of a more specific term like thermodynamics is indictative that the accuracy of the phrasing is important, even if physics would do just fine. my intention here was to tell the op that they are not wrong, but they are not right. no one likes being corrected, so i figured to deliberately write a response that doesn't dismiss what they thought as improper.

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Will there be a new feature in future versions where I can decide my own staff's costumes? I can only decide Asterion's costume in the current version, so I'm asking if there will be a new feature for other tavern staff to decide their costumes in the future version?

Developer(+1)

We have plans for some characters to change costumes if some specific things are achieved. For example, at a later date we plan on Luke changing costume for players who reach a specific point in his story — beyond changing his pants and shirt, he'll put on a very stylish and personally meaningful jacket.

But it's not going to be like what players can do for Asterion, no. With Asterion you really can pick what he wears, but with the rest of the staff the clothes they wear is tied to what happens in your playthrough.

It always felt like in chapter 17, triggering Khenbish to tell the protagonist that he could cook for a character to permanently increase their attributes. But I picked Asterion to add the Memento value felt a bit full of malice. Because the players all in order to get along well with Asterion is not going to send him to the valley. So the meaning of this attribute added is really unclear, new version consider to add Contract or Tech instead? I think Asterion is still better suited to go to R&D.