Minotaur Hotel

The minotaur's side of the story. · By Minoh Workshop, Nanoff

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Minotaur Hotel community

I finished some routes, here's my unsorted spam of unsolicited opinions and feedback :)

A topic by faffing_minotaur created Aug 25, 2021 Views: 445 Replies: 2

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faffing_minotaur3 years ago

After playing through the VN I have several opinions/feedback, so I figured Id just vomit them out in one long post. Overall the game is great. Spoiler warning.

Asterion's personality is great and the choices and reaction almost always feel realistic and thought out. Great. Kota and dickbird feel slightly less deep, but it's reasonable since Asterion is the main focus. Maybe you'll be able to tackle this with the character routes you implemented in 0.5?

Generally one of the main features of great storytelling is suspense, creating a problem, and making the reader want to find the solution. The story does this well several times, such as when we wait for the inevitable meeting between Asterion and 'Storm', when bluedragon will meet reddragon, when luke will finally be castrated, when 'argos' comes clean about his real intentions, what's the weird crystal stuff in the basement? Some answers&lore&background is given through exploring the wild. I personally prefer when it's tied into the story instead of having to navigate through menus. I think it works great when finding artifacts triggers ingame-scenes. (throwing away dagger, sunglasses, etc)

I personally thought the 'kiss' scene in the later chapters where you get a closeup image of his kissy-lips was a bit weird visually. Although in general people do tend to look pretty awkward right before kissing I guess.

The image representing the game on Itch - a front-look at Asterion feels a little misrepresentative. It's not clear that he has a pronounced snout. It would be a real shame if people didn't click into this great VN just because the cover image. 'Storm' (oscar?)'s face looks a lot better, the profile view makes his face look less goofy. I'm not much of an artist but I did a mockup to try and show what I mean.

I did a playthrough where I tried to choose everything as if it was the real me who was the main character, and it was a bit difficult. I felt like I was pushed too hard on being either a saint, or a sadist, sometimes lacking the middle ground I felt would represent me best.

I also did some ruthless runs. They were written well, but I hate them. In a sorta good way. "Thanks, I hate it." I agree that the existence of ruthless routes makes the choices of actually being good feel way more meaningful, and Im glad that the ruthless routes exist. I am surprised that the ruthless routes only seem to be directed towards greed/sadist players. I'd expect there to be a horny route, but I also understand and am sort of glad that there's no extreme 'noncon sex' route. (that Ive found?)

The scene where Asterion gets to try the internet bothered me as an irl tech-guy. It feels like I'd really wanna order a VR headset and take him around the world on google earth. (If his face shape could handle VR glasses.)

It feels like the contracts are very unexplored. If I was given the power to create magical contracts & magic items, I'd try the fuck out of that. Instead, the main character only sometimes gives himself food? There's the 'no go valley or die >:(' band, but other than that, there isnt much artefact creating going on. This is probably the biggest 'choice problem' I have in the story to be honest. Could I create contracts that can discern truth? (Something like, "this contract will break when an untruth is written on the attached papers). Are digital contracts valid & indestructible? How does that work? Would it make the physical harddrive indestructible & the file undeletable? Would it remain so if duplicated? If so, could you mass-email spam an undeletable contract file and clog up servers? What are the limits of the rules of the contracts? How big? How generic? How abstract? Can contracts create other contracts? Can you create loops & recursion? Could you make turing compete contracts? Can you make golem servants? Why not make a contract/magic item which automatically delivers the food to the correct table, instead of trying to teach kobolds to use software? It also makes more thematic sense that contract research would result in magical contracts instead of buying and integrating software. If you really wanna help the kobolts learn software, why not create a contract/magic item which helps them do the right thing, instead of having them bother the chef?

If the main character is concerned about security (which he says he is when he considers getting wolfy), why doesnt he make a contract that prohibits violence? It feels like the answer to that question is "Because the hotel doesnt allow the creation of contracts which stray from the purpose...", but it's only assumed to be so, and there should be plenty of workarounds/loopholes/exploits to reach the approximate desired effect. The main character doesnt actually try.

The newly introduced characters are a bit too early for me to give opinion on. We've got unlucky boar food guy, elephant money guy, demon lawyer (best smile), and a wolf. Maybe Boar guy and luke are a bit close thematically - both of their main problems seem to center around them being unable to live a fulfilling life with relationships due to charm shenanigans, however that seems to be more or less a reoccurring theme for many mythic beings.

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end of spam

cue5c3 years ago(+1)

Why not make a contract/magic item which automatically delivers the food to the correct table, instead of trying to teach kobolds to use software?

If you really wanna help the kobolts learn software, why not create a contract/magic item which helps them do the right thing, instead of having them bother the chef?

That last bit sounds especially like the Ruthless route character. The point of the hotel isn't perfection. It's about humanity. Humanity is full of imperfection. Allowing people to work fairly easy jobs to help travellers who are themselves lost gives them meaning. Automation would only serve to remove that sense of belonging. (And this is veering into real-world issues where I am prone to take the opposite stance, but in this ideal scenario where they are being paid enough to live the rest of their lives comfortably and could also stay without working and still get the same service, I don't the equivalence works.)

It also makes more thematic sense that contract research would result in magical contracts instead of buying and integrating software.

Does it? All of the contract research in the story we directly experience is tied to getting the hotel to understand what a certain technology does. That's why we spend three days with Greta trying to teach the hotel to interpret what the internet is. We see magic throughout, but it's tied to mostly decorations or resources.

Asterion outright says if you try to sign a contract like that, the ink will just spill off of it. You could have the main character test to make sure Asterion isn't lying, but that goes against the major point of this which is to trust Asterion implicitly since no one up to that point has. There is a way, and that's through mutually assured destruction like the armband that comes at the price, but there's no way Asterion would agree to that when the hotel is supposed to function as a temporary underworld that gives lost souls a safehaven where they can rest before returning on their journey.

This goes back to the first point I was making about automation replacing labor at the hotel, but Asterion is trying to turn this hotel into his version of Asphodel Meadow, since that's the only place he ever felt happy. Asphodel isn't Elysium, but neither is it Tartarus. Like Asterion himself, who should have been in Elysium and had his brother leverage that in order to balance the spite that would have placed him in Tartarus, the hotel is the balance between the Labyrinth's evil and the illegitimacy of his sentence. It's neither paradise, not ruin.

faffing_minotaur3 years ago

Thank you for the thought out reply :)

Yes, you make a good argument, and I agree. 'Fixing' the kobolts problem is not reasonable / goes against the narrative of the Saint MC & hotel purpose. But I still think my fundamental argument is still valid, even if my example was bad. Let me try a better example. Why doesn't the main character create artifacts to protect the exploration team? Utility, search-aid, and defense / offense? Why doesnt the mc create tools to spy on / try to one-up Argos?(before his true nature is revealed.) This type of artifact creation would be reasonable for a kind main character, as it's motivated by wanting to protect them, and doesn't go against the purpose of the 'hotel'.

>why doesnt the mc make artifacts to protect the Asterion / the guests?

I don't remember the exact phrasing Asterion said, but I believe that it was something like that 'contracts that goes against the purpose of the realm (tormenting asterion) would rot like milk'? You are correct that it probably wouldn't work to make contracts that outright protect the minotaur, and I don't think the main character should ignore Asterions observations and try anyway. But the guests shouldnt have the same problem? If so, there should be no problem creating contracts that doesn't protect Asterion, only guests. And it's aknowledged several times in-game that the contracts are pretty exploitable. There's a contract that prevents Asterion from embarassing himself with nudity in front of the guests. (A contract im guessing uses a loophole to phrase it like a punishment, 'Asterion isnt allowed to have sex with guests', or something like that). Why doesn't the main character attempt to create / talk to asterion about an artifact to help protect the guests?

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Minotaur Hotel

I finished some routes, here's my unsorted spam of unsolicited opinions and feedback :)