To access the new side content you'll have to load a previous save file, yeah.
We know things seem tight time-wise in the game. Some of that is purposeful on our part — there is not going to be enough time to do everything, so players should reflect on what they want to prioritize and what they'd like to see. This means everyone will have their own very unique journey through the game.
At the same time, I'm also aware this issue is exacerbated by the relatively small number of in-game management days. What I can say is that as we add more main story chapters this will start feeling better.
Yes, i was aware of the multiplaythrough idea and have prepared save files accordingly. Still, you should consider possible work arounds for this. A save skip to when the new content becomes available would be very user friendly, but i imagine that would be awful to program in. However, considering we have a global save system with the achievements, then may be completing a character route should give a reward for it, perhaps just a flavor thing about the specific character, or a permanent buff for that character stats on a new game plus kinda deal, like Asterion's purple color. I suppose you might have already discussed some of these on the development side of things, but hopefully it doesn't hurt to have some repeated suggestions as feedback.
I like the idea that "as the hotel becomes more complete, and as the staff grows, you find yourself with more time to get the things done you want to do." That's a good touch of ludonarrative convergence.
We won't be adding more days this time. We are aware the time management doesn't feel perfect now but we think it will feel a lot better as the game progresses and more days are added along with the new chapters.
For now the way to access the new side content will be loading a previous save. Not perfect, I know, but this is relatively temporary in the grand scheme of things.
We are definitely going to explore that!
There's some stuff to Pedro and Oscar's relation that I'm not sure it all came across as well as I wished. Namely, even if Oscar doesn't have a crush on Pedro the two of them still cherish each other. Regardless of your choices, Pedro and Oscar mean a lot to each other and I want to make that more clear going forward.
A lot of stuff is going to happen, and player choices affect how it goes (for example, while Oscar will always join the hotel's staff not everyone will be able to recruit Pedro) but a constant across all iterations is that the two of them retain their bond no matter what and the thread of found family will become more prominent, including with how they relate to other characters.
We are still throwing ideas around, but one of them is that even if Pedro is not recruited as staff and even if they have a familiar relationship he'd keep visiting the hotel to spend time with Oscar, and they might go as far as going out during the weekends. Most likely we will also explore a bit more of their relation, whatever it may be, during the next main story chapters. You'll probably like what we have in store, as we will touch on it even more than we did so far.
Preemptively posting pic related because the big in-game text won't be enough for some people.
Chapter 19 will be added in 0.7, the 0.6.x builds will add side content.
0.6.0 adds all of Kota's hangouts. To access the new content, load a save from chapter 14 (or onwards) and select the Hang out with staff option, then Kota.
There are five hangout scenes, and a special episode that plays at the end of chapter 17 if you completed all of them to cap Kota's story.
Yeah, thankfully Nanoff talks about his plan here to do a restoration job on the other character's sprites to help with the resolution scaling disparity, which won't require him to do them all over again. It's just the artist's curse, as you evolve your stuff in something where you can make iterative changes like a VN, you end up with little quality changes here and there that you have to let lie.
Ah, yes... We wrote Kota's interaction in Chpater 17 with his hangouts in mind. We had good reasons to have him as the "matchmaker" rather than Luke.
I will also say that it really hit me when I saw in action the whole scene where everyone gathers around Kota. It and the string of haikus really hit me.
Fun fact about the Hinterlands skip: For the longest time I had this idea in my mind of P and the player character talking. Sometimes (not always) I even toyed with the idea that the Hinterlands are narrated by P to the MC in a future part of the story. I don't know if we will ever go for that, but it came to mind when nanoff proposed the idea of the skip.
I like to think that there was at least half a dozen lines there that really expressed Pedro's and Oscar's relation. Writing them was a joy.
I edited the thread just now to allow spoilers, so it's good.
You know, we got very worried about how people would respond to Kota's story. We mapped it out very early in development, before the first build came out. We fully expected Minotaur Hotel to be a small game in terms of reception, so we thought we could take the chance to comment on the very recurring motif of, shall we say, gods marrying inside their pantheon, and it was a chance to highlight just how gods aredifferent from mortals. It also connected to the hotel bringing in people who are lost, and it's a reprise of the MC's and Asterion's relationship — both are transgressive — while telling a story that, in its origins, has zero relation with the Greek gods. It rolled up many things into one dense storyline. Needless to say things changed a lot since, the game's audience got bigger than we ever imagined it'd become, so we were nervous about it, but we didn't think changing the plans would work. Thankfully it all came together well in the end! I'm particularly proud of the longer haiku and the introspection of the nighttime scene, Nemo and Kangarube really did it and nanoff made it work perfectly well in-game.
And about the Hinterlands skip... When nanoff brought up the idea of making a skip I only needed a few minutes to think of what the writing could be like. Mind you, it's not a fourth wall break — he's talking to the MC there! It's all in-character.
it's likely related to their mythos. gods made them too strong and smart, so they hunted them down and splitted in 2. right now all the Grootslang live together in a small pack because one managed to escape and reproduce. You can imagine from this that they would be wary of gods who might terminate their species if found.
There's not an Argos NSFW scene in the game but, if you do like him, I suggest you keep playing and keep trying to get the best of him at every opportunity. He respects wit and trickery, and the more you outsmart him the more he'll open up. There's a lot of fun stuff regarding him!
Pedro is definitely one of my favorites. Just the way he ties into the actual mythology so well and how deep his character goes. Makes me want to learn so much more about him!
