I REALLY am enjoying the story and relationship with and between the characters (specially Asterion, hehe), but does anyone else think the NSFW stuff to be too distracting? The scene at Luke's introduction felt crazy outta nowhere.
(I've only seen Luke's thing and Kota's brief moment, I don't know if there are more yet)
Hello. Thank you for your comment.
So far the only NSFW scene is Luke's. Our approach with this kind of content is that if/when we write a NSFW scene it should be communicative of who the character is, what's his story, so on. Looking back, informed by the experience I have today, I do admit that I could have done a bit better with Luke's content — for starters I could have done a bit more to make it not come so suddenly. But I was also juggling the scene's size — it was already a very large chunk of writing.
The reaction to Luke's introduction was a very educative experience for me. The content starting from Chapter 9 and onwards was partly written with this in mind — hopefully Luke's story and personality will go down more smoothly once you finish the current content we have in the game.
In summary, the suggestions and criticism I received after Luke's introduction were very important. They helped us fine tune the course we are taking. Mind you, Luke will still have more NSFW content in the future (the story we have in mind for him depends on that) but his sexual content will be in optional parts of the game and hopefully it will be better than his intro.
If it's not too much, I would appreciate hearing your opinion on this matter after you finish the game. Thank you for playing our game and dedicating time to tell us what you think.
First of all, thank you for taking the time to read and respond! Your attention to feedback is very noticible and MUCH appreciated!
I had already seen the end of the current build (0.3) by the time I wrote that post, though. I hope I didn't come off as bashing the quaility of that scene or any scenes after. Still, I feel like that one stuck with me as a important part of the experience and thought I'd say something.
Thank you for your continued work! The game's quality has only increased with each update and I doubt that will change anytime soon.
Addressing the same topic I'd also like to ask about your plans for the NSFW scene(s) with Asterion. Obviously when it happens it will be a huge event for the MC, Asterion and the player as well and I'm sure that you will give us your best in regards to +18 content. What I'm interested in hovewer is the form of the event itself - and by that I mean available interactions. Of course it would be shameless to ask for more when you're already providing us with such a well-written and engaging story, fun character concepts plus surprisingly nice, climactic artwork and quite hot (in all the important cases) sprites (Nanoff did an awesome job with the cg's - his art is saturated with climate and highly immersive. His non-human sprite art is really good too, even if I personally would love to see some more polish - for example I love cursedmarked's extracurricular activities art because for me it felt really "full" - as if i could touch the characters if I simply reached to them. In comparison the current CGB's art feels flat and paper-y. I don't know if it's just the matter of style, perspective, presentation or if it can be done with some simple trick, but Nanoff's art is still closer to the one I like - and yet it could be even better.) all free of charge. However since I feel that Minotaur Hotel has a potential to become one of the best gay furry Vn's - heck, even VN's in general - I also hope for physical intimacy portrayals in this game to be as close to perfect as possible. As such I'd argue that the more interactions in the scene the better. And so I ask: is it okay to hope that the NSFW AsterionxMC scene(s) in Minotaur Hotel will include interactive elements like touching and/or undresssing plus maybe even different ways to do it i.e. rough or gentle? Or do you not plan to include such features? Once again I apprecciate the great work and effort you put in this game and I assure you that it's not my intention to pressure anyone :)
But if you do plan to include interactive elements into carnal pleasure depictions then PLEASE allow foreplay on a full body sprite (with possibly some look-around options like in Benki Wars and maybe even *squeal* a possibility to choose to see more than one side of Asterion's fluffy frame in more positions) instead of slapping it on a CG like newer EA scenes. In EA the early scenes - especially Spencer's and Coach's - were quite good even if the interactions they offered were limited. I'm sure that if you decide on such a model for the romantic experiences between the Moo and the MooC you can do so, so much better and incorporate many fun elements into those culminations of feelings and desires which are so heavily anticipated by your fans.
I understand that the amount of work which it'd take is quite substantial but seeing as you manage your workload a lot better than other creators and that your passion burns as bright as it did at the beginning I feel a strange hope that my dreams of near-perfect intimacy scene with a beloved husbando might just be realized in your project.
Hey Anjimito, thank you very much for the lengthy response.
I think it's fairly evident that if I can get away with adding interactive stuff to the VN, I will because I love making that stuff, so whether we add something like this or not comes down to how MinoAnon wants to write those scenes. It's possible that adding an interactive element to a very intimate moment messes with the pacing or the flow of the scene we want to tell. I've played ExAc a couple years ago and the interactive elements in those scenes really elevated the scene for me so I get where you're coming from.
Another thing to consider is that the CGs featuring Asterion are considerably more laborious than other games since we have to account for Asterion's fur color, clothing, and many more customization options we'll be adding later. That's why Asterion's clothing at the end of build 0.3 is fixed to his more formal outfit (besides story reasons)- I would have had to draw one t-shirt for each background on top of everything else.
I'll answer with a "maybe, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."
Also thank you for praising the art, I know I'm not on par with a lot of insanely talented people working on other VNs but I appreciate the compliment, and I'm doing my best to get better at it. I think the sprites for the more recent characters in the upcoming build are an improvement over some of the older sprites like Kota and Luke's (the latter of which I'm tweaking a little for 0.4) so hopefully people's opinion on it will improve a little.
Hello there!
...and thank you for your response! First let me clarify that I am not a supporter of baseless back pats and pointless praises - your art is seriously good because you're doing your best. The effort and heart you're injecting into your creations is palpable - it is also quite evident in your new comic (I enjoy it quite a lot by the way. Characters feel incredibly natural and I chuckled when Boomer remembered wanking to his high school coach). Your art style may not be as elaborate as for example Darkgem's but it's perfectly suited for a VN like MinoHotel with its multitude of options. Besides, it also has a lot of charm - I can't imagine Asterion looking any different than the form that you have given him. The only thing that I think your sprite art may use is more shadowing to make the characters more pronounced and protuberant.
Like in cursedmarked's EA art. By the way which character did you like the most? Wait, don't tell me! I'll guess and then you can guess my favourite character, alright?
It was Chester, wasn't it?
I'll spare you the effort of guessing - I liked Chester the most myself.
As for the NSFW scenes in MinoHotel and your concerns that the many options that we have in regards to Asterion customization will make an extensive scene an impossible endeavor for a single artist I have a few suggestions. The most obvious one to ignore the side adornments like bracelets and tatoos and only change the fur color when it comes to the scene itself. It could be easily paired with the stripping and foreplay before the scene itself - I'm once again suggesting doing it on the sprite but extended to include the whole body (maybe even allowing the backside view and access). I myself would be more than happy to overlook the lack of apparel in order to enable more options in the intimacy with our moo and I'm pretty sure that it might be the position shared among the supermajority of the fans. The only variables could be fur color, horns and penis type.
Speaking of the rooster in the room - since MC can choose how Asterion looks like would it be plausible for the labirynth to also enable the player to change some of MC's physical attributes? I think it would expand our options nicely and provide a huge addition to our growing relationship with Asterion.
Thanks again for your answer. Your project is the most promising one I've seen for a long time and I eagerly await the next build. I wish all the best to you and everyone involved in the development of this astonishing Visual Novel.
Oh yes I'm definitely keeping the character customization down to a minimum for the CGs. Just fur color, horn shape, genitals and tattoos/birthmarks.
As for customizing the MC, that's not really something we plan on doing. First, the labyrinth doesn't work that way, you can't morph your shape like you can Asterion's, and second, we don't really want to go into detail on the MC's physical attributes.
If we ever show the MC in a CG this is what he will look like.
https://twitter.com/MinoHotel/status/1199094303324299266
