Thea's route demo is released!
over 4 years ago – Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 08:36:13 PM

Our dear backers,

I'm happy to say that, while we're still working on Thea's route, we prepared a demo that can be accessed directly from chapter select screen (provided you have unlocked Thea's route in the first place; the update is now live on Steam and GOG, and as usual, I'll update Game Jolt and itch.io packages soon). It's basically a complete version of the first part of Thea's route (even the collectibles are included) - the only thing that's missing is the voice over! So if you'd like to see how the development is going, as well as to find out more about the story, do check the demo out.

Another update I wanted to release before the end of the year was Richie's route path A, but we're a bit behind on that. Just a bit, though! The work on it has been going well, and we'll try to release it next month (or at least, not much later after that).

So yes, I hope to be back with another update shortly! In the meantime, a couple of important notes:

– REGARDING CLOUD SAVES: as Minotaur grows in size, so does its save data, and I had to make some updates to it. If you use cloud saving (on Steam or GOG) and will get a message (after this update) about your local save files conflicting with the ones on the server, know that your local files should take priority, and that you should use those! If you'll still have problems with your save data, no worries - let me know and I'll help you restore it.

By the way, thanks to a bug report from one of our backers, we found out that Minotaur save files (of game versions 0.6 and up) aren't fully compatible between Windows and Mac operating systems. I'm still trying to find a solution for this issue, which turned out to be quite non-trivial, so I'll probably address it in more detail in the next update.

– About an event from the ending of Mentor's route... 

SPOILERS!!!

At the moment, should you select Thea's route on chapter select screen, you'll see that there's an event for Mentor updating the autopilot. This event needs to be re-initialized, i.e. by default it will always be shown as "off" (something that didn't happen), even if Mentor did update the autopilot! It doesn't matter now, but it will affect Thea's route ending dramatically, so if you'd like it to be "on", you will need to re-acquire it. Sorry about that, I should have foreseen this and planned ahead, but... it is what it is! Hopefully with some kittens sacrificed, it won't be too much trouble.

END SPOILERS...

- Just a reminder that you can join our Discord server for more frequent smaller updates, as well as lots of other stuff, really : )

And that's that! We hope you all have a great ending to this year, and that you and your loved ones will stay safe and healthy next year (and for many more years to come)!

Love,

Nick & u7committee

Mentor's route is... released!! The first in the string of updates?
almost 5 years ago – Thu, Jul 15, 2021 at 10:24:29 PM

Our dear backers,

I'm so, so happy to say that just now, we finally published Mentor's route!!*

*On Steam and GOG at the moment - just like the last time, Game Jolt and itch.io versions are coming very soon, since they don't update the same way and require some custom work on the game build!

Last-minute news: we have a Discord server now! I only just created it and it's pretty bare-bones at the moment, but we'll work on it. Hopefully together, so come join us!

(This turned out to be a looong update - I'm probably overcompensating for the lack of them lately. If you'd like a TL;DR, please scroll down to "The meaty stuff" section, which contains the most important information that I recommend reading before playing Mentor's route, especially if you already played Nod's.)

Mentor's route

It's hard to argue that we didn't take our sweet time... I have to admit that COVID, in particular, impacted us in more ways than I thought it would. We were more or less fine while working internally, and in fact, we already had a stable build back in December (!) last year, but the post-production stage of the job, which required involving more people from all over the world, was... wild.

In any case, we hugely appreciate your patience (and hope that you have been and will continue to stay safe!), and I actually have a couple of ideas about making content updates more frequent - regardless of the state of the world, so to speak - which I'd like to share further below.

In the meantime, a couple of words about Mentor's route: it took a huge amount of effort to plan and put together, as it is quite different from the other routes in its structure and execution. There are two main characters in it: Mentor herself, of course, but also Kyos.

A large part of this chapter is dedicated to the world that Minotaur takes place in, since learning more about it is crucial in order to fully experience the overall story and the impact of some of its endings (especially the one called "The Empress", wink-wink). Mentor's route is integral, and without it, Minotaur simply wouldn't be complete. But we aren't, of course (to quote one of the new characters), "just going to read to you from 'An Abridged History of Kyos'". This is still very much a chapter about Fifteen, and since her story is intertwined with the lives of other Royce residents, there are many clues about what's going on there, as well as tons of smaller secrets and references.

Speaking of personal assistants, even though it's the route in which Ollie is least featured, it contains some very important information about her. Which is delivered mostly indirectly (via the lore about the blue boxes, for example), but don't forget about the skits too!

(It probably is.)

In any case, please don't worry - just as I promised, the story of Nod and Ollie (and everyone else) will be resolved, but we do need to set some things up for that.

By the way, the sweet creature you see up there on that screenshot (in the center) is one of new Minotaur characters, and just like everyone else, these new characters were given voices, in this case by fantastic actors D.C. Douglas and Michael Schwalbe. Let's welcome them to the cast! They did an awesome job, just like the rest of the cast, and I'm really happy that we managed to produce the voice over for Mentor's route in current conditions, which was only made possible by great effort from everyone involved in this process. And since this is Mentor's route, it's worth mentioning in particular the amazing work of her VA, Rina Hoshino, who essentially had to play several roles in two languages. Seriously, her part was insane, and I still get goosebumps from her lines in the final dialogue. Here's a short clip from Salmix recording studio in Tokyo (another dialogue - Mentor is asking Arthur what's wrong):

Nothing's wrong, obviously.

Now let's get to the part that I mentioned in the beginning of the update:

The meaty (or machin-y?) stuff

1) After you update to version 0.6, all your collected extras and obtained endings from Nod's route should be preserved! There's no way to check directly for obtained endings at the moment, but as long as the movies (on the extras screen) are present, this means that the corresponding endings are unlocked as well. To be honest, I'm proud that we managed to pull this off while still introducing the new chapter select screen, it was quite non-trivial!

2) However, you will still need to play through Nod's route to unlock its chapter select. Since a new checkpoint system is in place, there was no way around it, unfortunately... I'd recommend doing a normal run to refresh your memory a bit, but it's of course not necessary - you can simply blaze through it to initialize the checkpoints, and it doesn't matter which ending you get (see previous item).

Please note that the next 4 items on this list contain some spoilers for Nod and Mentor's routes, including the number of endings that Mentor's route has. If you'd like to go in blind, I suggest checking out the Steam version of this update, since Steam allows tagging spoilers, or skipping items 3 to 6 (but do come back for them later).

3) Mentor's route should be unlocked immediately as long as you freed her in the concierge's room in Nod's route!

4) The new chapter select screen is here in all its glory (I think I already posted it in one of previous updates, but here's a reminder):

We hope it makes playing and getting different endings more convenient, though it's still a work in progress. I think we can make it more intuitive. In the meantime, just like I mentioned, to unlock it for a character (including Nod), you'll need to finish their route once first.

5) Mentor's route only has one ending, but there's a "thing" that you can do (or fail to do) near the end. It will influence the outcome of one of the endings of Thea's route, which will be reflected on the chapter select screen:

I suggest taking another look at this screenshot after finishing Mentor's route and getting acquainted with the chapter select screen, I'm sure it will give you a sense of closure.

6) Nod's route bug fixes

- We managed to fix the "extra wrong symbol" bug in Chinese version by decreasing its font size, which stopped text texture buffer from overflowing. Of course, this solution is far from perfect, but we have been in touch with the engine developers, and it appears that the only way for us to fix this issue permanently without decreasing font size is by switching to a newer engine version. We plan to do this eventually, of course, but after more content is released, since it's by no means a small undertaking, which will require some time... I do hope that the current solution will make playing Minotaur in Chinese more enjoyable, though!

- I have optimized Nod's route elevator descent scene to be less demanding on the hardware. However, it's still the most resource heavy scene in the game, and may cause crashes on some machines. But! Thanks to @PePTo, one of our players on Steam, we discovered (well, they discovered!) that the issue is most likely caused by these machines running Minotaur on integrated cards, and forcing the OS to use the discreet card instead solves the problem. I will post a more detailed description of this solution to these threads on Steam and GOG.

- A bunch of other minor fixes have been implemented, though not everything has been done for Nod's route yet, and it will get a final revision pass before the full release. For example: the post-Bygone fight optional puzzle will be remade (instead of examining that wall of text, Nod will interact with various areas in the room in a kind of "spot the difference" mini-game); Ollie will have a dialogue after "watching the sunset" with her in Maya's car (she will thank Nod for staying, to which he'll reply that he simply dozed off); we'll do a number of small text amends; and so on.

IT'S OKAY. THE SPOILERS ARE GONE NOW.

7) The soundtrack has been updated with new tracks from Mentor's route! On Steam, it was converted from DLC into OST format, but the keys you received for it are still valid, so we hope you enjoy! We also included some additional artwork, and since some of the tracks for Mentor's route are mixes which I made for its longer scenes, the extras folder for Mentor's route also contains individual tracks from these mixes.

Well, what's next?

How's work on Thea's route coming along, you ask? Very well! Larger part of it is in playable state, though sharing screenshots without spoilers is becoming increasingly difficult. Wait, I found one...

Seriously though, I'm sure that we'll finish it before the end of the year (and maybe Unter's route too), but at this point, it's really hard for me to say how long the post-production stage will take. In our case, this stage usually includes licensing music, adding SFX, recording and adding the voice over, doing the translations, etc. So that's on one hand, and on the other, I'd like to make the updates more frequent, which is why I want to try something different. I want to make a beta-testing branch that anyone can opt into (on Steam and GOG - it's really easy), as there are several things that we can release on it in the nearby future:

1) The first part of Thea's route without the voice over: the music and the translations will still be there, though music won't be available on the OST until the route is fully released. Thea's route can roughly be split into three parts, and as I mentioned before, the first part takes place in Mira. If this release goes well, we will later push the second part the same way, and then the full route. I want to release the first part in September. This year...

2) One of Richie's route's "paths". A "path" is a variant of Richie's route that takes place after an ending of Nod's route, or a combination of endings of several routes. Some of them are relatively short and can be done comparatively quickly.

THE SPOILERS ARE BACK (minor stuff though, only if you haven't played Nod's route or don't want to know anything about Richie's route at all)

The path that I'm talking about takes place after "To Be With Her Again" ending, and in it, Richie is looking for Nod (sorry, "Nod"), one of the very few survivors of the Royce incident, in Soma DC.

Some sweet Soma DC hand-drawn sketches from Adam (the path starts with Richie sitting in a Somian café):

Just like with Thea's route beta releases, it won't have the voice over, and the music, even though it will be in the game, will be added to the OST later, but the path will be fully playable. And again: you won't need to play it if you prefer to wait for full releases, since installing it will be optional. I do think it answers some very interesting questions about the story, though. We'd like to release this path in parallel with Thea's route until the end of this year.

THE SPOILERS ARE GONE... FOR GOOD THIS TIME.

3) Now that one of new characters of Mentor's route is introduced, he can take his rightful place at the cards table:

The original idea was for him to tell Mentor a short illustrated horror story for every 8 cards you bring him, but then I thought: why not tell the story of what happened in the Northern Research Center 500 years ago? We're still figuring this part out, but for the moment it seems like a good candidate for a smaller update, and unlike the parts of Thea and Richie's routes, since the story is narrated by just one character, it might even come with a voice over right away. And who knows, maybe Mentor (and everyone else by extension) can get something out of collecting all 24 cards... You never know.

Okay, you can stop now

I was honestly going to! I apologize for the longread, though I do hope that you got something interesting out of it. We also hope you enjoy Mentor's route, and we can't thank you enough for your limitless patience! You're the best players that we could ask for, and you inspire us to keep working on the game and to try and make it the best it can be.

Which reminds me... Time to get back to work!

Love,

Nick & u7committee

It's almost ready! Preparing Mentor's route for release...
over 5 years ago – Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 08:05:16 PM

Our dear backers,

We're very happy to tell you that Mentor's route is almost ready, and Thea's route is coming soon afterwards!

I realize it took us a year to prepare the next chapter...

Damn, that's a large font. Be that as it may, we hope you'll enjoy the expansions as much as we do! There's a lot of story to uncover (combined script for Mentor + Thea's routes is almost as long as Nod's), many new beautiful locations and character encounters... And of course, new (and free) tracks for the OST. The soundtrack for Thea's route hasn't been finalized yet, but Mentor's will have 15 new tracks!

Speaking of Mentor's route soundtrack, Adam created a really cool cover for it:

It's 3840 x 1080 px, and we rarely do art in this size, so in case someone has a suitable dual monitors setup (and a desire to update their wallpaper), here's a full resolution version.

Anyway, we hope to be able to release Mentor's route in November, and Thea's route in Q1 of next year. Please note that these are, or course, estimates, but they're something that we're striving towards.

And that's that! Not much else to say, we just need to grit our teeth and finish Mentor's route as soon as we can. In the meantime, here are some screenshots from it! I tried to pick the least spoilery ones, but if you prefer going in completely blind, just know that we've been hard at work, and that the screenshots are there : )

Cheers and see you soon on Kyos!

Nick & u7committee

THE SCREENSHOTS:

This last one is a work in progress - it's from a movie that Adam is currently working on!

Another progress update!
almost 6 years ago – Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 08:50:09 AM

Our dear backers,

With this update, we'd like to let you know that the development of the remaining routes has been in full force! We're working hard to bring them to you as soon as possible.

We have mostly been busy with Thea's route, but its last third is a bit complicated. Some things that we want to implement are difficult to do, but we don't want to compromise on them, so... we're working on making them happen : )

In the meantime, we have actually finished a huge part of Mentor's route too. I think it's safe to say, without spoiling much, that Thea's and Mentor's routes are connected in a certain way, and working on one meant doing a lot for the other. At a certain point we realized that Mentor's route is mostly playable, and we might even release it before Thea's, so as to shorten the time between major updates.

In either case, we plan to release the next route in the next few months! I'll be able to tell you the exact date in the next update, and you know we never move a release date once we set it. Just kidding... I'm just trying not to get ahead of myself and make sure that at least 90% of the work is done.

Below are several screenshots from the future routes - I'm not telling which screenshot is from which route, because we'd like to keep things as spoiler-free as possible for you.

First, some great Banshee art from Demi (I count this as "spoiler-free" because Banshee encounter has been planned from the start - I think it was even included in one of our earlier trailers):

Why does she look so surprised? Who knows... And here's another new "character", whom I mentioned in one of our previous updates:

Adam did an amazing job with its animations - in fact, he added quite a few animations that bring the level of interactivity up a notch:

What else we got? Lots of new Royce locations:

Maybe someone will finally be able to get to that Hornet... And to top it all off, here's an image of Thea playing tuba (for a change):

So to sum up: we've been working on some pretty exciting stuff, and we can't wait to show it to you. I hope you can bear with us for a little while longer!

By the way, do you remember that new chapter selection screen that I mentioned in our previous update? ("Not sure Nick, so much time has passed since then." Ha-ha...) Well, it's been Hades to make (although it's our fault for not planning ahead in the first place), but it's 100% ready!

***SPOILER ALERT*** I suggest skipping the next GIF if you haven't played Nod's route yet!

Not only can you now start from any chapter of any route (provided you have completed that route at least once), the screen also contains hints on how to obtain different endings, what events and actions contribute to Ollie's energy level in Nod's route (and other similar mechanics in other routes), which of those or other events you have triggered in each save slot, and so on. For Richie's route, you will also be able to set the starting conditions (which endings you got in other routes, did Nod take that strange flower with him, etc.). We put a lot of thought into designing this screen, and I think it turned out to be a very robust system, which makes navigating the game and seeing all that Minotaur has to offer much more convenient!

***END SPOILERS***

In addition to that, the elevator sequence has been completely remade, which should address the problems that some players had with it (of the game freezing, Thea's perpetual snoring, and so on).

And that's that! We hope to bring you the next update as soon as possible... In the meantime, cheers and stay safe!

Yours,

Nick & u7committee

Progress update! Working on Thea's route...
about 6 years ago – Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 07:42:53 AM

Our dear backers,

We're happy to let you know that the work on Thea's route has been going well!

Thea's route is the second longest after Nod's, and it can be roughly divided into three big parts. We're currently working on the second part, and we hope to finish the route in the middle of the year... This year : )

I shared another winter screenshot with you in our previous update, and some people expressed their concern about Thea freezing to death. Don't worry, we already tried to kill her once, so this time we got her covered - literally:

Variants of Thea's "winter outfit" by Demi. Can you guess which one we picked?

Other players wondered if the rest of Thea's route will take place in the same locations as Nod's. Not to worry either! Thanks to Adam's relentless work, most of the areas that Thea visits in Royce are either entirely new...

...or can be seen from a new angle, so to speak:

Wait, sorry, that screenshot is missing one important detail:

I wish I could share more screenshots with you, but it's a bit risky - now that Nod's route is out, they're full of spoilers! What I can tell you is that Thea will get her own skill, just like all other playable characters. Originally we didn't intend for her to have one, but since we want to keep the gameplay engaging and diverse, and Thea's route is quite long, we decided to spice things up a bit.

***MINOR SPOILER ALERT***

Without going into too much detail, Thea's skill will allow her to see the location that she's at from the outside (under certain conditions). For example, here's one of the locations that she visits in "normal" mode:

And here's how it looks with Thea's skill in action:

This gives us an opportunity to use some pretty cool (hopefully) concepts visual, puzzle and story-wise.

***END MINOR SPOILERS!***

In parallel, we've been working on the improvements based on the feedback we got so far from our Early Access stage (huge thanks to everyone who provided it!) - like this chapter select screen, which has replaced character selection screen, and which will allow you to start from different parts of the game:

Most of the screen is blocked, of course... huge spoilers! Anyway, in addition to selecting where to start from, we want you to also be able to pick a set of choices that you've unlocked prior to that point. That way you won't need to replay the whole route, or even game, several times just to try various combinations of those choices.

I'll be honest with you, this is NOT an easy screen to make, and it's still a work in progress... But I hope it'll make your navigation throughout the game much more convenient! Ideally, it will be complimented by a manual save system with the same feature, and perhaps later we will also add indicators for missed extras (cards, artwork and music) - this screen seems to be well-suited for that.

Some other things that we're working on based on feedback (that we plan to roll out with Thea's route):

- Proper output of Chinese language (without that horrible extra symbol bug - I'm really sorry that it turned out to be such a problem to fix!)

- Optimized elevator descent scene - some players had issues with it (up to the point of the game becoming unplayable), which is most likely caused by unoptimized assets and animations; we've decided to rebuild this sequence from scratch to address this

- Adjusted post-Bygone puzzle - it turned out to be very confusing, so we're replacing it with visual-based exploration (no text wall!)

- Some other minor bug fixes and improvements

Other requested features that we're keeping in mind (most likely for Mentor's route release or later):

- Gamepad/touch controls support

- Auto-dialogue option

And that's that! As usual, let me know if you have any questions or comments, and we hope that you're looking forward to Thea's adventure!

PS: we've updated Club 703 with new content - lots of concept art, exclusive development screenshots, a brand-new music playlist and some additional info. Do take a look when you have time!

Love,

Nick & u7committee