The Visual Update Approaches!

Hello, everyone! dilukha, Art Director, here. I know it’s been a long time, and I have to thank everyone for being so patient with us. After various months of blood, sweat and tears, I can finally announce with certainty:

VU: Hotel Basics 1 will be releasing on the Saturday March 21st!

Yes, a little later than our initial estimate, but this extra time ended up being very necessary to lay a lot of the groundwork needed for all the future Visual Updates. Both the art and the writing team have been putting a lot of work into improving the first act of the game and making Minotaur Hotel look the best it can, and God, I’m ecstatic. As a reminder, this update will not have a Patreon exclusivity period! It will be immediately made public, so everyone will be able to try it out as soon as it’s released regardless of whether they're a patron or not.

Now, without further ado, let’s talk about what was with no doubt the most time-consuming part of this build:

The UI

It feels so good to finally show you guys actual game footage after only being able to show mockups for the past month. This is how the game is looking right now, and along with the higher resolution, it really elevates the vibe of the game, doesn’t it? It was a ton of work to manually draw every single asset, but it really paid off. The warmer tones, the hard textures and brushstrokes and the generally more spacious disposition really contribute to set the tone of Minotaur Hotel.

(Plus the mobile variant!)

That’s the screen you’ll be spending the most time with – despite its apparent simplicity, a lot of thought went into it. Now that the game will be at full HD resolution, we made sure that the text box would leave a lot of space for all the new art to shine. We turned the quick menu into one that can be expanded and collapsed at need, to keep the screen free of clutter:

We’ve also finished the new side portraits of every character! We had a lot of fun exploring different art styles and textures that would call back to each character’s cultural background (and, for some of them, there’s even a degree of thematic and lore reasoning behind them). Here are some of the ones that Rayan made:

The changes aren’t just visual, either. As I mentioned in my last devlog, we ended up noticing a lot of points where the UX aspect of the menus could be improved, so there’s also been navigational changes.

The game originally had a lot of screens that were pretty redundant and, according to players we talked to, didn’t really see a lot of use: there was a Ledger screen only accessible via the quick menu, which showed you your employees, their team composition and the items you had, on top of the individual Guests, Items and Teams screens in the pause menu. We have instead turned Items into a Files submenu, where it fits better as part of the game’s lore encyclopedia, and the previous Ledger, Guests and Teams menus have been collapsed into a single one:

Here, you can see information about each character’s growth status and stats, now with identifying icons, along with your current team composition, which allows you to compare between your recruited guests more easily. It’s also, I hope, nicer to look at (I myself have spent a lot of time just blissfully staring at it).

The settings and save/load screens, too, have been cleaned up quite a bit!

This is pretty much all for Hotel Basics 1, but the UI overhaul isn’t over yet. As of now, the Team Management, Daily Agenda and Wardrobe screens are placeholders, and they’ll receive more significant UX updates in future VU builds, so look forward to that! Also, I must thank our programmer, Wattson; he’s the one who actually put together this interface in-engine, and deserves credit for putting up with me during the whole process. 

Now, let’s take a look at some other pending matters:

The Sprites

Picking up where we left off last time, Argos’ sprites have been finished! 

With a grand total of five poses, multiple unique expressions per pose and some layering reworks, he ended up being the second most complex sprite after Asterion (it was a good idea to do him first, because after dealing with him I feel like I can deal with anything). I hope that his heightened emotional range helps get across the absolute dramatism of his character, and that you guys have as much fun reading his scenes as I did drawing him.

And since I mentioned Asterion, you might remember that in my last devlog I wrote that Asterion wouldn’t be getting any sprite updates this build. Well, that was a half truth: Asterion’s fully healed sprites weren’t redrawn for Hotel Basics 1, but because his spritework is so large, it’s necessary to spread them out between different phases. What this means is that his spritework will also be pushed out in parts, and since Hotel Basics 1 is meant to cover primarily the first act of the game, this is the turn for his unhealed variants!

The Unhealed Asterion sprites have had some additions too; on one side, his recovery is more gradual, taking on a straighter posture after drinking his first bottle of wine; and on the other, he has actual expressions now. Just like with Argos, Mino has been working hard implementing these new expressions to make the introduction of the game hit a little harder.

Also, (most of) his background-specific shirts have new designs! We wanted to give him a prettier wardrobe to make the dress-up mechanics of the game more fun, and this is the first step towards that. I still aimed to preserve the general vibe of the original shirts, mind you: the one he’s wearing above is the Leader shirt, for example, and I kept the “MOO!” of the original while leaning harder into the cow pun. We hope you guys have fun discovering each background’s shirt! (even if it’ll be a while before Asterion’s other sprites can have them as well…).

Now, let’s end this segment with a little surprise:

That’s right, we had a whole another character lined up for a new sprite this update! Lappan was in charge of Robert, and just like with Kota, he’s gotten a pretty significant redesign! 

Of the original set of sprites, Robert was the one the writing team most agreed was in need of a retouch, so some aspects of his design were reconceptualized. The biggest change is his face: Robert is supposed to look imposing and menacing, even when he’s trying to appear friendly, so Lappan was very careful to make his facial features very aggressive and monster-like. Sharp, angular horns, spikes everywhere and a permanently scowling expression that is perpetually obscured by shadow… he’s quite the imposing gentleman now, he is! All this is also meant to make the contrast with his colorful clothes, his tiny glasses and his nubby tail more fun (and also to play into his monsterfucker appeal!). We’ve been biting our tongues about this redesign for months now so we’re very excited to see how it’s received.

The Backgrounds

Our background artists were also hard at work all these months! First, let’s check in on some backgrounds we teased in the last VU Devlog:

Kinutao was the one responsible for both designing and illustrating the new versions of Luke’s/Kota’s bar area, and damn, it just really feels like their bar now. Kota’s version of the bar is clear and sophisticated, with muted tones and wooden finishes — the standout of the room are the imposing, handpainted dragon murals, befitting of his divine background. On the other hand, Luke’s version of the bar is dark and moody, full of flashy, streamlined curves everywhere, all coated in neon lights and leather seats, perfect for the carefree, raunchy guy that Luke is. These new backgrounds are simply a delight, and I’ve been having so much fun reading scenes that take place in them during playtesting (And as a fun fact, these were initially meant for the second phase, but Kinu was able to finish them much earlier than intended. Kudos to him!)

On the other hand, it was Faun who was tasked with the exteriors of the hotel, and they’ve really brought them to life with a thick, organic brushwork that really adds to the fantastical and slightly unsettling nature of the valley. You might remember that we had already showed this second background; it has since received proper color correction to make sure it looks well against the sprites, and I’ve had fun messing with gradient maps to make the different time variations. Faun has been doing an excellent job making the surroundings of the hotel feel unique and giving the world of Minotaur hotel a visual identity of its own, so look forward to even more of these in future updates!

BorkThunder has also pitched in to help with another of the most important backgrounds, the Bedrock, which is one of the most visited spaces in the story. The original background was made when the team was still early on their research of Minoan culture, so a lot of work has been put into making the Bedrock more accurate to actual Minoan art architecture, while preserving its foreboding, ominous vibes. (This one is still in its sketch phase, mind you — even if it’s not finished by release, you can count on the sketch version being implemented in the game).

And let’s finish up with some of the most exciting additions of this build…

The CGs

You lay your weight on the rusted door and force it open. Light pours in, and as your eyes adjust you catch glimmers of broken glass and ceramics over the trail of old, dried blood.
The cold room extends into absolute darkness, a hallway in and of itself, with a faint glimmer drawing your gaze to the far end where a shape emerges.

The new CG for Asterion’s introduction is Phwog’s creation, and the end result was simply fantastic. As I said in my last devlog, this CG is one of the most important CGs in the entire game, it’s the hook, and Phwog truly succeeded in imbuing it with the most miserable, hopeless feeling a man could muster. Along with the new original track by Nick Shutter created for this very moment, this might just be the gold standard of writing, illustration and music coming together in the visual novel medium, and I couldn’t be happier with what they have achieved.

The other key moment in great need of an update was Asterion’s concert in Chapter 12. This, too, was Kinutao’s making, and to be honest, I’ve been kind of obsessed with it since Kinu finished it. The tenderness in Asterion’s expression, the warmth of the light engulfing him… it’s just so good. I won’t go too much into it (as I’m hoping some soon-to-be new readers are hopping on to check out this devlog and I don’t want to spoil the circumstances around it) but it really showcases the talent that this art team is working with.

If I’m allowed to be sappy for a second, as a long-time fan of Minotaur Hotel, being able to take on the Art Director role and watching the Visual Update materializing has been a dream come true. Not many have the chance to participate in the creation of something like this, much less gathering a whole team of sensitive and skilled artists to help you fulfill that vision. I’m eternally grateful to MinoAnon and the rest of the writing team, who put their hopes in me to lead this process, to the art team that has put so much effort into their contributions, and to all our Patreon members who have contributed in making the Visual Update possible. This is just the beginning, and there’s even more amazing things on the horizon.

That’s everything from me, so let’s move on to some words from our critically acclaimed lead writer and director:

~~~

But what else is there to say? It's not often that I struggle to find words, but here we are. Perhaps it bears stating the obvious: the Visual Update (and Chapter 20!) has only been impossible thanks to this incredible team, to each and every one of our amazing and talented fellows who have come to lend their best skills to our project. And that, in turn, has only been possible thanks to our patrons, who have financed this massive effort, and all our fantastic readers, whose support has always pushed us forward.

From the bottom of my heart, I am grateful to all of you who have stuck around with us.

Now, I do have a few practical matters to bring up.

Expressions!

As dilukha mentioned, we decided to include some additional expressions to sprites that previously were very static. For instance...

"Skull Asterion" may only appear for two scenes, but conveying his emotional state here has always been of extreme importance, so we went the extra mile and gave him six very appropriate expressions. For instance, now you'll actually see his ghostly eye "flickering"!

"Thin Asterion", meanwhile, has a broader variety of emotional states, and we ended up giving him twelve different expressions. We really spared no expense here. Some are used very sparingly, but we knew that this was our chance to really push this pivotal part of the game to a whole new level.

Edits and Rewrites!

I am not very keen on reediting Minotaur Hotel now, but I've been aware of things I wanted to improve about the first few chapters for many years now. They really were the roughest part of the game, which is particularly bad considering it's the first thing new readers go through.

So, while adding all those new expressions I've also been doing edits here and there, mainly improving some sloppy sentences and adjusting the prose so it flows better with the new assets. Rest assured the substance of the story remains unchanged — we are limiting ourselves to polishing the writing, and only for the earliest chapters of the game. For now the goal is to go as far as the scene where Asterion and the MC light the hearth.

That said, when you play through the game please do not stop there! As you were able to see, our Art Team has covered a very large chunk of the game. In fact, now I hope you can all understand that, despite the little delay on the release of Phase 1, we are technically ahead of schedule — many of the assets that were originally meant for Phase 2 were squeezed in on this update because our artists exceeded our expectations.

And that's about it... Oh...

...Just One More Thing...

To celebrate the Visual Update and gather funds for the work ahead, we'll be running a promotion on our Patreon! All subscription tiers will be 50% off until the end of the month! This is your chance to grab all the exclusive Chapter 20 content we've been publishing there over the last few months, along with all the other rewards we've been cooking.

And that's it! I'm looking forward to next week. I'm confident you'll love what our incredible team has prepared. See you soon!

— Mino.