My fellow Kyosians!
First of all, I apologize for not bringing a major update to you sooner... While I do post regular small updates on our Discord, it's obvious that not everyone uses it or has joined our server, and updates on Kickstarter, Steam, etc. are just as necessary. And while the main dish - Thea's route in its entirety - is still being cooked (in a crock-pot, apparently), I'd love to share the details about our overall progress with you!
1) We aim to release our next major update, 0.7.5, in February next year! Here's what it will include:
- An extended demo of Thea's route, which will cover 2/3 of the route. Not necessarily for playing, but definitely a solid evidence that we're getting there with its full release! More info on the progress on Thea's route below...
- Richie's route path A will move from beta to main branch (and will also get a Mac release)! A refresher about it: Richie's route is split into 4 alternative paths, which take place after different endings of Nod's route, or a combination of endings of several routes. Path A, in particular, happens after Nod's route To Be With Her Again ("The Swap") ending, and it's entirely self-contained, which makes a safer bet for playing than the demo of the unfinished Thea's route, for example. Here are a couple of screenshots from it:
Just like Thea's route, though, it still doesn't have the voice over, but if that doesn't deter you (and if you're on Windows), you can actually play it right now by switching to the beta branch - to do this, select Minotaur in your Steam library, then go to "Properties" > "Betas" here:
...and enter the super-secret password that I'm posting in a public update: Sungatesettlement
Don't forget to back up your save files before switching, just in case! They're located at: \Users\ \AppData\Local\VisionaireStudio\Minotaur, and you need to back up the whole folder.
- A bunch of major quality of life improvements, including some highly requested ones, such as (drum roll) automatic dialogue - the next best thing to an anime adaptation.
The updated sound options window
- An update to chapter select screen, which will make discovering different endings and extras easier, among other things. It's pretty important, but I don't want to make this post longer than it already is, so I'll talk about the chapter select screen in more detail in the next update!
2) Speaking of new features and our development effort in general - our small committee has recently grown! We had a wonderful new member - Rokari - join us, which not only lets us work faster all in all, but, with the help of his programming expertise, allows us to add more quality of life features to the game, such as auto-dialogue mentioned above, as well as controller support and - who knows! - maybe even a dialogue log... The list is long, and we obviously want to bring you new content as soon as possible, so we're very happy to have Rokari on board!
3) And finally, about the progress on Thea's route... Oh, Thea, Thea!
Your route is turning out to be long and ambitions. All characters take part...
There are several cinematics...
And even musical numbers!
Also, Thea's skill has been a major pain to implement, since it essentially requires a new scene for every place she can use it in, but it allows us to take a fresh look at some familiar locations...
...as well as integrate several cool (we hope) puzzles and story moments. It all builds towards a very satisfying emotional payoff - or payoffs, to be precise, since Thea's route will have 3 endings. All varying degrees of bad, of course, as is tradition.
To be honest, I think the task of completing all of this would have been insurmountable without your continued support... We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your amazing patience, and while it's not clear whether we'll be able to finish the game entirely by the end of 2023, we'll do our utmost best to bring you at least 2 new routes next year! In that February update that I mentioned earlier, we should be able to pretty accurately™ estimate the final release date for Thea's route, and we really hope that you'll be looking forward to it.
Love ♡🐧
Nick & u7committee
