Minotaur Mentor’s Route update (July 18, 2021) is now rolling out on PC. According to the official Minotaur patch notes, the latest update brings new changes fixes and improvements.
Previously, a hotfix was released with various fixes for crashes and more.
Unfortunately, players are still experiencing several issues since the last major patch. Today’s Minotaur patch will address a few of these errors.
Minotaur Patch Notes – July 18, 2021
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 very lore-heavy, but it’s integral, and without it,
Minotaur simply wouldn’t be complete. Though 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):
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).
3) Mentor’s route should be unlocked immediately as long as
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) Endings: Mentor’s route has
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” but in Chinese version by decreasing 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.
- 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:
7) The soundtrack has been updated with new tracks from Mentor’s route! Just like I promised, it’s a free update, because what on Aya would we need money for? I also converted it from DLC into OST format, and all tracks should be there (and should play in Steam’s music player correctly), 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. No secret this time, but I think the files are still worth checking out.
Download free Minotaur update for PC.
