Wiki.Minotaur.gay Connects Fandom of Furry Visual Novel
Minotaur.gay brings you to the homepage of Minotaur Hotel, a gay, furry, erotic, choose-your-own-adventure romance novel that you play as a video game!
Thanks to their engaged readership, the game developers also created a community wiki for the game at Wiki.Minotaur.gay.
We got in touch with MinoAnon, the director of the collective that developed Minotaur Hotel, to talk about the premise of the game, the importance of innovative LGBTQ storytelling, and the furry community!
Hi MinoAnon, thanks so much for chatting with us! First off, would you please tell us about the creative collective you are a part of?
Our group is called Minoh Workshop. We are a collective of artists and writers, both from the developing and developed world, working to create honest, unashamed, essentially gay games and fiction. We want to tell stories that can be a source of joy and hope to our readers.
Introduce us to Minotaur Hotel. What is the premise?
Minotaur Hotel is an 18+ gay romance visual novel set in a magical hotel. It’s an interactive story where the player meets the minotaur from the old Greek myth, learns about "his" account of what happened in the Cretan labyrinth and, eventually, has a romance with him.
Simultaneously, the player will have to manage a hotel and a diverse cast of employees (who are mythical beings and gay as well). All the characters are from different countries, so each character is an opportunity to explore a different set of emotions and conflicts that connect to our sexuality and cultural experiences.
Tell us what’s different about Minotaur Hotel compared to other video games.
We do a lot of literary experimentalism in the game. We wrote epic poetry for it, studied Homeric language and Sapphic poems, analyzed ancient theatre and its narrative structures, and did a lot of research on how homosexuality occurred in Greek societies. Those who enjoy playing detective will have fun digging out all these literary and plot threads.
There's also some eroticism in our projects. Although some people look down on it as a lesser kind of writing, we think that it brings a form of enjoyment which is no less valid than other kinds of writing, and we often weave eroticism into our gay narratives and character arcs.
Sexuality in all its forms, be it raw and explicit or subtle and suggestive, is an honest part of the stories gay people live.
What was the impetus for creating Wiki.Minotaur.gay?
We created the wiki at the request of a few very engaged readers. It became a collaborative project wherein our readers are piecing the story together bit by bit.
In the future, we want to develop resources for LGBTQ game developers, and we plan on posting them on the wiki. Our goal is to foster community and improve ourselves as creators.
Tell us more about that. How do you participate in the community of LGBTQ game developers?
We are very engaged with the continued growth of LGBTQ content in indie games. We did some outreach to improve how algorithms index and deliver gay content. (You can read about it here and here).
We write and publish free resources to help other game devs do well:
a guide on how to publish and market indie LGBTQ games,
and technical tutorials such as how to make interactive fiction accessible for people with dyslexia.
We are always trying to create new resources to help our colleagues do better. We were very much inspired by the ethos of the free and open software community in this regard.
Why did you choose a .gay domain for this project?
Picking a .gay domain was an important step for us. There are all the pragmatic aspects, like picking an easy-to-remember domain name, but mainly I appreciate that having ".gay" in our domain inherently communicates a sense of pride. I think that goes along very well with our attitude towards our art and writing. Hopefully it shows that we love what we are doing.
Why is it important to you to be proudly LGBTQ?
A few years ago I spent a lot of time digging, trying to find good gay fiction, and I was so disappointed by what I found. While nowadays we do have access to more LGBTQ fiction than ever before, too often we keep hearing the same old stories of young men struggling to come out of the closet.
I think we all need more than that. I believe that, for the majority of LGBTQ people, there's an unmet need for good, soulful culture and fiction.
As far as our work is concerned, being proudly LGBTQ involves mainly two things:
For all of us as consumers, it touches on our need and desire for authentically LGBTQ art and culture that tells a vast range of stories.
For us as creators, being proudly LGBTQ is about freeing our creativity and artistic spirit to create one-of-a-kind gay narratives. It's about being bold and passionate with our ideas, and putting a lot of effort into telling meaningful stories for our small but dearly cherished audience. Crucially, it's about creating something that brings joy to the lives of LGBTQ people, and being proud to perform that role.
Would you talk about the furry community for those who may not be familiar with it?
The furry community is, essentially, a creative community that revolves around the creation and appreciation of art featuring anthropomorphic characters — that is, characters that blend animal and human characteristics.
People all around the world identify with these characters, which affords storytellers like us a great deal of creative freedom.
Overall, the furry community is very creatively open. Some furry art has erotic content to it, but not all of it. The furry community is a very welcoming space for the exploration of eroticism as an artistic and literary subject, and that freedom to explore, create, and connect is so empowering.
The furry community is willing to take a chance on unique and unorthodox stories, which is exactly what we experienced with our game. We created a very niche thing — a romance game based on Greek mythology that dabbles in epic poetry and features a lot of hard-hitting themes — and in return we got an extremely kind and engaged reaction from the furry community. We could not have asked for a better readership.
Thank you MinoAnon and Minoh Works for sharing the behind-the-scenes story of Minotaur Hotel! To learn more, visit Minotaur.gay and Wiki.Minotaur.gay.
Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed in this interview are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of .gay, its parent company, or its employees.