Dear readers, hello.
Today I have a surprise for our supporters. By now most of you must know about Devil's Gambit, on which I work alongside Roddo and Alpha0, but fewer of you know about Sex Drive (or SD for short). It's a visual novel I've been developing with Eddio and Eymon, both accomplished creators in their own right and active contributors to the Minoh Workshop team.
Based on the poll we did on our Discord server, the majority of you who do know about Sex Drive know it from its initial marketing and free demo, which painted the picture of a straightforward but customizable collection of erotica. This was the impression Eddio and I wanted to paint, even though the reality was that we did have some serious literary aspirations for this project -- which became apparent starting on the game's 3rd story, which has been exclusive to those who purchased the game.
SD is, despite its little notoriety, a project which I hold very near and dear to my heart, and which I see as equal to Minotaur Hotel in terms of the effort put in to give it a literary quality. If anything, it's a game where I allowed myself to become truly unhinged, embracing hard eroticism as a vehicle for literary experimentation, then following it with moments of deep introspection. It's like I made an entire project out of the insanity that was Luke's introduction, pushing its peaks and valleys to the absolute limit.
This philosophy extends to the music. For this project I instructed Eymon to "rock out too hard" -- harder than would usually be recommended for a visual novel. I wanted the soundtrack, which is entirely original and made for the game, to also embody this level of "excess".
I'm very proud of what I've accomplished so far in this game. It still is, mind you, an erotica-focused project, but no effort was spared to make it into an uncompromisingly cohesive game in all aspects, and my literary heart is in it -- a fact which I only hid because that surprising twist was meant to add on to the experience.
Sadly, Sex Drive's reach and distribution were kneecapped during the infamous policy changes on Itch, which were motivated by payment processor pressures. All paid NSFW games were de-indexed, making them almost impossible to find on the platform. On top of that, on April 2025, just as Eddio and I were gearing up to put some good time and effort on SD, I had to refocus all of my attention towards Minotaur Hotel -- bringing dilukha as Art Director, setting up a company, gathering funding, the Visual Update and Chapter 20, and so on.
Now that things are moving at a more manageable pace for me, Eddio and I sat down to talk about SD's future.
Despite the restrictive policies for paid NSFW games on Itch, I have been able to secure funding to finish SD's development. This budget is entirely independent from Minotaur Hotel's and has already been secured in full. On top of that, Eddio and I agreed on a timeline for the production of the assets we need to finish the game -- the next build is slated to come out in July 2026, shortly after Build 14 of Minotaur Hotel. More information here.
Following that, we quickly agreed that distributing it additionally through the Minotaur Hotel Patreon would be a good idea. As I said, I am very proud of my writing in Sex Drive, so I'd like to give it a better placement among the rest of my work and a less restrictive distribution.
I am planning on publishing, over the next few days, the most recent Sex Drive update (version 0.2a) as a freebie for all our paying supporters. Further updates will be integrated into one of our other tiers, essentially making Sex Drive a bonus given to the majority of our supporters.
This should not negatively impact the development of Minotaur Hotel. Most of the writing of Sex Drive is done already, and what little is left to do is comparable to the work I was doing every month for the VIP Stories and for Devil's Gambit. And, as I made it clear, the budget for SD is independent from Minotaur Hotel's.
If anything, since the budget for Sex Drive is already secured and sufficient, any additional earnings we make out of increased support towards Sex Drive will be pulled into Minotaur Hotel's development funds.
Though I understand Sex Drive will not be everyone's cup of tea, I hope that at least a slice of my readership here will enjoy it. It's a story made with love, dedication, and the insane mix of eroticism and literary writing which I consider essential to my style. As a writer I am proud of it.
Now, before I leave for today, I want to divulge a quick update about Build 14 of Minotaur Hotel! As some of you may have noticed from the weekday streams I've been doing, we are ahead of schedule!
We should have, very soon, a playtest build with a little more than half of the new content ready to go out for our Good Master patrons. This update is one of the most technically and narratively complex ones we have published to date, so the team is in agreement that an early playtesting period is both necessary and beneficial.
More news, on all fronts, coming soon. And don't forget: keep on being gay (or any other letter of the acronym!) no matter what.
-- Mino.