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Hey everyone!

Devlog #8 was kind of a downer, huh? Well, this time I've got big and exciting news. I got a job! Yay! It happened kind of randomly, but it happened. In a strange twist of fate, I didn't  even have to look for it. Picture this:

A couple days after the last update, I'm in the middle of booking my flight back home when I receive a text from one of my pals. He says that he got a gig to work on a promotional game in a neighboring city, that he needs a partner ASAP, and that it pays really well. He asks if I want to join him. I say yes. So yeah! I'm currently staying in a hotel (paid for by the company), and once I finish writing this, I'm going to pack my lunch for tomorrow at the office. Adult stuff! About the project itself, all I can say (on account of the NDA) is that it's a VR game, which I'm not super familiar with, but... I'm learning!  The workload is also not super intense, so I still had time to work on the game.

If you haven't played this version yet, I suggest you go through it once or twice before reading the rest.

After V9, my Pico-8 cartridge was almost full, so I had two options: move to an actual game engine and continue developing the platformer, or just scrap everything. Given that I'd just started a new job, I went with the latter as I figured it would be a smaller commitment and the prototyping process would give me a fun reprieve from the office's routine. I might come back to the platformer in the future.

I had two big inspirations for this version. During my research, I came across the first one: Michael Ayrton's Minotaur Suite, a series of etchings showing the Minotaur at different points of his life. The drawings immediately struck me for how it humanized the beast: in all of them, he is, of course, monstrous and grotesque, but he is also weak, fragile, pathetic, and angry, as he holds onto his mother's dress or sulks around. After seeing these, I knew I had to make something out of them (I ended up using them as references for a lot of the Minotaur sprites). Angel Raising Project, an odd little game based on Neon Genesis Evangelion, was also on my mind at the time. In it, you take care of one of the show's angels. I was inspired by the game's absurd premise, how this seemed to conflict with the anime's original story, and how it used and subverted Tamagotchi-esque genre conventions to tell its own narrative. So I combined the two in my mind, and out of it came The Minotaur Raising Project.

One of Ayrton's etchings, which I used as a reference.

The game is now a pet raising sim. You play as a computerized version of Daedalus's maze, with the task of raising the Minotaur and keeping it alive and contained. There are three activities you can do with the Minotaur: feeding (leading a tribute to the beast by switching maze panels), training (blocking its punches to make it stronger), and talking (making it happier). The game goes through several years of the Minotaur's life as it grows older and bigger. 

There's a few different ways the game can end. The first is by letting (accidentally or not) the Minotaur starve. It is perhaps cruel, but also perhaps the most moral option as no one will ever be sacrificed to it again. The second one is death by Theseus: on year 8, the "tribute" will instead be the hero come to kill the monster. If the player leads him to it, the Minotaur dies. This is how the myth is supposed to go.  But, if the player maxes out the Minotaur's strength or traps Theseus, the beast will live on another year. After the hero's defeat, King Minos decides to stop sending tributes to starve it out. But if the computer and the Minotaur have formed a strong enough bond, the player will be able to lead the creature out of the labyrinth. Outside, the Minotaur is faced with an angry mob. If it is weak, the beast will die to the mob. If it is strong, the beast will lay waste to Thebes the city - and it will be free. In this case, does the maze's preservation directive override its containing directive, or does it actually care for the Minotaur, enough that it chooses to let it go? That is up to the player's interpretation. Similarly to what I did with version 6, I wanted to tell a story that shows the Minotaur as a victim of its fate. But unlike version 6, this game ends. Whether it is a good or a bad ending is up to you.

As a way to challenge myself, I tried to use as little text in the game as possible.  However, this proved difficult when I got to the epilogue since I didn't have a lot of sprite sheet space left, and it was hard to make illustrations that are  legible enough to convey the different endings. Still I think having the text be pretty much only there creates an interesting contrast, so I think that turned out okay. Anyway. As usual, let me know if you have any comments, criticisms, or suggestions for next time. Gameplay video below.

EDIT: I just realized that Thebes is not the name of Minos's city. I don't know where this misconception came from - and this isn't the first time I'm referring to it... But I also don't feel like changing it now. Call it artistic liberties.