MINOS

Of course, Minos’ fans – and the game deserves to have a lot of them – will tell you the plot isn’t important. What is important is its creative sandbox and gleefully gory approach to what is essentially a tower defence game. And on that I would agree with them. Minos is really difficult to put down once you start finding yourself daydreaming about new ways to combine your trap arsenal together.

A clever, engaging mix of roguelite and tower defense with an antique flair and a high 'schadenfreude' factor - despite minor UI clunkiness and slightly too punishing progression loss upon game over.

Minos is another excellent and entertaining gameplay-focused experience from the underrated developer Artificer. Crafting deadly labyrinths to make waves upon waves of human meat victims feels truly devious, thanks to the diverse set of traps and creative building abilities you can experiment with. Though I don’t quite think every piece of the pie works, it’s a winning formula in the form of a well-designed roguelike experience that I can’t exactly turn my nose up at either. Besides, how many other games let you feel like your own ancient Greek version of Jigsaw, crafting mazes and escape room hellscapes of death and torture? Not bloody many.

Minos reminded me of playing one of those wooden ball-in-a-labyrinth toys, where you tilt the maze just so to guide the ball to the end. In this case, gravity is replaced by scores of devious traps, and the goal is to stop the progress of enemies before they can defeat the Minotaur. Minos brings a lot of interesting ideas to the tower defense genre. If you have patience for increasingly challenging puzzles and a bit of jank, Minos can be a lot of fun.

Minos builds an interesting foundation by reversing the traditional role and turning the labyrinth into an active defensive tool. The combination of planning, traps, and direct intervention with the Minotaur creates tense and rewarding moments, especially when strategies begin to flow naturally, while the challenging campaign and steady progression help maintain engagement despite frequent defeats. However, repetition and limited content variety become more noticeable over time, with a lack of trap diversity, predictable level structure, and some visual clarity issues weakening the pacing and diminishing the impact of its strongest ideas. In the end, Minos presents strong and intriguing concepts, but still needs more diversity and refinement to sustain its long-term potential.

Minos is a maze-based roguelite featuring gameplay that is, all things considered, engaging—simple in structure yet remarkably deep in its mechanics. Its roguelite nature ensures that you are constantly facing new challenges within a system best described as a blend of strategy and tower defense. The goal of the game is not to hunt down aspiring heroes and tear them to shreds while playing as the Minotaur; rather, it is to devise the right strategy to funnel them toward traps and crossbows that will fire a few darts too many (much to your delight)...We believe Minos is well-suited for more contemplative players—those who enjoy experimenting with mechanics rather than adhering to a typically more linear, guided formula. If you value strategic planning, appreciate an intriguing storyline, and remain undeterred by repeated failures, then the Minotaur awaits you within that labyrinth—a maze that has become his very reason for being.

Minos shows promise when it hands the player a myriad of options. Pacing, however, isn't optimal, and creativity is not always rewarded.