Being the monster has never been this satisfying.
Tower defence games have a habit of keeping things comfortably familiar. You place your defences, you watch the enemies die, you repeat. What developer Artificer have done with Minos is take that formula and spin it through Greek mythology to create something that feels genuinely fresh, and a little bit evil in all the right ways.
You are the Minotaur. You are not the hero. You are the monster the heroes keep trying to slay, and your only job is to make absolutely sure they don’t survive long enough to tell the tale. Minos lets you lean into that premise with tremendous enthusiasm, and honestly? I had a blast doing it.
The core of Minos is trap design. You sculpt the Labyrinth, fill it with devices, and watch adventurers stumble to their doom. Ballistas, spike corridors, pressure plates that trigger chain reactions, the variety on offer is impressive, and the synergies between traps encourage you to think creatively about how you want people to die. It is, as advertised, a little too much fun.
The structure splits neatly into rest levels and challenge levels. In the rest phases, you heal, pick up new traps, and plan your next move. The challenge levels are where Daedalus, yes, that Daedalus, helps you understand your labyrinthine home as waves of adventurers descend looking for a fight. The further you push down into the depths, the harder and stranger the challenges become.
Spill enough blood, and you’ll unlock the tools to spill more. New traps, temporary power-ups, game-changing artifacts, there’s always something to experiment with, and experimentation is genuinely rewarded here.
When you die – and you will die – everything is stripped back. Your trap arsenal is gone. Most of your riches vanished. You’re back at level one. But Minos is a roguelite rather than a roguelike, which means the punishment is tempered. Your Minotaur gains experience across runs, and that translates into permanent upgrades. More health, more speed, the ability to rearm traps mid-wave, shortcuts to the lower floors – there’s a genuinely hefty skill tree to work through.
This makes the experience far more forgiving than it initially appears. Even a run that falls apart spectacularly still moves the needle. I found myself trying out entirely different trap configurations across runs just to see what clicked, and that freedom to experiment without feeling truly punished is what keeps the loop fresh.
The one genuine frustration here is time. Levels can drag, and even with a fast-forward button, cautious players will find runs extending well beyond what feels comfortable. It mutes that “just one more run” pull that the best games in this genre nail perfectly.
Minos knows where its focus needs to be, and the visual design reflects that. It is understated rather than flashy – adventurers are simply designed, maze walls have enough detail to be interesting without being distracting. But when the chaos starts? The ragdolling, exploding heroes are genuinely delightful, giving the game real personality.
The sound design is particularly sharp. Every trap has a distinct audio cue, so you can track exactly what’s activating in your maze without being overwhelmed. Zoom in close enough and you can even hear the mechanisms humming. Small touches like that go a long way.
The music and story keep things grounded without overstaying their welcome – atmospheric without demanding too much attention. There’s also a surprisingly robust suite of customisation options in the menu, covering everything from gore level to kill cams and functional tools like auto-rotate for traps. Nice to see a game that genuinely caters to how you want to play it.
Minos is a clever, satisfying trap-laying game dressed in Greek mythology and held together by strong mechanics and just enough depth to keep you hooked across multiple runs. It is not perfect – levels run a little long and some of its more complex interactions could use clearer explanation – but when a perfectly engineered kill corridor fires off exactly as planned, there is very little else that scratches that particular itch
Devolver Digital continue to back genuinely interesting games, and Artificer have delivered something worth your time here. If you’ve ever wanted to be the monster doing the hunting, Minos is absolutely your game.