For a rare few, the best and perhaps the only way forward through tribulations in life is to dig yourself deeper first, to go to dark places you never thought you would have to, just for the hope and chance to oncFor a rare few, the best and perhaps the only way forward through tribulations in life is to dig yourself deeper first, to go to dark places you never thought you would have to, just for the hope and chance to once again see the sun. Maybe you seek truth, liberation, power, or security, but no matter what it is, one question is irrefutably apparent: what price are you willing to pay for it?
This is the thematic crux of MINOS, a new roguelite strategy game from Poland’s Artificer, makers of Sumerian Six and Showgunners, two games that have been on my Steam wishlist for some time. There’s also some strong elements of tower defense here, though in this case it should be maze defense since you play as Asterion, the ill-fated king of Crete and Greek tragedy given flesh and form.
After death, Asterion is plunged into the Labyrinthos, a winding, twisting hell of shifting walls that seems to have a mind and heart of its own, sentenced to be hunted like a beast. In the search of freedom and the truth behind the nature of Labyrinthos, you together with your father figure Daedalus must build mazes, setting up traps to turn would-be plunderers and monster murderers into mulch. You can be as devious, cunning, or straightforward with it as you want, as long as Asterion lives.
Ambience on high
If he dies, well, this is a roguelite game and, plot-wise, Asterion is doomed to his fate eternally so rise again he shall, and another run through the depths of Labyrinthos begins hopefully wiser and with more resolve than the last. This is the gameplay crux of MINOS, looping you along so that Asterion and Daedalus can lift the veil that the whole situation seems shrouded in. Surely there are answers for them as Asterion settles into his newfound destiny.
MINOS requires you to engage with your sinister side. There is no pacifist path through its walls (aside from some detours we’ll get into later) all the way down so you must resign yourself to the fact that you must shed blood. You’re given free rein of your maze building, each allowing you to erect walls to guide adventurers and tomb raiders to their deaths. Deception is optional but rewarded well, because each trap that kills an enemy gives you blood that fills a vessel. Once filled, you can offer it as a sacrifice and gain a new trap to place in your maze during your preparation period.
If you’ve played any sort of tower defense or turn-based strategy game that focuses on smaller, quicker, wave-based experiences that build over time, MINOS will feel warm and fuzzy despite the howls and screams of those you kill. You plan things out, you prepare with traps and various other devices that help enhance your kill potential or make it a more technical affair, and you unleash hapless people that have no idea what’s coming.
MINOS was most fun for me when I was thinking, surveying the next wave of meat banging down my dusty stone doors, taking stock of what traps I had at my disposal, and positioning Asterion for ambushes in the event my traps didn’t work as I imagined (which was often). Thankfully, he’s not helpless, able to swing an axe and take out foes pretty handily, even more so as you dump experience points into him at camp between mazes to up his strength, speed, health, and more. There’s no time limit to your preparation phases either. You can plan and overthink as long as you want since you control the button that starts the action.
I was pretty proud of this slaughterhouse I made up
Enemy variety and demands are what keep MINOS fresh, fun, and taxing even after 20 hours. They’ll start basic with men who can barely hold a sword and pee themselves when they see their pals get vivisected by your tools, but later on you’ll encounter more specialized units that can tank through damage, attack at range, or even deactivate your traps without being harmed by them. Just when you’re getting comfortable and you can feel the tinge of arrogance and power welling in your body, the next maze reveals a new modifier that changes how you need to play the game or a new enemy that upends much of your strategy or current roster of traps. It’s humbling to say the least.
Just as with traditional warfare, variety will win you battles. What good is a single weapon against an army of diverse enemies that requires different approaches? The Imaginarium encourages experimentation by providing a wide array of devices that you can unlock at camp to use in mazes. Once it’s unlocked, you have a chance to be offered that device during a blood sacrifice, or more importantly when you start a maze and by default get to pick a few free devices to begin your campaign of pain with. You can expand how many devices are offered to you in this and other manners when spending XP.
You’re never fighting hard for experience or other resources like gold or gems either. You’re practically flush with them after beating a couple mazes and can spend ample camp time unlocking various things, some that will completely change how you engage with MINOS‘ systems. I can say from experience that finding the potential in the use of pressure plates was a revelation I haven’t had in a game in quite a while. I loved seeing the various upgrades for traps you can get throughout a playthrough, turning my skewering ballistae into ones with stronger shots, then ones that can shoot twice with multiple activations, or making my falling boulder traps more durable and able to turn through maze walls instead of disintegrating at the touch of one. There’s a few different upgrade paths for the main traps so you can really customize your set to the way you play.
It’s not all violence and destruction, though. I mean, it mostly is, but there are cool asides in Labyrinthos that you can choose to engage with, like puzzle mazes that tweak the usual free-form labyrinth concept into something that requires you to really think instead of just regularly thinking. You get a set number of tools and devices, and you have to meet an objective like killing all enemies before they reach a goal, or ensuring at least one enemy reaches a goal by guiding them well. There are also adventure mazes where you must guide Asterion through a premade maze without dying, managing his energy level to dig through dirt blocking his path, in addition to his health, by not falling victim to the same types of traps you use yourself.
Don’t look, Asterion’s about to go through monster puberty
They’re nice twists and, honestly, when I felt like I was getting my ass kicked at the main labyrinths, it was always nice to see a puzzle or adventure maze as a choice next up in the queue so I could collect myself. Once, I did five exploration mazes in a row just because. I got lots of XP, but that’s about it and lost the run in a normal maze shortly after because I wasn’t able to prepare as well without adequate gems and gold. I can’t even say “you only live once” here to justify my reasoning, Asterion lives forever whether he wants to or not.
What I thought was going to be a pretty inconsequential story for MINOS turned out to be a decently emotional missive that toyed with the notion of humanity, the sense of self, and the loss of both. You’re not handed a smorgasbord of exposition and lore like in Hades or other games, so every piece, every movement feels hard-earned when you’re seeing interactions between Daedalus and Asterion. You get drip feeds of what life is like outside Labyrinthos, what Asterion was up to before this fate befell him, and what still happens while you toil away in maze after maze. Turns out the world goes on just fine without you.
My only real critique of the story parts I’ve seen so far is that they are pretty backloaded. Much of the weighty, meaningful exposition happens very late into the game, with a big twist only showing itself during the final cutscene before the credits roll. This is fine per se (do reward me for my work), but it could have been led up to smoother with more nuanced interactions with other characters or lore scrolls you find during your runs. Who knows, maybe I will find things like those as I play more, but the lead-up to at least the first ending of the game felt a little imbalanced. There seems to be plenty of reasons to keep playing MINOS after the credits roll, as I’ve only discovered just over half of the traps and secret device combos possible in the game, and faced roughly half of the possible enemies you can. Labyrinthos goes deeper than you’d expect, and that makes for great replayability as long as the core concepts mesh well with you, as they did for me.
The end of MINOS leaves you dejected, the humanity, or at least decency, torn from you either by your own doing or the intervention of a terrible fate, forced to kill thousands for your own benefit. I have yet to confirm myself, and maybe it’s a dash of both as is the wont of many tragic tales. You build intelligence, strength, and perseverance, but at what cost? You’re ultimately still stuck being the monster you were fated to be, the minotaur of the labyrinth, the scourge of the maze. Asterion persists because it’s all he has, but what of the men foolhardy enough to venture into your domain (and the reason for their summoning that you learn of eventually)? There’s a lot of meat to dig into there with regards to the hubris of man, but you are unquestionably the villain of it all by the time the credits roll.
Asterion gets hate mail through an Hermes statue
Don’t get too hung up on the themes though, for MINOS has a beautiful side as well. The environments you play in are understandably similar and are more functional than form-focused, but, just like the tones of Bomberman games before it, MINOS has livery and design on its side, with different tile sets and styles often implemented. Character portraits are bright and vivid, handmade to pop against the dark, drab subterranea of the mazes. You only see a handful of different characters in this way, but they’re always welcome due to how detailed and superb they appear. The little scenery you do see that frames each maze is interesting as well, whether it’s the deep molten lava flanking mazes frequently or the more expansive atmospheres you can see mainly in the story mazes where plot is advanced and major events happen.
It took me a little over 20 hours to reach depth 20 and beat the final boss, on my fourth run. This is a good time to mention that runs can go pretty long, spanning hours if you wish or are very thorough with how you approach mazes. I know some later ones took me almost an hour because I wanted to make sure I was doing everything as maximally as I could, and even then I forgot some small detail that meant a trap of mine was less effective, forgot to place one single wall that led to a group of guys completely bypassing my traps, or totally missed a new incoming path of enemies that nuked my plan and either almost or did kill me. Oops. There’s definitely a feeling of frustration you get with MINOS as you learn its systems, but it’s hardly ever frustration at the game, it’s more frustration at your own ignorance or inability to foresee something specific happening that you should have. It’s like playing chess; in order to excel, you need to be thinking several moves ahead and that type of thinking only comes with time and experience. What I’m trying to say is, don’t play this game while you’re tired.
While you are told before you commit to a maze how many enemies and what types they are (as long as you’ve encountered them before anyway), I would have found it beneficial to see a running tally of at least the grand total of remaining enemies, if not also which types were coming. In each normal labyrinth, you’re always told how many waves it’ll be up top, what wave you’re currently on, and you see the enemies outside the doors to the maze so you can properly plan, but that’s all you get. No other future-related information while in a maze. You’d have to keep a running tally yourself to stay informed about that. If I had the number of how many enemies total were left in future waves of the maze, it would perhaps allow me to plan purchases and device requisitions from blood sacrifices better.
Some of the trap or enemy descriptions weren’t as clear as they probably could be, either. The game does a good job of trying to explain keywords in descriptions as long as you have that feature activated (and you absolutely should for your first several runs), but sometimes I’d be grasping for clarity over a certain word’s usage, or exactly how one thing would affect another. It would only be found once I let the maze roll and learn in real time. This led to both surprises and disappointments, tough lessons learned, and new, useful information gleaned from the question marks that were over my head moments ago. It’s a give-and-take, but since MINOS goes out of its way to explain things adequately, a final push to rid its writing of some ambiguity could help it go further.
Despite its limits, there’s still a lot to look at here
This is more of a minor thing too, maybe even nitpicky, but some of the writing in the scrolls didn’t fit the classical aesthetic of MINOS either. Some are written with a more modern English and slangy slant. While generally I’m all for anachronistic accouterments like that in games, especially some humor, since the overwhelming majority of the game’s tone was played pretty straight with astute, dramatic writing, it made the levity stand out more than it should have, and not in a particularly positive way. It felt off. There’s also a sizable number of typos throughout the scrolls and other sections of the game.
I still have a lot more MINOS to play, and play it I shall. I think it could be my new go-to strategy game for the year when I have time to sink into a labyrinth or two. The allure of the rest of the story, to see what unknown enemies Labyrinthos can throw at me next, and to discover new ways with which to dispatch them is high. Just as Asterion endures, so too does MINOS endear. I kept wanting to get lost within its halls, often for hours on end, and the desire to pack more time away in it and get that playtime up to the second day pulls hard. It’s a savvy and smart game that respects you just as much as it demands of you.
MINOS is a valued toolbox of devious joy and wracking despair that’s pretty easy to look at, play with, and understand even as it gets more complicated and complex. Ultimately, you’re in control, for better or worse, and any game that gives you this level of freedom and personal expression is one that should be pedestaled like a bronzed Greek god for all to see. Give in to your darker side and see what its walls reveal to you.
MINOS is a valued toolbox of devious joy and wracking despair that’s pretty easy to look at, play with, and understand even as it gets more complicated and complex. Ultimately, you’re in control, for better or worse, and any game that gives you this level of freedom and personal expression is one that should be pedestaled like a bronzed Greek god for all to see.
For a rare few, the best and perhaps the only way forward through tribulations in life is to dig yourself deeper first, to go to dark places you never thought you would have to, just for the hope and chance to oncFor a rare few, the best and perhaps the only way forward through tribulations in life is to dig yourself deeper first, to go to dark places you never thought you would have to, just for the hope and chance to once again see the sun. Maybe you seek truth, liberation, power, or security, but no matter what it is, one question is irrefutably apparent: what price are you willing to pay for it?
This is the thematic crux of MINOS, a new roguelite strategy game from Poland’s Artificer, makers of Sumerian Six and Showgunners, two games that have been on my Steam wishlist for some time. There’s also some strong elements of tower defense here, though in this case it should be maze defense since you play as Asterion, the ill-fated king of Crete and Greek tragedy given flesh and form.
After death, Asterion is plunged into the Labyrinthos, a winding, twisting hell of shifting walls that seems to have a mind and heart of its own, sentenced to be hunted like a beast. In the search of freedom and the truth behind the nature of Labyrinthos, you together with your father figure Daedalus must build mazes, setting up traps to turn would-be plunderers and monster murderers into mulch. You can be as devious, cunning, or straightforward with it as you want, as long as Asterion lives.
Ambience on high
If he dies, well, this is a roguelite game and, plot-wise, Asterion is doomed to his fate eternally so rise again he shall, and another run through the depths of Labyrinthos begins hopefully wiser and with more resolve than the last. This is the gameplay crux of MINOS, looping you along so that Asterion and Daedalus can lift the veil that the whole situation seems shrouded in. Surely there are answers for them as Asterion settles into his newfound destiny.
MINOS requires you to engage with your sinister side. There is no pacifist path through its walls (aside from some detours we’ll get into later) all the way down so you must resign yourself to the fact that you must shed blood. You’re given free rein of your maze building, each allowing you to erect walls to guide adventurers and tomb raiders to their deaths. Deception is optional but rewarded well, because each trap that kills an enemy gives you blood that fills a vessel. Once filled, you can offer it as a sacrifice and gain a new trap to place in your maze during your preparation period.
If you’ve played any sort of tower defense or turn-based strategy game that focuses on smaller, quicker, wave-based experiences that build over time, MINOS will feel warm and fuzzy despite the howls and screams of those you kill. You plan things out, you prepare with traps and various other devices that help enhance your kill potential or make it a more technical affair, and you unleash hapless people that have no idea what’s coming.
MINOS was most fun for me when I was thinking, surveying the next wave of meat banging down my dusty stone doors, taking stock of what traps I had at my disposal, and positioning Asterion for ambushes in the event my traps didn’t work as I imagined (which was often). Thankfully, he’s not helpless, able to swing an axe and take out foes pretty handily, even more so as you dump experience points into him at camp between mazes to up his strength, speed, health, and more. There’s no time limit to your preparation phases either. You can plan and overthink as long as you want since you control the button that starts the action.
I was pretty proud of this slaughterhouse I made up
Enemy variety and demands are what keep MINOS fresh, fun, and taxing even after 20 hours. They’ll start basic with men who can barely hold a sword and pee themselves when they see their pals get vivisected by your tools, but later on you’ll encounter more specialized units that can tank through damage, attack at range, or even deactivate your traps without being harmed by them. Just when you’re getting comfortable and you can feel the tinge of arrogance and power welling in your body, the next maze reveals a new modifier that changes how you need to play the game or a new enemy that upends much of your strategy or current roster of traps. It’s humbling to say the least.
Just as with traditional warfare, variety will win you battles. What good is a single weapon against an army of diverse enemies that requires different approaches? The Imaginarium encourages experimentation by providing a wide array of devices that you can unlock at camp to use in mazes. Once it’s unlocked, you have a chance to be offered that device during a blood sacrifice, or more importantly when you start a maze and by default get to pick a few free devices to begin your campaign of pain with. You can expand how many devices are offered to you in this and other manners when spending XP.
You’re never fighting hard for experience or other resources like gold or gems either. You’re practically flush with them after beating a couple mazes and can spend ample camp time unlocking various things, some that will completely change how you engage with MINOS‘ systems. I can say from experience that finding the potential in the use of pressure plates was a revelation I haven’t had in a game in quite a while. I loved seeing the various upgrades for traps you can get throughout a playthrough, turning my skewering ballistae into ones with stronger shots, then ones that can shoot twice with multiple activations, or making my falling boulder traps more durable and able to turn through maze walls instead of disintegrating at the touch of one. There’s a few different upgrade paths for the main traps so you can really customize your set to the way you play.
It’s not all violence and destruction, though. I mean, it mostly is, but there are cool asides in Labyrinthos that you can choose to engage with, like puzzle mazes that tweak the usual free-form labyrinth concept into something that requires you to really think instead of just regularly thinking. You get a set number of tools and devices, and you have to meet an objective like killing all enemies before they reach a goal, or ensuring at least one enemy reaches a goal by guiding them well. There are also adventure mazes where you must guide Asterion through a premade maze without dying, managing his energy level to dig through dirt blocking his path, in addition to his health, by not falling victim to the same types of traps you use yourself.
Don’t look, Asterion’s about to go through monster puberty
They’re nice twists and, honestly, when I felt like I was getting my ass kicked at the main labyrinths, it was always nice to see a puzzle or adventure maze as a choice next up in the queue so I could collect myself. Once, I did five exploration mazes in a row just because. I got lots of XP, but that’s about it and lost the run in a normal maze shortly after because I wasn’t able to prepare as well without adequate gems and gold. I can’t even say “you only live once” here to justify my reasoning, Asterion lives forever whether he wants to or not.
What I thought was going to be a pretty inconsequential story for MINOS turned out to be a decently emotional missive that toyed with the notion of humanity, the sense of self, and the loss of both. You’re not handed a smorgasbord of exposition and lore like in Hades or other games, so every piece, every movement feels hard-earned when you’re seeing interactions between Daedalus and Asterion. You get drip feeds of what life is like outside Labyrinthos, what Asterion was up to before this fate befell him, and what still happens while you toil away in maze after maze. Turns out the world goes on just fine without you.
My only real critique of the story parts I’ve seen so far is that they are pretty backloaded. Much of the weighty, meaningful exposition happens very late into the game, with a big twist only showing itself during the final cutscene before the credits roll. This is fine per se (do reward me for my work), but it could have been led up to smoother with more nuanced interactions with other characters or lore scrolls you find during your runs. Who knows, maybe I will find things like those as I play more, but the lead-up to at least the first ending of the game felt a little imbalanced. There seems to be plenty of reasons to keep playing MINOS after the credits roll, as I’ve only discovered just over half of the traps and secret device combos possible in the game, and faced roughly half of the possible enemies you can. Labyrinthos goes deeper than you’d expect, and that makes for great replayability as long as the core concepts mesh well with you, as they did for me.
The end of MINOS leaves you dejected, the humanity, or at least decency, torn from you either by your own doing or the intervention of a terrible fate, forced to kill thousands for your own benefit. I have yet to confirm myself, and maybe it’s a dash of both as is the wont of many tragic tales. You build intelligence, strength, and perseverance, but at what cost? You’re ultimately still stuck being the monster you were fated to be, the minotaur of the labyrinth, the scourge of the maze. Asterion persists because it’s all he has, but what of the men foolhardy enough to venture into your domain (and the reason for their summoning that you learn of eventually)? There’s a lot of meat to dig into there with regards to the hubris of man, but you are unquestionably the villain of it all by the time the credits roll.
Asterion gets hate mail through an Hermes statue
Don’t get too hung up on the themes though, for MINOS has a beautiful side as well. The environments you play in are understandably similar and are more functional than form-focused, but, just like the tones of Bomberman games before it, MINOS has livery and design on its side, with different tile sets and styles often implemented. Character portraits are bright and vivid, handmade to pop against the dark, drab subterranea of the mazes. You only see a handful of different characters in this way, but they’re always welcome due to how detailed and superb they appear. The little scenery you do see that frames each maze is interesting as well, whether it’s the deep molten lava flanking mazes frequently or the more expansive atmospheres you can see mainly in the story mazes where plot is advanced and major events happen.
It took me a little over 20 hours to reach depth 20 and beat the final boss, on my fourth run. This is a good time to mention that runs can go pretty long, spanning hours if you wish or are very thorough with how you approach mazes. I know some later ones took me almost an hour because I wanted to make sure I was doing everything as maximally as I could, and even then I forgot some small detail that meant a trap of mine was less effective, forgot to place one single wall that led to a group of guys completely bypassing my traps, or totally missed a new incoming path of enemies that nuked my plan and either almost or did kill me. Oops. There’s definitely a feeling of frustration you get with MINOS as you learn its systems, but it’s hardly ever frustration at the game, it’s more frustration at your own ignorance or inability to foresee something specific happening that you should have. It’s like playing chess; in order to excel, you need to be thinking several moves ahead and that type of thinking only comes with time and experience. What I’m trying to say is, don’t play this game while you’re tired.
While you are told before you commit to a maze how many enemies and what types they are (as long as you’ve encountered them before anyway), I would have found it beneficial to see a running tally of at least the grand total of remaining enemies, if not also which types were coming. In each normal labyrinth, you’re always told how many waves it’ll be up top, what wave you’re currently on, and you see the enemies outside the doors to the maze so you can properly plan, but that’s all you get. No other future-related information while in a maze. You’d have to keep a running tally yourself to stay informed about that. If I had the number of how many enemies total were left in future waves of the maze, it would perhaps allow me to plan purchases and device requisitions from blood sacrifices better.
Some of the trap or enemy descriptions weren’t as clear as they probably could be, either. The game does a good job of trying to explain keywords in descriptions as long as you have that feature activated (and you absolutely should for your first several runs), but sometimes I’d be grasping for clarity over a certain word’s usage, or exactly how one thing would affect another. It would only be found once I let the maze roll and learn in real time. This led to both surprises and disappointments, tough lessons learned, and new, useful information gleaned from the question marks that were over my head moments ago. It’s a give-and-take, but since MINOS goes out of its way to explain things adequately, a final push to rid its writing of some ambiguity could help it go further.
Despite its limits, there’s still a lot to look at here
This is more of a minor thing too, maybe even nitpicky, but some of the writing in the scrolls didn’t fit the classical aesthetic of MINOS either. Some are written with a more modern English and slangy slant. While generally I’m all for anachronistic accouterments like that in games, especially some humor, since the overwhelming majority of the game’s tone was played pretty straight with astute, dramatic writing, it made the levity stand out more than it should have, and not in a particularly positive way. It felt off. There’s also a sizable number of typos throughout the scrolls and other sections of the game.
I still have a lot more MINOS to play, and play it I shall. I think it could be my new go-to strategy game for the year when I have time to sink into a labyrinth or two. The allure of the rest of the story, to see what unknown enemies Labyrinthos can throw at me next, and to discover new ways with which to dispatch them is high. Just as Asterion endures, so too does MINOS endear. I kept wanting to get lost within its halls, often for hours on end, and the desire to pack more time away in it and get that playtime up to the second day pulls hard. It’s a savvy and smart game that respects you just as much as it demands of you.
MINOS is a valued toolbox of devious joy and wracking despair that’s pretty easy to look at, play with, and understand even as it gets more complicated and complex. Ultimately, you’re in control, for better or worse, and any game that gives you this level of freedom and personal expression is one that should be pedestaled like a bronzed Greek god for all to see. Give in to your darker side and see what its walls reveal to you.
by David Rodriguez
