In Minos from Artificer and Devolver Digital, the roles are reversed. Rather than playing as heroes aiming to slay the fabled Minotaur, players take on the role of the Minotaur. They must create a labyrinth riddled with traps and try to eliminate the heroes as cleverly as possible.
In Minos, a maze-building tower defense roguelite, the players take on the role of the legendary Minotaur and must defend their sanctuary from attacking adventurers. The game tells the stories of Asterion, the former king who is now cursed to live on as the Minotaur, and Daedalus, the creator of the labyrinth. Players must eliminate the 'heroes' who venture into the labyrinth to defeat the Minotaur. To achieve this, they can place traps, construct new walls, tear down others and set up gates. The aim is to build corridors of deadly, interconnected traps. It is also possible to confuse and split up the intruders using rotating passages and shifting gates.
The game is essentially divided into two phases. During the first phase, players can alter the layout of the maze and position traps in specific locations. At the same time, they can see exactly where the enemies are coming from — yes, there are often multiple entrances — and how many appear at each location. An animated line traces the exact path that the enemies take to reach the centre of the map. Asterion can also be placed in a position to attack. Once players are satisfied with the obstacle course they have designed, they release the wave of enemies and watch the traps in action to see if their defense plan succeeds (with time acceleration). Afterwards, the setup phase begins again, usually starting with redesigning the maze as other entrances may open, or special enemies may require a different trap combination depending on their weaknesses. Mechanical devices such as spikes shooting up from the ground, rolling boulders and fire traps can be linked via pressure plates to create devastating cascades, though it should be noted that many traps can only be triggered once per round and a limited number can be placed. Once X waves have been survived, the mission is won — or the heroes are successful. Between attack waves, players collect gold, experience and resources to upgrade Asterion and the defense mechanisms, and they can also choose new traps, depending on how much of the intruders’ blood has been sacrificed to the Labyrinth God.
After a round, whether won or lost, further rewards and unlocks allow players to strengthen the Minotaur or unlock new abilities and devices permanently. As a result, new creative combinations of deadly traps emerge. The game rewards experimentation and planning, as well as an understanding of how to combine increasingly complex combinations of traps and mechanics as players progress. At the same time, the roguelite elements — with changing enemies and trap combinations, as well as dynamically shifting walls — ensure fairly high replay value. However, the onboarding isn’t quite as elegant. The tutorial only scratches the surface, and the subsequent explanation that the best way to learn the game is by playing it could have been presented more elegantly, especially the part where players make upgrades and start runs. The other game mechanics and how the traps work are visualised exemplarily, though.
Minos was developed by Artificer, a small, 14-strong game development studio based in Warsaw. Since its foundation in 2019, the studio has released two games: Showgunners (2023) and Sumerian Six (2024). Minos is thus their third game as an independent studio. Previously, the team had worked on Hard West and Phantom Doctrine at CreativeForge Games. In April 2019, Good Shepherd Entertainment (formerly Gambitious) acquired a majority stake in Artificer; at that time, the studio still had over 30 employees. In January 2021, the Devolver Digital Group acquired Good Shepherd and, with it, Artificer. In early 2024, the studio was forced to lay off nearly half of its developers (28 in total) to ensure its survival. It is believed that Showgunners failed to meet financial expectations, despite being very well received by critics and players alike. But Sumerian Six wasn't a big commercial success either.
"Dear Gamer, I wasn't quite sure what to write here; if you've played the MINOS demo, I'd be preaching to the choir; you're probably already sold on the game. Part of the reason the game is so lovable is that, compared to all our previous games, I gave up on You. The broad, general, "target audience", "market demographic", You. With our previous projects, we tried to anticipate what players want. What genres does the market want now? What are some features players demand or expect? Trying to make informed, analytical decisions. And while those games were really well received (93%, 94% positive), they weren't successful enough, and the studio suffered significant scaling down. There's a finite number of millions of dollars you can burn through before whoever's investing loses patience. And so, I thought to myself, looking left and right as the industry is brought to its knees in the current ongoing crisis: well, f**k it. Might as well do something I'm super excited about doing. For some cosmic weird reason, Devolver obliged. When thinking about them, I think about this Frank Zappa interview explaining the music industry (google: Zappa music business). That's a good thing. But I digress. I present to you MINOS, a game that I had no idea how to put together when I first thought about it (and I found it extremely enticing), of which I'm super proud, and for which I'm super thankful to the Artificer team and all contributors who helped us out." - Kacper Szymczak - CEO / Creative Director at Artificer on the game's release
The game's publisher, Devolver Digital, is an American company that specialises in indie video games and embraces unconventional concepts and marketing campaigns. Notable hits this year include Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, which has sold over 750,000 copies, and the major expansion Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven by Massive Monster. Other titles scheduled for release this year include the boomer shooter Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 by Auroch Digital; the narrative exploration game Virtue and a Sledgehammer by Deconstructeam and Selkie Harbour; and Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions by System Era Softworks. Recently, Serious Sam: Shatterverse, a co-op roguelite FPS for 1–5 players, which is being developed by Behaviour Interactive and not the original Croatian Croteam. "Seeing Shatterverse come to life is a really big moment for us," says Croteam's Davor Hunski, co-creator of Serious Sam. "It's very exciting to see another talented team step in and create something bold, fresh, and different within the universe we cherished for so long. I can’t wait for both the old and new fans to experience this new interpretation of the series!" But the publisher also has several other promising projects in the pipeline, including Tenjutsu, Enter the Gungeon 2 and Human Fall Flat 2, though they do not yet have release dates.
Minos is coming to PC on 9 April 2026.
A different take on tower defense: Minos is a strategic puzzle game that stands out for its creative maze-building, trap combinations, and roguelite elements.
