Minos Review – An Addictive and Challenging Maze Builder

Minos is a maze-building roguelite gamedeveloped by Artificer (Showgunners) and published by Devolver Digital. The game launched on April 9, 2026, and sees you play as Asterion, the tragic Minotaur, who must defend his sanctuary from bloodthirsty adventurers.

Unlike traditional tower defence games where you place static units along a pre-set path, Minos allows you to break and erect rock walls, set traps and doors to cause maximum damage to raiding heroes, and rotate entire corridors to funnel the invaders exactly where you want them.

While the planning phase focuses on your role as the architect, the action phase sees you roaming the halls as Asterion. If a particularly stubborn hero manages to bypass your traps, you can take direct control to finish the job personally. However, the game wisely avoids making Asterion an unstoppable tank; your health is limited, forcing you to rely on the labyrinth you’ve built rather than brute force each run.

Pressure plates can be linked to cascades of spikes, rolling boulders, and fire traps to create some devastating and brutal death corridors. There is a perverse joy in watching a confident knight trigger a single plate, only to be bounced through a series of buzzsaws and into a spike pit. As more invaders succumb to your traps and their inevitable doom, the more blood you harvest to sacrifice for even nastier tools.

The progression system is where Minos finds its “just one more run” hook. The more traps and mechanisms that you unlock, the more fiendish plans for corridors or death become apparent. However so too does the diversity of the enemy units, with some having health bonuses by being in a group, and others with ranged weapons. When Asterion is eventually overwhelmed you are sent back to Depth 1 and lose your accumulated gems, gold, and non-permanent artifacts. Most painfully, any ideas you’ve unlocked in the Imaginarium, the workshop where you brainstorm complex new trap types, are wiped clean.

However not all is lost, and you aren’t starting from scratch. You keep all your XP, character levels, and permanent artifacts. This ensures that while a failed run stings, you’re always returning to the maze slightly more formidable than before.

Overall, Minos is a surprisingly addictive and challenging maze builder that was like playing chess with dungeon pieces and death traps. The early ramp-up of difficulty can feel slow but persist with it and your maniacal nature will come to the fore as you try to outsmart the oncoming raid parties. Artificer has delivered a clever strategy game that respects the player’s intelligence and time. If you’re tired of being the heroic chosen one and want to try your hand at being the one who builds the dungeon, Minos is an easy recommendation.

This review utilised a key provided by Devolver Digital and Minos is available now on Steam.

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