Review: MINOS is a Good Tower Defense Game in the Shadow of Great Roguelites
- Antal Bokor
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
I was excited when I got the chance to review MINOS. See, I’ve been a huge fan of games like Balatro and BallxPit—games that take classic mechanics and shatter them with addictive roguelike synergies. I was hoping MINOS would be more of the same, but it’s a tad slower and a bit more contemplative. Don’t get me wrong: there are opportunities for those kinds of synergies, but MINOS, by its nature, is paced more deliberately and isn't quite as bombastically over-the-top. In fact, if I were to compare MINOS to another game visually and narratively, it's Hades, despite the two being very different gameplay-wise.
MINOS is a tower defense game with roguelite and puzzle elements. You play as Asterion—the Minotaur—sitting in the middle of a labyrinth, stopping pillagers from messing with your stuff. You’re accompanied by Daedalus, who helps by changing walls and placing traps. He also doles out useful bits of lore and wisdom, guiding Asterion through his literal and metaphorical descent. The relationship between Daedalus and Asterion relies on a dynamic as old as video game storytelling: you have the guy who sets the tone and scene, and the guy controlled by the player who ostensibly does the actual heavy lifting.
A run in MINOS is split into two main sections. First is the map phase, where you rest at camp, buy upgrades, and prep. Then comes the gameplay phase, which is further divided into preparation and action. Here, you set up your labyrinth to your liking, then wait and watch as your enemies get slaughtered by your traps. There are also special labyrinths you can enter that act as story rooms, and others that serve purely as progression puzzles.
Building the labyrinth into an intricate killing machine and watching that machine do its job is the main draw here. As Asterion, you can use energy to clear rubble and optimize your space, eventually unlocking abilities to set new trap tiles. As Daedalus, you can move walls to funnel adversaries into killzones. Most traps can only be placed on specific tiles, adding a layer of strategy to routing the enemy’s path over as many hazards as possible. The labyrinths themselves range from massive to cramped. There isn’t an inherent advantage to a large labyrinth over an average one, but there is definitely a disadvantage to setting up a defense in a small map with multiple entrances; it often feels like enemies spawn right on top of the maze's center.
Theoretically, there is a ton you can do with your arsenal. You can dispatch interlopers using spikes, blades, boulders, fire, poison, and more. Many of these deadly traps can be linked to pressure plates to create intricate, Rube Goldberg-style sequences of death. You can even set up shifting walls or rotating rooms to trap and separate looters—possibly even sealing them in to choke to death on gas. That is, if you’re clever. I tend to take a more straightforward, brute-force approach. Instead of clever combos, I just put out lots of traps and hope for the best.
To keep runs interesting (or frustrating, depending on your point of view), MINOS throws a massive variety of enemy types at you. Some can walk over traps without activating them; others can disarm them entirely, allowing their retinue safe passage. There are enemies that throw bolas to slow Asterion down, and big, beefy types that act as meat shields for their friends. And then there’s Asterion himself, who becomes quite formidable after a few upgrades. Still, he’s easily overwhelmed by a group, so traps remain your best method for crowd control.
Playing through a run of MINOS doesn’t have the same propulsive forward momentum as something like Slay the Spire 2. Luckily, developer Artificer gave players a reprieve in the form of shortcuts to bypass the early levels. If it weren’t for that, MINOS might feel like a tedious slog as you go through the motions to get to the meatier depths, where the real challenges await.
Ever since I played Dungeon Keeper as a wee lad, I’ve loved the idea of setting up dungeons to foil adventurers. While MINOS isn’t exactly the game I wanted, it definitely scratches that itch. Just because it is slower than games like CloverPit doesn’t make it worse.
The current zeitgeist in roguelikes favors fast, loud, arcade-like flashiness and over-the-top combos—or at least the promise of them. With those other games, you have to pry me away; I go to sleep feeling like I neglected my actual life. MINOS had a hard out for me. I would hit a point where I absolutely couldn’t play anymore, and I likely lost a few runs simply because my interest waned and I started making reckless decisions.
While MINOS isn’t exactly the "Balatroization" I was hoping for (that’s a real word, I swear), it is a competent tower defense game with roguelite elements and some synergistic fun. Sadly, it never quite hits the genre-bending heights of its contemporaries, and it faces stiff competition for a player's time. I put a dozen or so earnest hours into MINOS, but when a game like Slay the Spire 2 can effortlessly command over thirty hours of my week, it highlights just how hard it is for a slower, more methodical game to hold my attention.