I love the Greek mythology, gods and monsters, heroes and villains, every aspect is wonderful. Which is why it is surprising that Daedalus and his labyrinth has never had more of an impact in videogames. The character was used a lot in God of War, but they have never had a spotlight, until now. But even though they are in Minos, they are not really the star, no that honour goes to Asterion, the minotaur that calls it home. Minos is not your average game, it plays a little like a tower defence game, but it is also a roguelike.

Minos tasks you with guiding soldiers who are venturing into the labyrinth, only you are guiding them to their doom. Asterion can move around the labyrinth to fight back against the invaders, but the main way to fight them back is with the traps. At the start of your run, you are only given a few traps, but as you take down the waves of soldiers, you can earn more. While the labyrinth will create a layout as it spawns, you are free to move around most walls, in order to direct the intruders to the path you want. There is no time limit on this part, so you can take your time. Once your path has been set, then it comes down to placing the traps, in order to reduce the number of soldiers you might need to fight. This is where a lot of the challenge comes in, because leaving a few soldiers together, could be dangerous for you.

The traps that you have access to are mostly the style you might think, fire trap and spike trap for example. There are a few fun ones, the alluring statue is one such trap, which will draw in the first soldier unlucky enough to cross its path. The problem you will encounter early on is that you will often only have three traps, to your four or even five soldiers. Thankfully you can upgrade your limit, as long as there has been a significant amount of blood spilled. Yes, in order to upgrade the labyrinth and add more traps to it, you will need to kill soldiers. For any soldiers that fail to fall to your devious traps, you can send Asterion out to fight them directly, the only catch with this is that depending on the soldier type, he might be outmatched.

Something that I was not expecting to see in this demo build of the game was soldier types, well as many as there were anyway. In your first few levels you might have two types of basic soldiers, who on their own are not that strong, but if you fail to break up their team dynamic, they can deal more damage. As you progress deeper in the tunnels of the labyrinth, more soldier types will begin their hunt. The one to be weary of early on is the evader, who can easily step over your flame or spike traps, though balistas’s still take then down. Some of the more advanced soldiers will also have more health than a single trap can take from them, which is where upgrades come in. You can use your gold collected from the bodies of those foolish enough to enter, in order to have Daedalus create more powerful traps. These are not ones you can just plop down and then hope for the best; they require thought about their placement. Remember that alluring statue I mentioned before, the upgraded version of that can do almost double the amount of damage, but they need a longer path to it, in order to take advantage of that.

In my 2 hours playing through the demo, I made it to the final section of the labyrinth twice and failed to defeat all the enemies that were coming in. Some of those soldiers were designed as tanks and while my traps were doing ok, there were just too many to deal with, with how I was doing things. I did upgrade Asterion quite a bit, which gave me more of a chance on my second time down there, but I was still unable to snatch victory. Thankfully I have a lot of time to practice as the full game is not coming out until 2026. If you have a passing interest in Greek mythology or tower defence/strategy games, then I suggest you grab the demo and give it a shot yourself, you might be impressed at what you find lurking within the depths of this labyrinth.

You can learn more about the game here and grab the demo for yourself on Steam.