TAURONOS

Tauronos is a top-view survival horror game where you are trapped in an ancient labyrinth and must find a way to escape. This task is complicated because you will be chased by a Minotaur and need to be careful to avoid dangerous traps. The game consists of six chapters, each with multiple levels. In some levels, you can find upgrades that increase your stats and even secret developer rooms. If you die, you will need to start the chapter from the beginning unless you have found an extra life before. Some level names give you hints about the level. All in-game dialogues are voiced. The game has three difficulty levels and a map editor where you can create your own levels. The controls are simple and straightforward.
The only downside I find is that after finishing the game, you can't replay specific chapter or level. Overall, it's a pretty good, underrated game with a nice price.
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Making badges on steam can be worth it sometimes. In this case, I got a 50% coupon for Tauronos. It’s appealing to give such a game a try when it costs me €2,50 and it seems to have its priorities straight. I can say with confidence that the game has been worth it after spending 6.7 hours on it.
The game is mostly a mix of exploration, survival, health/stamina management and being chased by a monster in some stages. You have a light around you that lets you see your direct surroundings but the rest of the stage is dark. You have to be careful of traps or you need to avoid getting lost in a maze. Clearing rubbles takes time and running costs stamina. You can become stronger when you find upgrades for your stats (armour, stamina, interaction time, strength of light and movement speed). There are 6 chapters with each one having between 5 and 8 stages. The game also has secrets where you can find extra lives, health regen, unlocks for a map editor etc. There are different difficulty modes with easy allowing you to continue after losing your lives. But you will have to start from the beginning of a chapter. Game auto saves when you clear a stage.
The most important aspect the game got right is the gameplay. It kept my attention because the levels are well designed, the stats and the upgrades work well with noticeable improvements every time, the game is challenging in the right way and it’s engaging exploring or managing your health/stamina. I played on easy and it feels like it’s just right in terms of challenge. Having to retry an entire chapter is a good motivator to do your best without the game being too punishing. The game seems like it could get frustrating if played on higher difficulties (I didn’t test this) and I normally hate being chased in games. This shouldn’t be a game for me on paper but it really works on easy at least. The chase sequences feel like puzzles and offer a bit of variety to the whole package. What’s surprising is a game like this having quite a bit of voice acting for the main character. I like it, it gives it a bit of personality. The achievements are also fun and will require playing the game twice. It’s great that you can get all the achievements on easy. There are luckily no difficulty related achievements.
With all that said, the game has a few minor flaws. I’ve experienced one bug where the playable character got stuck on a wall with one specific stage. I had to exit the stage and retry a few times until it worked. This can be more of a problem on higher difficulties as you lose a life every time you exit the game if you don’t select ‘continue later’ after finishing a stage. It’s not possible to select stages or retry the ones you’ve completed. If you missed secrets, though luck. You can retry with new game. The game also only shows you what you missed after finishing a stage, it doesn’t show you in advance. This coupled with not being allowed to select or retry stages forced me to write down the stages with the secrets I’ve missed for my second run. It sounds pretty bad but the game is not long and there are some alternative choices where you’re going to replay the game anyways. And lastly, the game lacks variety in terms of graphical assets and color palette. The stages look a bit similar even though they’re different in terms of gameplay design.
I’m impressed with Tauronos, I had a great time despite some of the flaws mentioned. The developer knows how to create a fun game and they made sure everything around it is of a decent enough quality. It’s one of those good examples where a budget is effectively spent while you can see it’s small. This game is worth a try if you like smaller experimental indie games and are on the patient side.

Tauronos is an indie game that combines elements from the adventure, survival horror and puzzle genres. In it, you play as a Greek warrior descending into the depths of an underground complex where a hostile minotaur is lurking. Also, facing the minotaur may or may not have a symbolic significance...?
The gameplay is generally slow-paced dungeon crawling from a top-down perspective. You move around labyrinthine corridors, try to avoid traps through patient observation, clear rocky obstacles and pick up upgrades which will boost some of your stats, such as movement speed, torch power and defense.
The minotaur is also present in some levels, slowly but surely moving towards your location like a heat-seeking missile. Given enough time, the minotaur's speed and aggression increases, until eventually it's impossible to avoid. The only way to slow down the minotaur is to close the hatch from where it spawns; other than that, you just have to keep moving and think on your feet.
The game's basic formula is pretty simple, but the developers have squeezed everything out of it to keep things interesting for the game's six chapters. It doesn't take long until the game starts playing some mind tricks on the player, creating and betraying expectations to keep you on your toes. Sometimes it forces you to go slowly and observe, sometimes it makes you rush ahead to avoid a real or implied danger. It has some psychological and even "meta" elements, which is always interesting, even though subjectively I didn't feel everything cohered together in a perfectly satisfying way in this regard towards the end.
The game's audio is good. There isn't a lot of music, but all of it is quite atmospheric. Arrangements featuring harp, strings, timpani and similar percussion instrumentation fits the ancient Greek setting. The sound design is perfectly functional as well. Sound actually plays a surprisingly important role in the game, as there are some traps that can be heard before they can be seen. There's also some decent voice acting. Occasionally a bug may cause sound effects to play multiple times at once, but that's the only negative thing I have to say about the audio.
The game uses an extra lives system which is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, knowing you have a limited amount of continues makes the game feel more tense and serious. On the other, the game's design is at worst essentially based on trial-and-error, which makes the idea of limited continues seem fundamentally unfair. For instance, there are insta-kill traps which are not easy to notice until it's too late. Your visibility is frustratingly poor in the game, and even with maxed out torch power I frequently walked on trap tiles all around the game. Getting cornered into a dead end by the minotaur can also be a guaranteed game over, depending on the tightness of the corridor.
Playing on "easy" difficulty allows you to restart from the start of the current chapter instead of having to restart the whole game upon running out of lives, and doing so is recommended because it's unlikely you can finish the game with the 10 lives you're initially given. Furthermore, given the slow-paced gameplay, having to replay lengthy sections is not necessarily a very enjoyable prospect.
The game took me around 4.5 hours total to beat on easy-difficulty. As for unlocks, the game comes with a level editor, which is a cool bonus for the truly dedicated.
I found Tauronos to be frustrating and unfair sometimes, but it has an intriguing premise and atmosphere, and it can get quite tense too. So, overall my score is around 6/10. It fills a pretty unique niche, so feel free to give it a try if it seems interesting.