Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete

***Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete*** is a 1992 Macintosh computer game produced by the founders of Bungie Studios, Jason Jones and Alex Seropian. *Minotaur* marked the debut of Jones. It is a sharply detailed dungeon crawler similar to many other computer role-playing games (CRPGs) and adventure games. The game distinguished itself from other games of its time by including a multiplayer mode that functioned over the AppleTalk protocol or Point-to-Point Protocol. A single-player exploration mode was also available. *Minotaur* was the first multiplayer-only game for the Mac, supporting up to seven players.

   The game's tagline was "Kill your enemies. Kill your friends' enemies. Kill your friends." This tagline has reappeared as a description in one of the multiplayer menu screens for Bungie's 1997 game, *Myth: The Fallen Lords*, and their 2007 game, *Halo 3*.

Bungie later licensed Minotaur's game engine to the studio Paranoid Productions (Richard Rouse) who used it to create the RPG, *Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis*, released in 1996.

In an interview with Richard Rouse III, Jason Jones said that, originally, *Pathways into Darkness* was supposed to be a sequel to this game.

`*"Actually Pathways started out as Minotaur 3D, but we pretty quickly decided that Minotaur was not well suited to a 3D environment since so much of the game relied on the top-down point-of-view. We also wanted to create a game which could be played without a network or modem, which was Minotaur's big marketing weakness. We eventually decided that we had a totally different product, and that it was going to be an adventure game. So, we wrote a story for it and started to carve out maps...."*`

## Description

`*The first multiplayer-only game for the Mac, supporting up to seven players. Minotaur marked the debut of Jason Jones, the programmer who later masterminded Pathways Into Darkness, the Marathon games, and Myth: The Fallen Lords.*`

## Gameplay

   The Game consists of players roaming a randomly generated maze in which Weapons, spells, armor, and other miscellaneous objects are scattered around. Also roaming around are stalkers, spider like creatures that damage a player when they make contact and can't be killed.

### The Maze

The maze is so large that players could foreseeably never run into each other before time runs out (at which time all players are teleported to a small inescapable arena filled with stalkers). The maze is also highly destructible, as there are several spells and objects that destroy walls.

### Player Stats

A player has three stats: Braun, agility, and lore, which determine how much damage a player causes, how accurate a player is, and how well a player uses magic respectively. Unlike an RPG, these stats do not increase, but a pool of character points is divided among these three attributes when that particular profile is first created. No attribute can have a score higher than 45 or lower than one.

### Player Death

Once a player dies, they do not respawn, and the player that inflicts the last blow gets the point. This will end a two player game. In a game with three or more players, they drop everything they have. The manual notes that "several games have been ended in a battle over a well equipped corpse." Furthermore, they are able to wander the arena as invisible ghosts. This allows them to exact revenge on the player that killed them by giving away what the player is doing.

## Media

**Wallpapers**

Wallpapers can be found on Bungie's website via archive.org.

**Screenshots**

Screenshots can be found on Bungie's website via archive.org.

## Availability

To download this game, visit https://www.macintoshrepository.org/4044-minotaur-the-labyrinths-of-crete