Minotaur China Shop has a very distinctive, clever art style. The main menu is done like an ancient Greek vase, as are the in-between screens where you can view your stats. The actual in-game graphics reflect a sort of classical-modern feel, but in a warm way instead of the cold feel one sometimes gets from banks. It feels like a cozy Greek hole-in-the-wall shop. Textures are good, the models are simple but effective, and the detail added to things such as the randomly-generated customers and china are surprising in a good way. There's also special effects such as your vision becoming red and your horns catching on fire as you become enraged. The only complaint in regards to graphics is that it runs a little sluggishly when the action really picks up. As for sound, it's minimalistic. The sounds you will hear most often are grunting, roaring, and smashing, and they basically form the soundtrack of the game.

The game has two distinct playstyles that can overlap however the player chooses. The two different ways to play are to bring the customers what they want with minimal damage, and to break everything you can to get incredible insurance payoffs. Both are very fun and tie into each other quite well.

When you are starting out, a customer will approach the counter and request an item with three hearts below the item in question. The item will be highlighted by a green pillar to tell you where it is. Standing next to the green pillar will make the minotaur automatically pick up the item in his hand. All you must do is bring the item to the customer before the hearts run out to get your money. Sometimes a customer will want multiple items. If that's the case, the hearts reset after each item, and you will get a chain bonus for each one you deliver, increasing the money you get. However, be careful not to break things or the itme you are carrying, or you will start to lose yourself to your rage.

The rage portion, which takes full advantage of the physics, revolves around destroying as much china as possible. As you begin to lose yourself to the rage, you become harder to control and stumble around, swinging into things. You can either go on a destruction spree or attempt to calm yourself by taking deep breaths. Either way nets you some good money. Destroying things over a short span of time ups your insurance multiplier, and with a fully stocked shop, insurance multipliers can reach 50x and above with ease. Along with raging, though, comes security. Security will fire arrows at you until you are subdued due to blood loss or calm down. If you are subdued while raging, it gives you a "Blaze of Glory" bonus, so don't feel too bad about dying. You get rewarded either way!

While this could be enough for most players, the game is also spiced up with some RPG elements in between days. Each time you spawn in the shop is one day, and it lasts until closing time or until you are subdued. There are 5 days total until the game ends to net as much money as possible to reach the leaderboards. To enhance the rate at which you earn money, you can buy new moves as well as upgrade the shop or your stats. The stats you can upgrade are:

• Insurance: This determines how well your insurance pays for destruction, how long your insurance multiplier lasts, and how long it takes for security to show up. The higher the level, the more money and freedom you have.
  
• Inventory: This determines how stocked your shop is. Higher levels means there's a higher payoff when you bring things to the counter and more stuff to destroy, but it's also a lot more crowded, leading to breakage.
  
• Strength: This determines how many arrows you can take before you pass out as well as how fast your special moves recharge. And max level, you can survive just about everything and all your abilities recharge extremely fast.
  
• Speed: This determines how quickly you move, but also makes you less stable and therefore more likely to run into things.
• Advertising: This determines how many customers you are getting. If you are going the "destroy everything!" route, this can be safely ignored, but is essential to those wanting to make peaceful money.

The new moves you can buy include a stomp that ripples the ground, deep breathing to relax your rage, shaking off attached arrows, and a charge forward that breaks anything in its way, among others. There are nine moves, and they can be activated by pressing the correct letter on the keyboard or, if you are particularly daring, pressing space to do a random move.

Minotaur China Shop is a really short game, but it makes up for it in overwhelming charm, hilarious situations, tons of replayability, and the simple joy of destroying things. In a way, it's just like Velociraptor Safari, only with more mythology and less science! You can play the game on Blurst as a guest or registered user. Creating an account or logging in allows the game to track your achievements and put your name on the leaderboard.

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