TL;DR: Shadow Labyrinth is a brutally unforgiving Metroidvania with a taste for cruelty, a labyrinthine world bigger than your will to keep playing, and a combat system that seems personally offended by your survival. But it’s also a hauntingly beautiful, ambitious love letter to Bandai Namco’s deep-cut lore, drenched in sorrow and mystery. Not for the faint of heart, but for the patient and masochistically inclined, it’s unforgettable.

I didn’t think I would finish Shadow Labyrinth. Honestly, I don’t even think I was supposed to. This isn’t one of those encouraging indie darlings that gently coaxes you through pixel-perfect platforming with whimsical tunes and a kindly shopkeeper. No, Shadow Labyrinth stares you down like a cold-eyed gym teacher in the ’90s who just made you run the mile in jeans. It breaks you, rebuilds you, and then throws you back into a meat grinder with a smirk.

From the title screen, Shadow Labyrinth is clear about its intent: this game is here to hurt you. It’s not just a Metroidvania; it’s a genre crucible, filtering out the weekend dabblers from the diehard sadists. And weirdly? That’s kind of beautiful.

Requiem for a Wakka Wakka

You’d be forgiven for forgetting this is technically a Pac-Man spinoff. After all, you spend zero time munching pellets in brightly lit mazes, and instead spend dozens of hours as Swordsman No. 8—a brooding, silent slab of pixels—trudging through sci-fi corridors that feel more Silent Hill than Saturday morning arcade. The titular labyrinth is oppressive, infinite-feeling, and uncaring. It is designed to lose you, then make you question why you even want to be found.

The setup, if you can call it that, involves an isekai’d warrior dragged into the game’s world by Puck—a twisted version of the classic Pac-head—on a quest to climb the Black Tower. And I mean that literally. The game starts bleak and only spirals from there. The prequel short film Pac-Man: Circle provides a morsel of context, but not enough to save you from drowning in ambiguity. There’s lore here, supposedly tying into five decades of obscure Namco canon (UGSF fans, rise?), but Shadow Labyrinth is deliberately uninterested in whether you get it or not. In fact, it seems actively invested in keeping you in the dark.

Oddly enough, that’s where the magic creeps in. I’ve played countless Metroidvanias where the plot is just a functional excuse to open new areas. Here, the confusion is the point. I didn’t need to know why Swordsman No. 8 was there—I just knew I didn’t want to die in this place. And the game was happy to test that resolve.

Through The Black Mirror Maze

The first six hours lulled me into a false sense of linearity. I progressed steadily, checked off upgrades like a good little gamer, and even started to trust the game’s flow. Rookie mistake. By the ninth zone, the hand-holding is gone. Actually, the hand has been lopped off, tossed in a spike pit, and replaced with a map system so vague it makes Dark Souls look like Google Maps.

When I say you’ll spend hours combing back through old biomes—18 of them, many with multiple layers—I’m not kidding. Your traversal upgrades (air dash, grapple, double jump) are drip-fed so slowly you’ll start to question whether you’re missing something fundamental. Spoiler: you’re not. The game is just incredibly stingy. And that’s part of the point.

It’s not just exploration that’s brutal; the combat is borderline sadistic. The swordsman’s kit is stripped down to dodge, block, slash, and the occasional ESP ability. This isn’t Dead Cells. You won’t be juggling flashy combos or respec’ing every five minutes. This is attrition. You learn. You die. You learn again.

A Gauntlet of Pain and Pixels

Boss fights are where the game’s masochistic streak truly blossoms. Many enemies have a grand total of three attacks. That’s it. But those attacks will end you in three hits max. Miss a parry by a single frame? Try again. Lose your focus halfway through a 15-minute duel? Back to the start.

The most humiliating moment for me? Spending two hours fighting a boss with a literal rock-paper-scissors moveset. No flashy phases, no dramatic music shift—just pure, punishing repetition. I beat it, eventually. And immediately fought a harder version five minutes later.

There’s some variety thanks to ESP abilities like the grenade, shield orb, and the surprisingly versatile pogo-bounce. And yes, you get a summonable mech suit called Gaia at one point. It helps, but it’s not a get-out-of-death-free card. It’s just a temporary crutch with a health bar that melts like butter.

Getting Lost, Growing Stronger

What ultimately kept me playing wasn’t the promise of progress—it was the subtle rhythm of improvement. Shadow Labyrinth doesn’t care about your “completion percentage.” It wants you to build muscle memory, intuition, and an emotional connection to suffering. You’re not collecting upgrades so much as earning scars. And slowly, painfully, it works.

Every return to a familiar area feels different with new abilities. That locked door you passed six hours ago? Now reachable. That platform you couldn’t scale? Air dash, baby. The feedback loop is primitive and unforgiving, but also intensely rewarding.

Even wandering aimlessly through the same hallways, I was collecting health upgrades, absorbing enemy traits, and unlocking more about Puck’s true nature. I still don’t fully understand the lore, but I feel it—like a strange fever dream etched into silicon.

A Horror Game Wearing a Platformer’s Skin

The audiovisual design deserves its own moment. The world isn’t scary in the jump-scare sense, but in the existential, “why am I here?” sense. Muted palettes. Bleeding textures. Sound design that oscillates between glitchy synths and chiptune dirges. The whole aesthetic feels like someone fed Event Horizon, Fez, and a Pac-Man cabinet into a haunted Unity build.

Even the map UI is cruel. Icons are cryptic. Color-coding is minimal. But the longer you stare, the more you begin to see patterns. Paths reveal themselves not with blinking arrows, but through vibes. It’s like if Outer Wilds was designed by someone who hates joy.

This Game is For Sickos, And That’s Okay

There were many points where I hated Shadow Labyrinth. Nights where I made no progress. Hours lost to bosses that gave nothing in return. And yet, I couldn’t stop playing. Like a cursed cassette tape or a demonically possessed Tamagotchi, it burrowed into my psyche.

It’s not for everyone. Hell, it’s not for most people. If you like fast progress, clear direction, or forgiving combat, you’ll bounce off hard. But if you’re the kind of freak who likes deciphering cryptic lore, mastering perfect parries, and earning every inch of ground with blood and resolve? This game was made for you.

I respect Shadow Labyrinth immensely. It’s a defiant, unflinching middle finger to modern convenience. It feels like a relic from a parallel timeline where Bandai Namco doubled down on weird, difficult, lore-dense sci-fi instead of letting Pac-Man make TikToks.

And in a gaming landscape increasingly ruled by accessibility and instant gratification, that feels like a little rebellion worth celebrating.

Verdict

Shadow Labyrinth is a brutal, beautiful mess—a game that punishes you for breathing but rewards you for persevering. It’s a slow-motion symphony of pain, confusion, and ultimately, satisfaction. Come for the warped Pac-Man lore, stay for the sense of hard-won mastery. Or don’t. The labyrinth doesn’t care either way.