I bet you have always seen the main character as the hero of the story. But what if someone takes what you know about a character and gives it a dark twist. Lets say someone takes a character like Pac-Man and makes him demonic and sinister. Shadow Labyrinth is a 2-d platformer where you play as a mysterious swordsman, being forced to help a suspicious sphere called Puck, who is clearly based on Pac-Man. If you played any metroidvania game then you know how this game works. But does this game do anything to make it stand out from other metroidvania games. In a way it does, but not in a huge way.

The game starts off by Puck waking you up from a pod and making you work for him. The game starts you off with a basic tutorial level which allows you to get a handle on how the game plays. The controls are very simple and basic to start with, but as you continue playing you will unlock more upgrades to improve the combat. You start off with a basic sword slash, which can be slashed in different directions. You also have a dodge which makes you invincible for a short time. This move uses up the ESP gauge every time you dodge, and when you run out of the gauge, you are left defenseless. You can also unlock other abilities when you defeat bosses which improve the traversal and combat, but these skills also use the ESP gauge, so don’t just spam these moves. You can use items called perks to upgrade your skills to improve combat and decrease the rate of your ESP gauge depletion.

When you defeat a boss you gain a new ability, but the disturbing thing is how you get the ability. When the boss is defeated, Puck possesses you and summons a demonic Pac-Man, which eats the boss, granting you a new ability. This is a good way to give a dark twist to Pac-Man’s ability to eat enemies. It actually makes you think, is Pac-Man really a hero or are we just seeing one side of the story. But what’s important is you get a new ability and can continue your adventure.

The enemies in this game are well designed and fit into the feel of a post apocalyptic world but gameplay wise they aren’t really threatening. Most enemies don’t really do anything and are easily dealt with. You might get hit by a stray shot but that’s about as bad as it gets. The bosses, while well designed, have very simple attack patterns, and with the dodge move, can be easily dealt with until you get into the late game and not in a good way. The difficulty spikes and can be deemed unfair. The damage you do is lessened, while their damage is increased, so this is an issue that affects most games that have the potential to be great.

Another big issue with the game is the lack of checkpoints in the levels. You will often find yourself replaying hours of the level because you made a mistake and now have to redo all of your work. This makes boss battles harder, because now you have to worry about dying during the fight and losing all your progress. At the very least this game should have had three checkpoints, one when you first enter the area, one about half way through the area, and one just before a boss fight. Games like Metroid, are a good example of where to have well placed save rooms, so you won’t have to redo nearly the whole level again.

The areas in the game are well designed and fit the aesthetic of the world. You really get the feeling of dread when you’re exploring ruins and abandoned cities, with no survivors in sight. It really adds to the mystery of what happened, why do we not remember anything, and if we can truly trust Puck. However the map is poorly designed and hard to read. When you look at the map it’s hard to tell where in the room you are and which way you need to go. While this game has hidden rooms like other metroidvanias’, unlike those games you will most likely only find those rooms by accident, since there isn’t any tell as to where these rooms are. Whether on the map or in any of the rooms in the levels.

In conclusion, Shadow Labyrinth had so much going for it but tripped over the finish line. The controls are fine and work, the levels are well designed in the looks department, and the enemies are also well designed, but this game has many issues that prevent it from being great.

Score: 7 out of 10

Reviewed on PlayStation 5