This is a strange one. Developer and publisher Bandai Namco has taken arguably their most classic franchise, and turned it into a dark apocalyptic Metroidvania filled with obscure lore, references to various classic arcade franchise, and a healthy dose of just plain weird. That’s right, Pac-Man is now almost entirely not unlike Pac-Man. Why would they do this? Perhaps simply because they can. Either way, Shadow Labyrinth is here to stay and it’s a very unexpected experience in many ways.
Shadow Labyrinth starts out with you controlling a giant mech for no apparent reason and then wanders through a series of strangely artistic scenes until you crash onto a planet’s surface and end up meeting a weird robot Pac-Man named Puck. If you’re confused, it doesn’t get less confusing. Puck explains that you need to grab a sword and then you are magically given a hand to hold it with since you are some sort of wraith called Number 8. Once you have your sword, it’s time to follow Puck’s directions and wander around, trying to find your way to accomplish Puck’s mission, whatever that may be.
Shadow Labyrinth is particularly odd because you never really know what’s going on and why. That would be fine if you were drip-fed information that you could piece together, but you’re really not. Instead you get a handful of veiled references, wander about finding stuff, and have to read the histories of soldiers and others that you find throughout the incredibly labyrinthine levels of the game. Once you get a ways into the game, you’ll get a fair bit more lore, but even that leaves you fairly confused and that’s frustrating because the game itself has a lot of potential.
In fact, for those of you that have been watching Secret Level (and there are a few of us), the Pac-Man episode of Secret Level is actually based directly on Shadow Labyrinth. Fortunately the game is a bit less overtly violent than the episode but having watched that episode, it’s impossible not to see the connections. That doesn’t make the story any clearer mind you, but it does bump the immersion level of the game up a smidge and it’s neat as well.
In Shadow Labyrinth, you play through a fairly traditional Metroidvania. You explore rooms, find hidden areas, discover upgrades, and fight bosses. A lot of bosses. Shadow Labyrinth is chock full of bosses, mini-bosses, and microbosses all over the place, adding a lot of challenge to the game. None of them are outrageously hard and your hitbox and attack boxes are pretty well-designed, but it’s still a lot of spread out combat. That’s because if you die, you are returned to the most recent save point, whether that be a small crystal (save, heal, transport to a larger save point) or the larger red orb crystals called Miku Sol that allow you to change Perks, move between Miku Sols, upgrade, and lots of other stuff.
Sadly, Miku Sols are few and far between, hard to find, and also are the only place you can refill your additional HP tanks once you get them. Saving at a smaller crystal (a Simple Miku Sol) will save your game, but it also saves it with however many full HP tanks you have and there is no other way to refill them, leaving you disadvantaged if you’re fighting one of the major bosses (there are a ton of them). You’ll quickly find that Shadow Labyrinth is a balancing act of survival as you wind your way through corridors and areas hoping to make it to the next save point before taking that one last hit, then warping your way back to refill tanks and doing it all over again. Fortunately, not all enemies respawn immediately and saving at a crystal keeps the respawns slower, but it’s still a struggle to find a save when you need one or close enough to keep trying on harder bosses.
Beating larger bosses nets you additional abilities such as power powerful attacks, jump dashes, and other neat effects that slowly allow you to access previously inaccessible areas. Some of those fights are fairly challenging and you’ll have to master every ability you get, but the overall difficultly level is only hard and not outright punishing. The boss patterns are not particularly challenging here and the repetition is fairly consistent so as long as you’re determined, it’s not outrageously difficult to make it through, but you’re still going to die more than a few times, especially when dodging through attacks and mis-timing the hit placement.
What you’re really looking for in Shadow Labyrinth is a bunch of hidden crystals. Some of the crystals add an extra life tank, others add an extra health bar allowing you to take more hits. Some of the yellow ones are also goods that you can trade later in the game and a handful are backstory, leaving you frustrated that you spent all that time trying to get to them when you really, really need more upgrades. A lot of the content in Shadow Labyrinth is very slowly handed to you and nowhere is that more irritating than upgrades. Sure, you can save up a lot of ora (money) in the game but you mostly can’t spend it after a certain point until you managed to struggle your way through the first four biomes and finally reach a store. Then you find out that you have far too little ora to buy most of what you want and far too few slots to slot it all even if you did.
On top of that, all the best equipment requires additional crafting components. How do you get those components? Well, remember how you start out as a giant mech? That’s called GAIA and you can switch to GAIA once it’s charged up by hitting both thumbsticks. GAIA is basically invincible and can also eat enemies, devouring their corpses and yielding a crafting component per dead enemy. There are different levels of crafting components required for different perks and you’ll have to figure out which monsters you’ll need to eat to make what you want. Eventually, Number 8 will gain the ability to eat enemies without shifting to GAIA, allowing you to fight and gather resources to prepare to upgrade…someday. Unfortunately, when you click the stick to gather resources with the ghost of GAIA, you’re also vulnerable during the animation, so if you do it while there are multiple enemies coming at you, you’re basically guaranteed to take a hit. What’s even worse is that if you wait more than a handful of seconds to gather the corpses, they evaporate, leaving you high and dry for key upgrading resources. This is a big deal with larger enemies that provide better components but surround themselves with smaller enemies, essentially forcing you to take hits to get what you need. Chances are you’ve probably never used an R3 button in a game as much as you will with Shadow Labyrinth.
So where’s all the Pac-Man stuff? Well, as you play, you’ll gain the ability to switch to Puck and act like Pac-Man during certain sections of the dungeon illuminated by glowing blue lines. These look remarkably like Pac-Man maze walls and you can jump off of them at various angles and even attack as Number 8 directly from Pac-Man mode. These are few and far between however and you won’t be doing it all that often, so the majority of the time, it’s just Puck following you about. There are some ancient tablets that look like Pac-Man levels strewn throughout the game as well, but you don’t get a chance to access them for a really long time, so be patient if you want to find out what they’re for (we’re not telling)! Aside from that, some references to ghosts, a few ori that look like power pellets, and some oddball weirdness, there’s not a lot of Pac-Man to be seen here and that’s a shame. While the focus is on a dark narrative, it simply doesn’t put out enough information to really become a gripping plot and you’re not sure what the heck you’re doing most of the time.
The environments and visuals are complex and interesting in Shadow Labyrinth however. Each biome is significantly different from the previous one and introduces new gameplay elements and enemies, making for a vibrant and unpredictable experience from a visual standpoint. The backgrounds and vistas are particularly enjoyable and the character designs are reminiscent of creatures from Ender Lilies (review here) and Ender Magnolia (review here). If nothing else, Shadow Labyrinth is a notably pretty game and there are a lot of design choices made entirely for effect, something you rarely see in today’s game market.
Naturally, the audio for the game includes a bunch of Pac-Man sound, especially when you’re controlling Puck. The soundtrack for the game is solid and there is only a handful of voicework so mostly you’ll be listening to music and sound effects which work well together and are by and large very well done. Expect to enjoy the soft and melancholy tunes from the soundtrack more than you might expect but there are some much more aggressive tracks as well and everything is chronological so if you’re looking for a chill playlist, you’ll have to skip about. Much of the music in the game is reminiscent of 90s synth common to shmups and other high action titles, so it’s got more than a bit of punch to it. If you buy the Deluxe edition, you can access the soundtrack from the main menu, as well as an artbook. There are 32 tracks in the soundtrack and over 60 images in the artbook which you can switch between while listening.
Here’s the thing. For all the positives that Shadow Labyrinth manages, the game as a whole kind of falls apart. Part of that is due to the inconsistency of save points, Miku Sol, and design choices that constrain players. That’s common to the Metroidvania genre but the progression feels glacial here, leaving far too few abilities to gain in the first 15+ hours and making it feel like you’re just not getting anywhere. Part of it is the sheer difficulty of the exploration. Sure, hard is the new norm, but Shadow Labyrinth feels like you’re struggling to make it from point to point even when you’re not dying and repeating straightforward puzzles with obvious answers due to the precision required. That’s frustrating and it absolutely decimates the fun factor of the game, turning potentially charming gameplay into a test of patience. And teasing players with upgrades that they can’t access and limiting what you can save up to buy and where you can buy it until many hours into the game is just a punch in the gut for players trying their hardest to simply survive.
With a steep learning curve, high difficulty, tons of content locked away until the late game, and no difficulty settings, it feels like Shadow Labyrinth is almost trying to make you not like it in spite of the excellent design work, clever ideas, and classic IPs used in the game. That’s a weird approach to take. Difficulty settings are pretty standard these days and accessibility is a big issue, one that’s noticeably absent here. You can make a game that’s innovative and creative, even in an overdone genre, but if you don’t make it playable for a large audience, it’s probably not going to do well.
Shadow Labyrinth manages to tick a lot of boxes for a lot of people, with nostalgia, creativity, gorgeous design, and a long, complex game that has a unique plot (though it takes a heck of a long time to open up). Unfortunately, it also comes up short in accessibility, design elements, and a few other areas that really limit the fun factor and audience participation for the game, making it more than a bit of a mixed bag. While it’s a wonderfully interesting game, it’s also a remarkably frustrating one and that balance is not going to work for everyone. That’s a big disappointment because it’s honestly a refreshing take an a classic IP and the music and visuals are particularly excellent. At $30 ($40 for the digital deluxe) it’s a reasonably priced title though and you’re not going to be out a AAA price if it doesn’t resonate with you. Whether or not Shadow Labyrinth is for you is something you’ll have to decide, but it’s quite the experience regardless. Oh yeah, and the Switch version comes with a free Switch 2 upgrade which is a nice bonus!
This review is based on a digital copy of Shadow Labyrinth Deluxe Edition provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both. Shadow Labyrinth is also available for PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.