Shadow Labyrinth is a game defined by contradictions—a bold premise wrapped in a tedious execution, a fascinating reinterpretation of a beloved icon buried under layers of frustrating design. Announced shortly after Amazon's Secret Level anthology aired its standout Pac-Man: Circle episode, the game promised a darker, more mature evolution of the arcade classic. That promise, while visually and thematically realized to a certain extent, ultimately stumbles due to underwhelming storytelling, clunky mechanics, and design choices that too often feel like remnants from a bygone era rather than deliberate creative direction.
Much like the Secret Level episode that inspired it, Shadow Labyrinth embraces body horror, psychological tension, and surreal sci-fi abstraction to mold a new vision of Pac-Man—here named "Puck," nodding to the character’s original Japanese name. Puck doesn’t chomp through mazes anymore; instead, he manipulates events from the shadows, a spectral force that guides and occasionally possesses the protagonist, an amnesiac swordsman summoned from another dimension. This mysterious traveler is less a character and more a vessel, wandering through derelict industrial ruins and bioluminescent cave systems in search of purpose, only to find cryptic NPCs, vague quests, and a story that confuses more than it compels.
The game’s opening hours gesture at intrigue. Players are dropped into a hostile alien world, one that nods to Bandai Namco's larger United Galaxy Space Force timeline. Eagle-eyed players will recognize nods to franchises like Dig Dug, Galaxian, and Xevious embedded in the environment and character designs. A village of Bosconian exiles hums with the lore of a shattered galactic war, and monstrous enemies bear faint design echoes of long-dormant IPs. But these touches, while clever on the surface, cannot mask the hollow narrative that runs beneath them. The writing is saturated with sci-fi jargon, heavy-handed monologues, and characters that oscillate between overly cryptic and embarrassingly banal. Dialogue trees often lead nowhere meaningful, and the player’s role in the unfolding events remains disappointingly passive.
Despite gesturing toward a grand cosmic conspiracy, Shadow Labyrinth tells its story through implication rather than engagement. There are no meaningful decisions to make, no branching paths to explore in conversation or action. The plot, bloated with exposition, fails to generate tension because the player is too often a spectator rather than a participant. Puck’s manipulative role could have been a rich vein to mine—a classic case of protagonist and puppet master—but the game never pushes this dynamic beyond the occasional cutscene. Instead of leaning into this dissonance, the game seems content to keep the player at arm’s length, relying on vague allusions and tedious lore entries to do the heavy lifting.
If Shadow Labyrinth falters in narrative ambition, it struggles even more with mechanical execution. As a Metroidvania, it checks all the expected boxes—an interconnected world, progression tied to movement-based upgrades, and hidden secrets littered across the map—but it does so with little enthusiasm. The first several hours are notably linear, guiding players through corridors filled with hostile creatures and locked doors. Only later does the world open up into multiple branching paths, but by then, the thrill of exploration has been blunted by the game’s design missteps.
Chief among these is the uninspired art direction. Despite the otherworldly setting, environments rarely differentiate themselves in any meaningful way. Most locations fall into a predictable rotation of dim caves, factory floors, and metallic corridors, distinguished only by their dominant color scheme. The monotony makes backtracking a chore, and because there are no waypoints or objective markers, players will find themselves wandering aimlessly through indistinct zones in search of the next progression point. Clues can be purchased from merchants, but they’re laughably vague, adding little more than extra busywork.
The game's titular labyrinthine design could have been a highlight, rewarding observation and memory. But the absence of thoughtful signposting, the presence of misleading paths that lead nowhere, and a lack of meaningful environmental storytelling make navigation frustrating instead of rewarding. Upgrades that should invigorate exploration—like the grappling hook and double jump—are locked behind long stretches of repetition, dulling the pacing and making progress feel like a grind. It's especially unfortunate because the platforming, when it works, is arguably one of the few enjoyable aspects of the game. The occasional movement puzzles and precision sequences evoke the spirit of Celeste, albeit in a diluted form. There are flashes of cleverness here—jump sequences that test rhythm and timing—but they are too few and far between, drowned in the game’s slower, clumsier moments.
Combat, which comprises a large chunk of the game, is similarly one-dimensional. Players begin with a basic three-hit combo, a stun attack, a heavy strike that consumes stamina (or ESP, as it’s called), and a dodge roll. As the game progresses, you unlock parrying and air dashes, but these additions do little to elevate what is ultimately a bland system. Enemy variety is shockingly sparse. Many foes are simply palette swaps of earlier encounters, their attack patterns indistinct and easily exploitable. The lack of variety dulls the sense of danger, and the combat rooms—frequent encounters that seal you inside until all enemies are vanquished—feel like little more than filler.
Worse yet, the game’s hit detection is spotty. Damage is not just delivered by attacks, but by any physical contact with an enemy, a dated design choice that punishes players for maneuvering rather than engaging. ESP, the game’s stamina system, governs both dodging and heavy attacks, but if it depletes, you lose the ability to evade, creating a vicious cycle of vulnerability. Couple this with sluggish attack animations and awkward transitions between moves, and what you have is a combat system that lacks both depth and dynamism.
Checkpoints exacerbate the issue. There are two types—Miku Sol nodes, which function as traditional rest areas where you can heal, upgrade, and fast-travel, and smaller resurrection points that merely allow you to respawn. However, these latter checkpoints do not restore health or healing items, meaning that players can find themselves entering difficult sections or boss fights with no healing options, forced to trudge back to the last Miku Sol if they want a fighting chance. It's artificial difficulty at its worst, drawing out encounters through repetition rather than challenge.
Boss fights, theoretically meant to be high points, are bogged down by similar issues. The design emphasizes endurance rather than tactics, as bosses come equipped with bloated health bars and predictable patterns. The combat doesn’t evolve, so each fight feels like a war of attrition. Your offensive options are limited, and using your strongest attacks depletes ESP, hamstringing your ability to dodge. It's a constant trade-off with little nuance, and the result is boss encounters that feel more like chores than climaxes. The game introduces perks—equippable upgrades that reduce ESP cost or reveal enemy health—but they’re largely cosmetic in impact, failing to fundamentally change your approach.
At the center of it all is Puck, a grotesque and unsettling reinterpretation of Pac-Man. During boss battles, his presence becomes briefly literal, overtaking the player in a disturbing transformation sequence to devour weakened enemies. These moments are striking, even memorable, but they exist entirely outside of gameplay. There’s no system to wield Puck’s terrifying power in real time, no build-up or player agency. It’s a cutscene gimmick, used and discarded. At rare moments, you can assume Puck’s classic orb form to traverse special surfaces, munching pellets and triggering the nostalgic "waka waka" sound. It’s a clever idea, but the execution falters—movement is clunky, jumps are restricted to three directions, and enemy gauntlets in this form strip you of combat abilities entirely. What should be a charming or chilling reprieve becomes a frustrating detour.
There’s a sense, throughout Shadow Labyrinth, that the developers had big ideas but lacked the resources—or perhaps the willingness—to see them through. It's not just a question of polish, but of cohesion. The game is ambitious in concept but conservative in practice. It attempts to bridge retro homage with modern design but ends up stuck between the two, failing to capture the elegance of either. There’s no shortage of Metroidvanias that push the genre forward, from Hollow Knight to Axiom Verge to the more recent Nine Sols, and in that context, Shadow Labyrinth feels like a missed opportunity. Its premise is strong enough to stand out, but it is weighed down by so many mechanical and narrative shortcomings that even fans of darker genre twists may find it difficult to stay engaged.
The music and sound design, often a saving grace in moody platformers, are competent but unremarkable. Ambient hums and industrial echoes fill the background, but there’s little melodic identity. The "waka waka" motif is used sparingly and without much flair. Visually, the game’s palette relies on shadows, grime, and artificial neon, which sets the tone but lacks variety. There’s little evolution in the environments, and what could’ve been a dynamic visual journey ends up feeling static.
As a reimagining of one of gaming’s most recognizable mascots, Shadow Labyrinth is undeniably brave. It is unafraid to push boundaries in its aesthetic and thematic choices, daring to turn Pac-Man into a vessel for horror, tragedy, and cosmic manipulation. But ambition alone doesn’t make a game worth playing. Mechanics matter. Pacing matters. Fun matters. And on too many of those fronts, Shadow Labyrinth falls short. It’s not unplayable—there are flashes of enjoyment, moments of clever platforming and striking visuals—but they are mired in a swamp of tedious repetition, underbaked systems, and storytelling that reaches for profundity but ends up tangled in its own abstraction.
For fans of Pac-Man: Circle, there may be enough connective tissue to warrant a curious glance. For Metroidvania aficionados hungry for new worlds to explore, Shadow Labyrinth may prove more of a curiosity than a contender. But for most players, it is a game that promises transformation and delivers stagnation—a shadow of what could have been.