Amazon Prime’sSecret Levelgave us the dark sci-fiPac-Manriff “Circle,” a short-form experiment with Alex-Garland-meets-Pixar vibes. This was quickly confirmed as a backdoor pilot for Bandai Namco’sShadow Labyrinth, a 2D action-platformer scheduled to coincide with the dot-gourmand’s 45th anniversary. Pumped up as a darker take on the formative tropes of the arcade series,Shadow Labyrinthlooks to be a surprisingly complex metroidvania with Namco references, sci-fi elements, and even some cartoonish body horror.
Shadow Labyrinthmusters a few inherent aspects of the franchise, with maze exploration and enemy-gobbling mechanics as steppingstones to a complex and modern action-adventure. It’s all powered by a recognizable 2D metroidvania core with hand-animated touches, but some stiff gameplay and jagged level design left something to be desired in my recent preview. I couldn’t sample much of its plot, but there’s a complicated sci-fi yarn evident in NPC chatter and keyboard-mashed names like “Tzadelef” and “Nandnot.”
The few hours I spent with the game featured boss fights, jumping puzzles, and swappable combat abilities, with the latter as the game’s best feature. Unfortunately, I was restricted to individual save files to precise points and loadouts for this slice of the game, making it difficult to know if the less coherent aspects and worldbuilding will be better articulated upon release.
Pac-Man Is Your Guide In Shadow Labyrinth
Your Trusty Robot Companion Hides A Dark Hunger
Without the luxury of a formal intro to the game, some mechanics admittedly appeared nebulous or unintelligible. It’s one thing to skip an intro for a staged platformer, butShadow Labyrinthis loaded with systems that proved confusing at first blush, even if it’s all couched in that metroidvania foundation.
Basic methods of engagement included a sword attack, a dodge, a defense/parry, a heavy attack, and a GAIA transformation, most of which consume a replenishing mana bar of “ESP.” As for GAIA, that’s a kind of mini-mech mode which triggers brief invulnerability and changes some attack patterns, though I didn’t get to see how and why a mech transformation even exists in the first place.
You play a numbered clone known as The Swordsman – their predecessor was shown in theSecret Levelanimated short – traveling along a map with a mechanical sphere named Puck by your side. Garbed in a hooded cloak,Shadow Labyrinthsees you navigate different biomes and unlock new abilities for further access. The avatar and enemy graphics appear hand-animated, but the environments seemed noticeably simplistic and drab, a mix of rocky terrain, creepy alien membranes, and generic high-tech hallways.
Lots of Combat Options in Shadow Labyrinth
Transform into Pac-Man or Even An Invicible Mech
It doesn’t make the most characterful first impression, but there’s apparent depth withinShadow Labyrinth’s many systems. Special attacks can be swapped and mapped, but combat requires you to nurture dwindling ESP reserves, which regenerate slower and leaves you vulnerable when spent. After an hour, balancing the rhythms of combat and the ESP bar proved engaging enough, even if it could be frustrating when the dodge ability was unknowingly cashed out in this manner.
Still, there could betoomany methods of engagement, and most of them do not feel smooth and responsive. There’s a simple slash combo and a basic invulnerable dodge, some clunky ledge-mantling that didn’t always register, and outright poor hit detection. None of the enemies or bosses I fought seemed very tough, but the game loves to trap you in challenge rooms with varied enemy types; all easily dispatched on their own, but harder to deal with in staggered hordes.
Conceptually, transitioning to Puck mode could be a great idea, and we’ve seen some cool transformation mechanics in other metroidvanias (including, notably, inMetroiditself). Still, I’m not as jazzed byShadow Labyrinth’s wall-crawling. Essentially, you directly control Puck when colliding with special electrified surfaces (complete with “waka-waka” sound effects), which plays into some navigation puzzles. An interesting twist, but I didn’t find it to be exactlyPac-Man-like, rather more jarring and hard to control in practice.
Shadow Labyrinth Has An Inconsistent Visual Presentation
Shadow Labyrinth Is Dark In More Ways Than One
Early images ofShadow Labyrinthwere promising, but something that stood out throughout my preview were the distinct clash between sprites and environments. Whether it was hyper-detailed anime-styled NPCs against the blurrier backgrounds and surfaces or the photo-realistic rocky areas with your tiny sprite sliding across the floor, the visual aesthetic often lacked a consistent sense of character.
Your character is just a cloak with two spindly legs and a gauntlet, and the faint illumination around their body to stand out against the overly dark backgrounds felt like a technical requirement rather than a stylistic choice. Meanwhile, many enemies are cartoonishly odd, with minimal pivot points in their paper-doll-style movement. It often makes the sprites feel flat as shadow puppets, whether that’s conceptually deliberate or not.
Even the boss fight against “PINK G-HOST” was conceptually underwhelming. You spot a glob of bright color, which is clearly Pinky the ghost, fused onto an unrelated piece of machinery, then fight the machine itself in an unremarkable factory setting. Other bosses may fare better, but if the play here is to experiment with the franchise’s iconography, I’d want something more than a large boss robot with aPac-Mancharacter glued onto it.
Classic Arcade References Aplenty, Not Just Pac-Man
A Splatterhouse Boss, In 2025?
The final boss fight of the demo was provided out of context via a save. Still, it positions The Swordsman against a massive masked enemy inspired bySplatterhouse, a Namco arcade classic. While it’s cool to see a hat tip to the mostly-ignored franchise, I’m not sure how it folds intoShadow Labyrinth’s wider plot, or if it was just shoehorned in purely as a fun reference.
I’m frustrated that the preview’s reins were such that I was unable to make sense of these aspects. NPCs milled around in a hub area section of the map, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of their dialogue without understanding the narrative leading up to this portion of the game.
What is clear is thatShadow Labyrinthis indeed aiming for a detailed story, with Puck acting as a conversational guide to the otherwise mute Swordsman. It seemed like completing tasks in other parts of the map could enable new information and plot progression in the hub, but I wonder how well-realized this narrative will fare on release.
An Imaginative Experiment For An Arcade Icon
Shadow Labyrinth Could Be The Most Ambitious Namco Lore Dump Ever
I will say that the very notion of aPac-Manmetroidvania is immediately appealing, and I love the gruesome effect of Puck expanding into a massive ghoul that consumes enemies. I enjoy crafting builds with different abilities, but the ones shown in this preview were fairly basic overall, aside from the surprising mech transformation.
Mostly, I’m concerned about how all these different ingredients will come together in the finished game, especially in how it centers the wider Namco UGSF universe. That detail alone should make it instantly appealing to fans spotting name-drops from lesser-known franchises likeBosconianand delighting at nightmarish creatures inspired by Namco’s historic catalog.
I appreciate gaming experiments, andShadow Labyrinthtakes an imaginative, left-of-center approach to a classic icon. I’m also cautious about some crucial fundamentals given my abbreviated time with the game, but its diversity of content and rampant references are immediately intriguing all the same. We’ll all know more when this curious metroidvania releases next month.
