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There’s a pervasive narrative around Bandai Namco’s Shadow Labyrinth that its amalgamation of IP and iconography into a grimdark science-fiction setting, replete with edgy undertones, is somehow uniquely twisted. As if the general vibe of the thing (taking an established property and making it Dark and Serious) hasn’t been fodder for forum posters and FMV makers for the better part of two decades now.
In a market completely saturated by IP crossover events and compounding gritty reboots and retellings of vaguely nostalgic franchises, the impact of “what if Pac-Man but evil” is all but nullified. What’s left is a pretty tame Metroidvania action title that is secretly packing some killer classic arcade fun amidst a dire lack of personality.
You play as No. 8, named for your lineage as one of PUCK’s many attempts to craft together a body strong enough to break out of the prison-like structure she finds herself trapped in. PUCK is visually indistinguishable from Pac-Man, only now sporting a cryptic mean streak and seemingly the ability to Frankenstein corpses into disposable warriors in her ongoing, loosely intergalactic war with a bevy of classic Namco mainstays.
That sentence should illicit some response, but Shadow Labyrinth is out of time and place in so many ways that its potential is crunched under inscrutable system design and even wobblier efforts at worldbuilding and narrative. If you’ve ever wondered about the thematic underbelly of an arcade machine, this is your moment. Have it.
With a disembodied robot arm and laser sword to their name, 8 and PUCK set out to move through a sprawling series of interconnected maps, tackling an assortment of expected genre mechanics and interludes themed around a more traditional Pac-Man experience. Built entirely in the shadow of the Hollow Knight bloodline, Shadow Labyrinth’s attempts to engineer organically compelling challenge land somewhere between ill-advised and clumsy, often wholesale removing player tools as it sets you loose in confusing biomes. All of this still feels deliberate; the minimalist map, sparsely placed checkpoints, and contorted playspaces speak to a game that asks you to be engaged, but Shadow Labyrinth can’t synthesise this design ethos with any real reason to actually want to be challenged by it.
This is partly because the game’s grip on the fundamentals is somewhat loose. No. 8 occupies the paradoxical space between too lightweight and too stiff, the effortless gliding movement plagued with problematic animation frames and imprecise momentum. Shadow Labrynth’s escalating level design requires more and more of the player as it goes, and along with its cumbersome enemy hitboxes, the frequency with which you’ll smack 8 into damage feels poorly tuned and frustrating. PUCK also suffers here as portions of the game will see you transform into her to fly along railed challenges, the raw speed one of the game’s little joys, but sullied by a wonky, propulsive jump.
Things improve when 8 needs to break out the lightsaber, at least as Shadow Labyrinth gives you a solid array of tools to tackle its surprisingly combat-dense world. A simple three-swing combo, dodge/parry, and jump are bolstered over time by an assortment of upgrade skills, from passive damage adjustments to more active attacks and abilities. Much of this is tethered to the ESP bar, a universal pool that depletes when you do just about anything (one of the few examples of the game getting manufactured tension correct), but PUCK can also go full mecha-mode and transform into a lumbering beast of a machine to deal massive damage and do away with environmental hazards.
None of it is particularly thrilling, though, but paired with a nice lineup of pretty okay bosses, it comes together to be fine enough to get you through the game without ever truly making its mark on the genre. Elsewhere, the game asks you to collect body parts from fallen foes with a truly bizarre grab hand mechanic that sees your mech-suit briefly appear on screen in a ghostly form to physically reach in any given direction to consume a defeated enemy before their body vanishes from the world, on its own timer. This action both consumes your ESP bar and is entirely unreliable in its aiming, making for a clumsy and costly bit of experimentation. It’s emblematic of the game’s uneven idea implementation (like certain checkpoints refilling your health potion but not others) and coalesces into a sporadically fine but ultimately grating experience.
All of this is packaged in an entirely forgettable aesthetic, its issues stemming not from fidelity (the game runs well, colours popping where they’re meant to, frames holding smooth and whatnot) but from a complete lack of art direction and cohesion. Despite dangerous pitfalls and tight jumps, the biggest hurdle to navigating Shadow Labrynth is simply wanting to pay attention long enough to get anything done as biomes become a blur of vaguely sci-fi locales. It’s aggressively uninteresting to look at, and while its character design occasionally ventures into “cool, I guess”, there’s nothing compelling about the game’s moment-to-moment vibe or tone. Maybe if you’re absolutely fanging for deep-cut Namco references reworked into a contemporary art style, this will do more for you, but as a standalone work, it struggles.
But then you hit one of the classic, Pac-Man type levels, and Shadow Labyrinth pops off. These bespoke, tightly timed sections take place in their own pocket dimension and, away from the game’s overbearing narrative and numbing art, are allowed to shine in countless ways. Not only are they mechanically finely tuned for a healthy balance of fun and challenge, they’re also visually and sonically absolutely thrilling, something akin to a Tetris Effect style reimagining of the core tenets of Pac-Man. In these spaces, I could feel the game shimmering with affection for its history, and it made returning to the bleak, misguided outershell of itself all the more tiring.