Back in December, I got an email from Bandai Namco inviting me to see a secret game it would be revealing at The Game Awards. I had some guesses heading into my meeting, but I couldn’t have possibly predicted the truth: a gritty Pac-Man Metroidvania. That wasn’t a fever dream. Shadow Labyrinth is real and it’s launching on July 18 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Even with that knowledge, I still didn’t believe it was true until I finally played it for myself.
While we took the oddball game for a spin back at PAX East, we got a much longer look at it during a 90 minute demo. That took us through a sizable chunk of the game, giving us a deeper look at the platforming puzzles, fierce bosses, and surprisingly deep combat customization. While it still feels like a hallucination, the lore-rich action platformer is starting to make a lot more sense to me when I place it in context of the wild era of gaming that birthed Pac-Man.
A surprising Pac-Man throwback
My demo drops me in about one third of the way through Shadow Labyrinth. If I didn’t know what I was playing, I would assume I was looking at the sequel to Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist. The environment is dark and moody. There’s a village to my left full of tech-enhanced humans. The only tell that I’m in Pac-Man’s universe is the yellow spherical companion hovering around me.
That alien feeling continues when I jump down a hole and enter into some traditional Metroidvania challenges. I start slashing flying insects and platforming up tall rooms, opening up convenient shortcuts between rooms. Combat feels a bit thin at first, but that’s only because I don’t have the full picture of how it works. I’ve got a basic attack that I can also charge up, plus I can parry enemies (because every action game has that these days) and dodge roll. I learn a lot more the deeper I get. For instance, when I press down my control sticks, I can summon a giant mech and unleash hell for a short time. I also have a radial wheel full of special powers that I can switch between on the fly, from a damaging circle to a stunning projectile shot. It almost brings me back to Castlevania and its monster abilities.
What does any of that have to do with Pac-Man? More than you’d think, but the connections are subtle. For instance, it takes me a good while to realize that I can press down the right stick when I’m next to a downed enemy to consume their corpse. Doing so gives me materials that I can use to gain new skills. It feels uncharacteristically morbid, but that’s Pac-Man’s entire thing, right? He eats his enemies. It’s a natural gameplay decision, albeit done in a very creepy way.
The series’ DNA becomes more apparent during exploration. The space I explored wasn’t your typical Metroidvania area where every path has a purpose. Parts of it are designed like a maze, as I can get a little lost and hit dead ends here and there. It’s a clever way to honor Pac-Man’s literal maze design, though I’m hoping the world is a little more loaded with collectibles and upgrades than the area I played. It didn’t seem like there was too much to find off the beaten path, as a lot of unlockables seem more tied to eating enemies. Extra paths are more about peppering in rarer bad guys who will drop different materials.
The most explicit ode to Pac-Man’s past comes from some of the platforming challenges. Occasionally I’ll run into a maze of blue rails. When I jump onto one, I’m suddenly controlling my pal as he magnetizes to it. From there, I need to jump to avoid obstacles like spike balls, hopping to different rails to avoid them. The design is pulled right out of the original Pac-Man but retooled so it makes sense in the context of a traditional 2D Metroidvania world.
There are some similarly clever nods like that in the few bosses I fought during my session. The most obvious one came when I took on a mechanical ghost. It’s a tough fight that has me dodging lasers and looking for the best moments to parry. When the battle ends, I catch a little glimpse of a more familiar pink ghost. That’s not the only classic video game reference either. At the end of my demo, I’m rocketed forward to a much later fight where I take on a giant boss inspired by Splatterhouse, of all things.
Those bosses get me thinking about how different video games are now than they were in the industry’s Wild West days. All of this feels weird and shocking to me, but this was the norm in Pac-Man’s heyday. Publishers used to be incredibly relaxed about IP and would happily give anyone the keys to create some wacky piece of spinoff media that took massive creative liberties with the character. It’s how we got Donkey Kong Goes Home, a vinyl children’s record that gave Mario a voice for the first time and completely invented his whole backstory. Stuff like Shadow Labyrinth was common at one time.
Through that lens, the project makes complete sense to me now. It feels like an adaptation of some long lost Pac-Man narrative cassette tape that Kids Stuff Records would have released in the 80s. It would have been the kind of weird artifact that you’d find at a thrift store and popped in a tape deck to find some convoluted sci-fi story built to squeeze water out of a stone. It’s gloriously retro in that sense, even if the intent here is to appeal to modern audiences. I have a few nitpicks here and there about how well it will all function as a traditional Metroidvania, but how invigorating is it to know that we’re living through a moment of weird video game history that we can call our own?
Shadow Labyrinth launches on July 17 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
