I got into Shadow Labyrinth yearning to relive the age of relentlessly edgy reboots, and oh boy is that exactly what I got. Whoever decided there should be a Pac-Man game where the franchise’s mascot constantly says stuff like “I’ll take you to places filled with things that deserve to meet the end of that sword of yours” deserves a raise at Bandai Namco, even if Metroidvanias are as plentiful in this industry as there are edible dots in the sentient circle’s black-and-blue mazes. I love the way this grimdark sci-fi adventure looks and presents itself as if it was pulled straight out of 15 years ago; it’s just a shame that it plays like that too.

Shadow Labyrinth tells the story of a nameless swordsman (that’s you!) who has been summoned to an alien world by a little robot named Puck. Puck charges you with breaking out of a prison and making your way to a huge tower, but beyond that, the narrative is kept predominantly a mystery. Is Puck someone you can trust? What exactly are you doing here? Who is this girl that keeps interrupting your journey? With nowhere to go but forward, the Swordsman and Puck embark on a journey to uncover not just the evil that lurks beneath the surface of this planet, but the extraordinary circumstances that brought them here to begin with.

Truthfully, it takes a handful of hours just to figure out what the game’s plot even is, but to its credit, Shadow Labyrinth left enough breadcrumbs to keep me interested from start to finish. Revealing basically anything could be considered spoilers, but I can say that I couldn’t believe how genuinely invested I got in Puck as a character. I wouldn’t say the overarching story is incredible, nor did it have a lot of big emotional beats. But Shadow Labyrinth treats the “dark Pac-Man” concept with complete earnestness, which elevates the dialogue and drama far above a mere exercise in novelty. 

At the same time, it isn’t afraid of making cheeky references to the original arcade game or other Namco properties, as if the developers are winking at the audience and acknowledging that the premise here is a little ridiculous. If you really want to fall down a rabbit hole, just wait until you see the entire extended universe timeline this game takes place in. Tonally, Shadow Labyrinth mixes drama and absurdity in a way that absolutely delighted me.

I WAKA LONELY ROAD

Even though the narrative lands surprisingly well, it’s the core play experience where Shadow Labyrinth gets lost in a maze of bloated systems. On the surface, it’s a typical combat-focused Metroidvania, not unlike countless indie games on Steam you’ve picked up on sale for 90% off. You have a satisfying three-hit sword combo you can bust out any time, or you can use your Stamina to dodge roll or use your equipped special attack. Defeat enough enemies, and you can turn into a huge ass robot for a short amount of time that’s impervious to damage. I guess that last part isn’t quite as typical, but it’s a berserker/rage/limit break mode, I’m sure you can think up a similar mechanic in at least one other game.

Despite its relative simplicity, this formula is an industry standard for a reason, and Shadow Labyrinth proves this point during its best boss encounters. Studying attack patterns and deciding when to unleash an all-out onslaught consistently made me evaluate my risks vs potential rewards, and I generally felt I couldn’t rely on one tried-and-true battle strategy for most encounters. Unfortunately, Shadow Labyrinth doesn’t hit this stride with its fight design often enough. In some cases, bosses devolved into just one or two easily readable attacks. Other times, I endured a barrage of cheap hits or vague hitboxes that I just wanted to get over with.

Regardless of the encounter, I was consistently baffled by how slowly Stamina recharges here. When fully depleted, it takes a good ten seconds to totally refill. And that’s only if it totally repletes, as by default it only charges at about a third of that speed. It feels decently balanced for big boss encounters, but against common enemies it’s way too sluggish. This unfortunately reveals one of the biggest issues with Shadow Labyrinth: It’s relentless when it comes to wasting time.

THE PUCK STOPS HERE

Hours into my journey with the nameless Swordsman and Puck, I started to notice how unfulfilling exploration felt. Sure, there are occasional HP upgrades and other helpful goodies, but the vast majority of secrets offered minimal value to my progression. Oftentimes, I found branching paths that would lead to the exact same destination, which I wouldn’t know until I actually explored both. I still filled in the map as I would with any Metroidvania, but it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d expect it to feel.

Then I got to the game’s major shop, which is filled with passive abilities the swordsman can equip. However, not only do these cost big sums of money, these also require a ton of items dropped by enemies. Frustratingly, these almost always include foes that only appear in a couple specific spots on the map that I never killed enough of through natural play. Also, some materials are actually rare drops, so defeating the right monster several times still doesn’t guarantee getting the right items.

It may be rude for a critic to offer backseat game design suggestions, but I cannot fathom why on Earth all these abilities and items had to be locked behind such a tedious grind wall. Why couldn’t they just be littered on the map, so exploration actually feels meaningful and significant? Why even put in such stringent item farming in a game with virtually no leveling or other RPG systems? I understand why something like Astlibra is a grind fest, here I’m genuinely confused.

I eventually unlocked a battle arena consisting of past boss battles that grants major character upgrades upon completion, but unlocking each boss encounter also requires grinding minibosses over and over for the necessary materials. So yes, we’re talking about a system in which you have to repeat old content to unlock the ability to repeat old content. I truly cannot fathom this as anything other than the game trying to be some bizarre parody of itself.

LOST IN THE MAZE

Tragically, these issues are exasperated by the implementation of Pac-Man game mechanics. The marketing for Shadow Labyrinth honed in hard on the “you must eat to survive” angle, to the point that the Secret Level episode of Pac-Man (which is canonically a prequel to Shadow Labyrinth) was almost entirely driven by this concept. In practice, what this means is that the Swordsman has to manually “eat” every enemy to both charge up the robot mode and to actually acquire those myriad of item drops mentioned above. 

Except this requires a huge chunk of that slowly recharging Stamina, and enemies will despawn if they’re not consumed fast enough. Once again, a fundamental system of the game seems to only exist to pad out the run time and to slow down the pace of exploration. I only saw one encounter in the entire game that actually used this mechanic in a way that was actually meaningful to the play experience.

I really wish I loved the other Pac-Man inspired elements in Shadow Labyrinth. Turning into Puck to traverse tight corridors and rails a la Metroid’s Samus with the Spider Ball upgrade plays so well with the game’s silly-yet-serious tone. The juxtaposition of rabid sci-fi monsters chasing down Puck gobbling up dots accompanied by all the classic arcade sound effects never got old. In practice, though, “jumping” when controlling Puck never clicked with me during hectic moments. Which is a problem, since the back half of the game likes to scatter enemies throughout the Puck sections in ways that didn’t feel especially intuitive to the insatiable circle’s movement capabilities.

Even the maze minigames, which makes boss fights out of mechanics seemingly inspired by Pac-Man Championship Edition, didn’t turn out nearly as fun as that concept sounds. I never felt fully in control of Puck, to the point that I often wasn’t sure what exactly the game wanted me to do during certain encounters. It’s a shame, as getting to these points made me smile so wide when I first started playing them. By the end of my playthrough, I started to feel like I was just getting through them to be done with them.

PAC IN THE PAST

Despite my complaints with the fundamental mechanics of Shadow Labyrinth, I generally enjoyed my ~25 hours with it. Sure, I basically avoided interacting with the entire “Perk” system since I didn’t want to go out of my way to farm, but otherwise nothing made me want to put the controller down. I had fun piecing together the lore and the story, and there are flashes of brilliance here when the enemy design compliment the Swordsman’s combat mechanics in ways that felt engaging and frantic to take down. Even during encounters that pushed my patience to the limits, I was still determined to see the game through to the end.

Yet at the same time, I had to ask myself: Were this not a Pac-Man game, would I have ever cared about it? Visually it’s fine, there’s some great music here when the background track isn’t just atmospheric sounds, and… yeah, I strain to think of much that makes Shadow Labyrinth really stand out beyond its premise. There are so many amazing Metroidvanias on the market that being just fine doesn’t quite cut it. And that’s without getting nitpicky about things like how the controls didn’t quite feel tight enough for the bouts of precision platforming the game expects the Swordsman to overcome.

Fittingly, if this actually was released 15 years ago, I could see it being a cult classic. But in 2025, where the presumptive target audience of a Pac-Man Metroidvania would be tired dads and retro enthusiasts playing video games to forget about their nonexistent plans for retirement, Shadow Labyrinth really needs to be more concise. Especially in a world where Blasphemous 2 came out two years ago at the same price point and is enormously more polished than this. 

If we judged games solely on their tone and premise, then Shadow Labyrinth would be one of my favorite games of 2025. Unfortunately, once you peel back the novelty of “dark and edgy Pac-Man,” all you’re left with is a sloppy-yet-servicable Metroidvania. It’s a concept I love enough that I hope Bandai Namco gives it another shot, but for now, this one’s for enthusiasts of the genre only.

5/10

NOTE: I’ve scored this based on Zoey’s metrics for Maximum Utmost. On most other sites, I would score this 1 or 1.5 points higher.

Disclosure: A retail code for this game was provided by the publisher.