Info about Shadow Labyrinth:

Official game description:
Deluxe Edition
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Deluxe Edition Includes:  
• Shadow Labyrinth  
• Digital Artbook & Soundtrack  
\*This product includes content that will also be sold separately. Please be careful not to make duplicate purchases.
About the Game
==============
Shadow Labyrinth is a 2D action platformer and a genre-twisting alternate take on the iconic PAC-MAN.  
As Swordsman No. 8, awoken by a floating yellow orb, PUCK, on a mysterious planet amidst relics of wars past, you are chosen to become the instrument of its will.  
To survive you will discover many secrets, consume your enemies, and grow from prey to the apex predator as you embrace your true purpose.  
Discover a World of Secrets  
Search the remnants of an age-old intergalactic conflict, started long before your arrival, and discover new powers and abilities. Use them to traverse an alien world as you battle dangerous creatures and evolved monstrosities.  
Become the Apex Predator  
Master the fluid combat and combine powerful skills to create a playstyle of your own. Use different abilities to turn the tables on your enemies as you consume them and grow from prey to apex predator.  
Embrace Your True Purpose  
Team up with PUCK, and dive deeper into the maze of a mysterious alien world. Find out the truth behind your presence here, what does PUCK want, and why it chose you.

Release date: Jul 17, 2025

Categories: Metroidvania, Platformer, Exploration, Character Progression, Resource Management, Single-player Story, Strategic Combat


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Engaging & Rewarding Gameplay (weight 0.53): Players found the core gameplay loop, including movement, combat, and platforming, to be highly enjoyable and well-executed, especially as more abilities are unlocked. The game offers a satisfying challenge and feels rewarding to master.
- Innovative Pac-Man Reimagining (weight 0.36): The game is praised for its bold and unique reinterpretation of the Pac-Man IP, blending classic elements with a new Metroidvania format and a darker tone. Players appreciate Bandai Namco's willingness to experiment and take risks with their established franchise.
- Excellent Soundtrack (weight 0.12): The game's soundtrack received significant praise, with many players highlighting its quality and how well it complements the game's atmosphere and overall experience.
- Appealing Art Style (weight 0.09): The art style and visual design of the game are widely appreciated. Players found the in-game art to be beautiful and inspired, contributing positively to the game's atmosphere.
- Solid Metroidvania Experience (weight 0.08): The game successfully delivers a solid Metroidvania experience, drawing positive comparisons to other well-regarded titles in the genre while still maintaining its own unique identity.
- Tight & Fluid Controls (weight 0.07): The character controls, especially for the swordsman, are described as tight, fluid, and reactive, providing a satisfying range of actions for combat and movement.
- Fun & Challenging Bosses (weight 0.06): Boss fights are highlighted as fun and challenging, offering a reasonable learning curve and good variety in their patterns, making them a rewarding part of the gameplay.
- Intricate Labyrinth Design (weight 0.06): The game's labyrinthine level design is noted for being challenging and expansive, featuring varied and somber landscapes that encourage exploration and overcoming obstacles.
- Unique & Mysterious Vibe (weight 0.06): Players found the game to have a unique and mysterious 'uncanny' vibe, appreciating the developers' choice to create something different rather than playing it safe.
- Enjoyable Lore (weight 0.04): The game's lore is found to be enjoyable and engaging, particularly for fans of other specific titles, indicating a well-developed background story that players connect with.
- Vast & Engaging World Map (weight 0.04): The game features a large world map that feels genuinely vast and well-designed, making exploration a worthwhile and interesting activity for players.
- Serviceable to Interesting Story (weight 0.04): The game's story is considered serviceable to very interesting, providing a compelling narrative backdrop for the gameplay experience.
- Varied Combat & Abilities (weight 0.04): The combination of combat and Pac-Man abilities is enjoyable, with a good variety of perks available to unlock special attacks, enhancing the gameplay experience.
- Enhanced Exploration with Skills (weight 0.04): Exploration and skill progression become significantly more comfortable and interesting after acquiring the two-stage jump ability, which opens up new possibilities.

Common complaints:
- Overall Unpolished and Bland (weight 0.99): Many players found the game to be generally unpolished, bland, and of low quality, especially considering it's a Bandai Namco title. This includes criticisms of its slow start, derivative mechanics, poor visuals, and overall uninspired design, leading to a disappointing experience.
- Clunky Controls and Movement (weight 0.9): A significant number of reviews highlight issues with the game's controls and movement, describing them as clunky, sluggish, unresponsive, and inaccurate. This extends to combat fluidity, hit feedback, and specific movement mechanics like D-Lines and Puck's rail movement.
- Frustrating Save and Healing (weight 0.71): The game's save and healing systems are a major point of frustration. Players reported too few save points, especially near boss battles, and a lack of healing flask refills at regular checkpoints, forcing inconvenient backtracking and limited recovery options.
- Poor Map and Level Design (weight 0.68): The map and level design received strong criticism for being bland, monotonous, and confusing. Players struggled with navigation, lack of clear objectives, and the absence of useful map features like marking or completion percentages, making exploration feel unrewarding.
- Boring Boss Battles (weight 0.62): Boss battles are frequently described as boring, repetitive, and artificially difficult due to high HP pools and simple, telegraphed attack patterns. The reliance on specific charms and slow stamina recovery further detracts from the experience.
- Repetitive Enemy Design (weight 0.61): Enemy design and combat encounters were criticized for a lack of variety in attack patterns and visual cues. Some enemies have hard-to-see attacks, while others are too predictable, leading to repetitive and unengaging combat.
- Frustrating Platforming Sections (weight 0.58): The game features numerous and often frustrating timed platforming sections. These segments are described as hellish, abstract, and visually monotonous, with lag sometimes exacerbating the difficulty.
- Slow Stamina Recovery (weight 0.57): Stamina recovery is noted as being incredibly slow, which significantly hinders continuous actions and can lead to stress during combat or exploration. This mechanic is often seen as an unnecessary addition.
- Disliked Pac-Man Sections (weight 0.18): The Pac-Man specific sections of the game were widely disliked. Players found the controls for Pac-Man clunky, the level design for these segments poor, and felt that these elements detracted from the overall experience and even tarnished the Pac-Man legacy.
- Lack of Secrets/Collectibles (weight 0.07): Players found a lack of meaningful secrets or collectibles, with existing ones being too easy to find. This contributes to a feeling of shallow exploration and a lack of incentive to thoroughly search the map.
- Limited Fast Travel (weight 0.05): The fast travel system is limited, only allowing travel between save points and requiring purchased items for mid-level fast travel. This, combined with a wide map and gradual HP decrease, makes exploration feel more stressful than enjoyable.

Gameplay feedback:
- Pac-Man elements are superficial (weight 0.21): The game integrates Pac-Man elements, including sections where the player becomes Pac-Man, but these are largely superficial. While the game features Pac-Man as a character and includes maze-like parts, it primarily functions as a Metroidvania with a Pac-Man theme rather than a core gameplay mechanic.
- Standard Metroidvania gameplay (weight 0.19): The game is a Metroidvania with classic genre elements like ability-based progression, hidden zones, and collectibles. While the core gameplay and controls are solid, some mechanics, like enemy movement, feel uninspired. The difficulty is generally easy, similar to Soulslike games.
- Simple but tactical combat (weight 0.16): Combat is relatively simple, often boiling down to a three-hit combo and a dodge roll, similar to Ender Lilies. While basic, it requires understanding enemy behavior and controls, with stiff combos designed to encourage dodging. The game also includes a mech form that feels less intuitive to control despite being marginally stronger, and various combat specialties like reflecting attacks and protective shields.
- Complex save and checkpoint system (weight 0.16): The game features a dual save system with 'checkpoints' and 'real save points.' While checkpoints are frequent, they do not restore HP recovery items upon respawn, which only happens at proper save points. Fast travel is limited to save points, and returning to recent checkpoints requires a consumable item.
- Diverse movement abilities (weight 0.13): The game offers a variety of movement abilities, including a two-stage jump, slide, air dash, and pogo jumping. Mobility improves significantly with later unlocks like the grapple and reach extension perk, and the down-dash allows for extended movement without stamina.
- Eating for crafting materials (weight 0.08): A core mechanic involves 'eating' enemies to gain crafting materials. This process requires energy, adding a resource management layer to material collection.
- Stamina-based movement (weight 0.07): The game incorporates a stamina bar that governs actions like rolling, which also has movement inertia. A charm is available to reduce stamina consumption for dodging.
- Vast map with good navigation (weight 0.06): The game features a vast map with surprisingly generous fast travel options. It also includes helpful map markers to indicate items that have been seen but are not yet obtainable.
- Puck movement is slow (weight 0.04): The 'Puck' element in the game involves slow movement, which is designed for collecting items and combat rather than speed.
- Health perk lost on death (weight 0.02): A specific perk that grants +2 health slots is lost upon player death, adding a penalty for dying.
- Abilities unlock to complicate gameplay (weight 0.02): Many abilities are locked at the start, suggesting that unlocking them will progressively add complexity to the gameplay experience.
- Distinct graphics (weight 0.02): The game features distinct graphics, contributing to its visual identity.
- Challenging enemy placement (weight 0.02): Enemy placement can be particularly challenging or 'rude,' indicating difficult or frustrating encounters.
- Spicy platforming challenges (weight 0.02): The game includes 'spicy' platforming challenges, suggesting difficult or intricate platforming sections.
- Bosses revive over time (weight 0.02): Bosses in the game revive after a certain period, requiring players to re-engage them.
- Hollow Knight-like perk system (weight 0.02): The perk system is similar to Hollow Knight's charm system, where perks require slots to be activated, influencing player builds.
- Market for upgrades (weight 0.02): Players can access a market in safe zones to spend collected coins on improvements like health, damage types, or other perks.

Performance notes:
- Game runs great (weight 0.03): Many players have noted that the game performs exceptionally well, indicating good optimization and stable performance across various systems. This positive feedback suggests a solid technical foundation for the game.
- Rumble not working on SW2 (weight 0.03): Players are reporting that the rumble feature is not functioning when playing the game on the SW2 device. This indicates a potential compatibility or driver issue that needs investigation.

Recommendations:
- Price point and value concerns (weight 0.45): Many players are hesitant to recommend the game at its current price, suggesting it's not worth the full cost. They advise waiting for a sale or avoiding the purchase altogether, indicating a perceived lack of value for money.
- Genre identity and comparisons (weight 0.42): The game's genre identity is a point of contention. While marketed as a Metroidvania, some players feel it deviates significantly, leaning more towards linear Pac-Man elements or failing to meet Metroidvania expectations. Comparisons to other titles highlight this discrepancy.
- Core gameplay and technical issues (weight 0.28): Some players express frustration with the game's current state, citing issues like timed platforming, combat gauntlets, and a problematic save system. There's skepticism about whether future patches will adequately address these core gameplay flaws.
- Support for IP and developers (weight 0.03): A few players express a desire to support the game, either out of loyalty to the Pac-Man IP or to encourage the use of older intellectual properties. This indicates a positive sentiment driven by factors beyond the game's immediate quality.

Other player notes:
- High difficulty, long completion time (weight 0.05): Players find the game to be quite challenging, which also contributes to the perception that it takes a significant amount of time to fully complete the game's content.
- Feels like an indie game (weight 0.04): There's a sentiment among players that despite potentially being from a larger company (indicated by a long credits list), the game feels like an indie title. This perception might lead to certain expectations not being met.
- Mysterious protagonist concept (weight 0.04): The game features a unique and mysterious protagonist, often described as a 'swordsman' or 'warrior' with amnesia, awakened by an unusual entity like a 'dark Pac-Man'. This character design seems to be a notable element.
- Slow-burn Metroidvania experience (weight 0.03): The game is characterized as a 'slow-burn Metroidvania', implying that its progression and reveals unfold gradually. This might appeal to players who enjoy a more deliberate pace in this genre.
- Expands Pac-Man universe (weight 0.03): The game expands the classic Pac-Man universe beyond its traditional boundaries. This suggests an innovative approach to integrating the iconic character into a broader narrative or world.
- Request for Pac-Man maze mode (weight 0.02): A specific request from players is for a dedicated game mode that allows them to play only the new Pac-Man mazes introduced in the game. This suggests these mazes are a highlight for some.

Emotions:
- Disappointment (weight 0.28): Players expressed disappointment due to the game's overall poor quality, including clunky mechanics, bland combat, and uninspired level design. Many felt the game failed to live up to its potential or their expectations, especially concerning its integration of Pac-Man elements and its deviation from traditional genre norms. The high price point relative to the perceived low quality also contributed to this sentiment.
- Frustration (weight 0.18): Frustration stemmed from various gameplay issues such as bad controls, difficult platforming, and a punishing checkpoint system that led to tedious backtracking. Players also reported issues with enemy visibility, lack of healing items, and technical problems like lag, which collectively hindered their ability to progress and enjoy the game.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.17): Satisfaction was reported by players who enjoyed the game's slick movement, solid combat, and rewarding boss fights, especially after getting accustomed to the controls. The appealing art style, magnificent soundtrack, and the game's unique Metroidvania format were also significant contributors to positive experiences, particularly for fans of the IP.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.09): Players found enjoyment in the game's fun boss fights, impressive visuals, and captivating exploration. The unique vibe, snappy travel, and engaging soundtrack, combined with satisfying combat and interesting powers, contributed to an overall positive and entertaining gameplay experience.
- Boredom (weight 0.05): Boredom arose from repetitive level design, large empty areas, and a slow game tempo caused by trap movement, tough enemies, and slow action recovery. These factors led to a lack of engagement and made the game feel uninteresting to play for some.
- Excitement (weight 0.03): Excitement was generated by the release of a new Pac-Man game, especially one taking a bold new direction within the Metroidvania format. Players also expressed excitement for the game's difficulty and challenges, and hope for future titles in the UGSF series.
- Regret (weight 0.03): Regret was primarily associated with the decision to purchase the game, often due to feeling misled by previews or finding the game's quality did not justify its price. The overall poor quality of the game contributed to this sentiment.
- Nostalgia (weight 0.02): Nostalgia was evoked by the game's strong 'Namco spirit' and the inclusion of Pac-Man elements. Players with a personal connection to the Pac-Man IP felt a sense of nostalgia while playing.
- Hope (weight 0.02): Hope was expressed for future updates and patches, indicating a desire for developers to improve the game. There was also hope associated with developers dusting off old intellectual properties.
- Appreciation (weight 0.02): Players showed appreciation for the developers' willingness to try new things and take risks with the IP, particularly regarding the game's new direction and solid execution. The game's actual tone and Bandai Namco's publishing approach were also appreciated.
- Anticipation (weight 0.01): Anticipation was felt due to the presence of many collection elements and the expectation of a long clear time. Players also anticipated the game improving after a slow initial start.
- Anger (weight 0.01): Anger stemmed from the perception that the game was an 'insult' to the Metroidvania genre, coupled with its perceived poor design and high difficulty. This indicates a strong negative reaction to the game's execution.
- Curiosity (weight 0.01): Curiosity was piqued by the game's interesting story, narrative, and world, suggesting that some players were drawn in by the lore and plot elements.
- Informative (weight 0.01): This emotion arose from the game clarifying its genre and target audience, providing useful context for potential players.
- Realism (weight 0.01): Realism was a factor in managing expectations about the game's quality, suggesting some players approached the game with a pragmatic view of its potential shortcomings.
- Desire (weight 0.01): Players expressed a desire for a 'Pac-Man only' mode, indicating a specific preference for how the game's core elements could be experienced.
- Adaptation (weight 0.01): This emotion describes the process of players getting used to the game's initially perceived weird controls and movement, indicating a learning curve.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion arose from conflicting opinions in other reviews regarding the soundtrack and controls, highlighting a disparity in player experiences.
- Dislike (weight 0.01): Players specifically disliked the map system, indicating a significant usability issue within the game's interface.
- Neutrality (weight 0.01): Neutrality was observed in relation to minor game design flaws, suggesting these issues were not significant enough to provoke strong positive or negative emotions.}