2025 marks Pac-Man’s 45th anniversary, and Bandai Namco is celebrating by taking its wildest swing on the franchise yet. At the risk of sounding cliche, Shadow Labyrinth isn’t your parents’ Pac-Man, regaining the yellow ghost-devouring circle as the robotic companion to a mysterious swordsman in a dark sci-fi action game. I played a few segments of the upcoming 2D Metroidvania, and while it didn’t give me a full blown case of Pac-Man fever, this wild reinvention has some promise.
To get a head start on grasping Shadow Labyrinth, you should first watch Amazon Prime’s video game anthology series Secret Level, specifically its sixth episode, PAC-MAN: Circle. The 11-minute episode serves as a prequel to the game, and tells the story of PUCK, a sentient yellow machine orb (i.e., a sci-fi reimagining of Pac-Man) originally dispatched by the United Galaxy Space Force (UGSF) to destroy a cosmos-dominating AI. However, PUCK’s mission fails, and they have been stranded on this world trying to complete the mission by enlisting the assistance of humanoid creatures called Swordsmen, found incubating in tanks. The events of PAC-MAN: Circle focus on PUCK’s journey with the 7th Swordsman it has awakened; without spoiling too much, it goes poorly. Shadow Labyrinth begins soon after, placing players behind the eyes of PUCK’s 8th Swordsman.
As the name Labyrinth implies, players explore a sprawling, maze-like map. True to its Metroid-inspired nature, players gain new abilities, such as a double jump, to reach inaccessible areas. The Swordsman and PUCK work as a duo, with the former cutting down foes using a hack-and-slash sword combo and parrying incoming attacks while the latter gobbles up the bits of currency they drop, called Ora. On that note, I appreciate the lighthearted use of the classic Pac-Man eating sound effect each time PUCK consumes this resource.
Shadow Labyrinth’s combat has a nice sense of maneuverability thanks to a dodge roll and mid-air dash. Performing these evasive actions consumes a meter called ESP. This functionally serves like a stamina meter, and depleting it results in an agonizing wait for it to replenish, leaving you incapable of evading until it does. Running out of stamina became a recurring issue during hectic battles in which I needed to dodge often, and managing this gets trickier thanks to a suite of special moves that also consume ESP to execute.
ESP abilities bolster the Swordman’s basic offense with more advanced abilities, such as a powerful sword slash capable of cutting through multiple targets. Eventually, you unlock other skills you can swap between on the fly via an ability wheel. One ESP ability lets you fire PUCK straight ahead like a bullet. Another lets PUCK orbit the Swordsman and electrify anything they touch. Yet another allows the Swordsman to lob exploding energy balls like grenades.
Additionally, equipping Perks adds passive upgrades to the Swordsman. One of my favorite Perks allows his mid-air dash to inflict damage, turning it into a Metroid-style screw attack-like maneuver. You can only equip a limited number of Perks at once, as each consumes a certain number of Notches (represented as Pac-Man icons). I begin the game with five Notches, meaning I could equip, say, three perks requiring one Notch and a fourth perk requiring two. Equipping Perks can only be done at save checkpoints, which is also where you can fast travel between other save points and spend Ora to upgrade certain basic stats, such as attack damage.
Combat is solid, though battles can become challenging wars of attrition; Shadow Labyrinth is a tough game. It requires careful management of your ESP and a limited number of healing items as you evade, parry, and retaliate to conquer tough one-on-one fights or enemy-filled rooms. When the going gets really tough, clicking the analog sticks after filling a meter transforms the protagonists into their GAIA form, a large mech suit capable of obliterating enemies in the blink of an eye.
Because of how dialed in you need to be while fighting, it’s easy to overlook that several adversaries and level elements are reimagined elements from old-school Namco franchises. From exploring a planet from the space shooter Bosconian to cutting down grotesque versions of enemies from Dig Dug, Shadow Labyrinth features a neat amalgamation of Namco’s history. The biggest reference I saw, quite literally, was during a nail-biting boss encounter with a grotesque behemoth wearing the Terror Mask from Splatterhouse.
This is my favorite section of my time with Shadow Labyrinth. The boss battle is a tough but entertaining test of my developing skills. My reward for conquering this is watching PUCK take over the Swordman’s body, transforming it into a giant gooey black version of itself that violently devours my fallen enemy. I never thought I’d see Pac-Man execute a Mortal Kombat Fatality, but here we are.
PUCK also takes center stage in special platforming segments inspired by Pac-Man. The floating sidekick can navigate tracks resembling the Pac-Man maze board to explore areas the Swordsman can’t. Like Pac-Man, PUCK moves on these tracks autonomously, with players steering their direction and jumping to reach new platforms. While I love the idea, I’m not wild about the execution.
Gauging the momentum for jumps is tricky when you’re constantly moving, and though you can kind of hold yourself in place by constantly flicking the analog stick in the opposite direction you’re heading, it’s easy to send yourself flying off course to your doom. This is especially true when crawling vertically, and while I tried to avoid jumping when going up or down, it often became necessary thanks to buzzsaws patrolling the same tracks. These can be avoided by hopping over them, but many sections of the map make this extremely difficult
More narrow spaces, or spots where jumping simply wasn’t ideal due to the physics (like vertical planes), meant colliding with buzzsaws was unavoidable. This meant losing health, and dying means redoing the entire section. This became especially maddening because this specific segment operated on a timer, tasking me to finish quickly to reach a door before it closed. This objective felt at odds with how the section required careful, deliberate platforming to avoid failure; I never finished it despite coming close on multiple occasions. I hope these design flaws are exclusive to this one segment, because it was the most frustrating section of my demo.
As a Metroidvania sicko, Shadow Labyrinth didn’t bowl me over. Most of its features are competently designed, but it didn’t make what I’d consider a strong impression. The 2000s Flash-esque art style doesn’t appeal to me either. What stands out most is the lore and premise; I’m intrigued to see how this adventure plays out as a fan of the Secret Level episode. A fascinating and, frankly, bizarre story and world can absolutely carry an otherwise decent action game, though I’m hoping the full adventure makes a stronger impression when Shadow Labyrinth arrives on July 17.