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Pac-Man’s Dark Metroidvania Adventure: Shadow Labyrinth Review

Posted by

July 17, 2025

On July 17, 2025

The 45th anniversary of Pac-Man brings fans a unique take on the iconic series of games. Shadow Labyrinth takes on a new role for the franchise, bringing you into a new piece of the Pac-Man universe with a darker tone and a new genre. Players must use their abilities to survive, consume enemies and level Swordsman No. 8 to their highest potential.

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An Unexpected, But Welcome, Metroidvania Game

Shadow Labyrinth is a Metroidvania game through and through. It has unique spins on the gameplay and separates itself from the competition well with a few new mechanics that you may not have seen elsewhere. The gameplay is a solid and timeless gameplay loop that any Metroidvania fan will enjoy. Exploring and remembering inaccessible areas is just as important as finding the next objective that you can access. Moving forward requires you to make use of the game mechanics you’ve been taught at the start, combining them with the knowledge you gain throughout the game. This combination ensures players are always able to use their provided abilities and is important in keeping the rest of the game fresh and entertaining.

It wouldn’t be a Pac-Man game if you weren’t eating your enemies to progress through the game, and that’s a prevalent part of this game as well. Consuming enemies you take down will let you get materials for better skills or passives that you can purchase. Weapon abilities can give a more powerful strike attack that can be added to the end of a combo chain, or as simple as giving PUCK the ability to gather currency dropped from your enemies for you.

These upgrades are a way to make the game more seamless and add to your pool of knowledge as you continue Swordsman No. 8’s journey with PUCK. Another piece of the game that mirrors Pac-Man are the rails that can be regularly used in levels, called D-Lines, which bring the Pac-Man personality into the game. When traversing on a rail, you’ll transform into a Mini-Puck and then travel the D-Line like you are in Pac-Man. This comes with new ways to travel through levels, attack, dodge when you’re Mini-Puck, and there are unique platforming sections that utilize these D-Lines and keep them fresh further into the adventure.

Moving forward requires you to make use of the game mechanics you’ve been taught at the start, combining them with the knowledge you gain throughout the game.

Consuming enemies’ dead bodies will allow extra rewards, and eating enemies as they fall in battle will allow a specific mechanic to be charged. This mechanic lets you transform into a GAIA, which is a massive mech that Swordsman No. 8 can use in battle. GAIA is powerful and allows you to avoid taking direct health damage, and this mech needs to charge up in a specific way. When your GAIA is on cooldown, you can’t use it for combat, and you’ll want to access it frequently. This means that you need to eat enemies often to charge the GAIA for use when you need it for combat and exploration.

Shadow Labyrinth is a Bizarre Metroidvania Spin on Pac-Man That Somehow Works

Shadow Labyrinth has grabbed our attention with its striking art style and 2D platforming.

The Mystery of PUCK and This New Planet

If you have seen the Secret Levelepisode titled Pac-Man: Circle, you may be interested in where this game stands in the timeline set up by the animated short. The episode acts as a prequel and introduction, showing you the state of Puck and the world they find themselves trapped on. From there, the story is also standard for a Metroidvania, with most things being shown to you while you’re exploring and told to you as sections are completed. Knowing that the episode is canon to the events of the game adds weight to the events once you know what has happened prior, and it’s awesome going into the game with that knowledge beforehand.

Shadow Labyrinth is also filled with references to past games connected to Bandai Namco’s United Galaxy Space Force timeline. Fans who have followed and know about the interconnected series of games will get to enjoy callbacks to prior games and see where the universe is at now. Some of these are just going to be nice little cameos, while others will be tied to the story. If you don’t know much about the lore that follows these games, you won’t miss out a ton, as the majority of these references are just there to provide extra flavor for folks who have followed these games.

You still get snippets of lore and buffs from objects you can find scattered throughout the stages. Objects you can find throughout your path in each area can increase your max HP, Sparking Stones to give to an NPC who is collecting them, where Soldier’s Logs and Thebe’s Memories provide lore for events that have transpired before Swordsman No. 8’s arrival. The memories of the events that cover Thebe’s story start jumbled and out of order. Thebe’s fragmented memories are as strange as the planet you find yourself on and aren’t as lighthearted as you might expect from a game contained in the Pac-Man timeline. They add a new layer of complexity to the game and its lore to provide players with a whole new experience in this universe.

The visuals stand out at times, and at others, they struggle to, but it still holds its own in being special. The moments when PUCK consumes an enemy and you gain a new ability are awesome. But this isn’t always the case with every boss, and at certain points, you might just get a rare material to gain new passives instead of anything outright new. Combat and enemy animations are simple, but don’t take away from the game, and they almost feel nostalgic about how the game looks and feels. You know when an enemy is going in for an attack, and everything is telegraphed accordingly for you to react and respond in the correct ways. The simple look the game has doesn’t impact how it plays and the artwork is well done. The areas you explore have well-made and thought-out backdrops to add to the experience of your exploration of an alien world that you’ve been trapped in.

Closing Comments:

Shadow Labyrinth is a simple and solid game that feels more like a thank you than anything else. Fans of the genre it now calls home, as well as fans of Pac-Man, get to enjoy a whole new take on the series and the world they belong to. The visuals add to the nostalgic feeling while still adding a new world and experience for players to fight their way through. There’s satisfying Metroidvania combat and exploration, a new story to experience and a ton of references to games that we all know and love within this universe.