Shadow Labyrinth is an enigma.

It should be simple enough to describe: It’s a “2D action exploration & combat platformer,” or “2DAECP”–which is Bandai’s Namco official description and its way of saying “metroidvania” without mentioning a word made by combining two rival games’ names–in which a mysterious amnesiac follows a small yellow robot through a labyrinth of tough battles and tight platforming. Like other games in the genre, the path here is well-trodden; there’s side-scrolling exploration across a big map that opens as you unlock new abilities, and lots of enemies to fight along the way.

What you won’t expect, however, is the story Bandai Namco is telling around the Metroi–sorry, 2DAECP–it has devised. It’s known that this game directly ties into the Pac-Man-themed episode of Amazon Prime’s animated Secret Level series, but it’s the rest of the lore that turned my head during a recent virtual preview session. The 2DAECP space is crowded right now, but Bandai Namco may have found a way to rise above the rest with Shadow Labyrinth; you’ll just have to brush up on your gaming history.

Before that, though, let’s dig into the meat of what you’re going to be doing in the game. My preview gave me access to a portion of combat and platforming challenges, with two boss fights waiting for me at the end. I began, naturally, with the exploration section, which dropped me into an area known as the Land of the Fugitives.

The core gameplay on offer here in Shadow Labyrinth is standard 2DAECP fare; I had multiple paths to explore, each with their own trials and tribulations, until I found what I was looking for and headed back to where I began. The demo gave me three different branches, each holding the piece to a key I needed to advance, but each also centered on one of three unique challenges: combat, platforming, and puzzle-solving.

The combat trial was a gauntlet of weird large-headed enemies wielding knives and swords. Shadow Labyrinth’s combat is easy to pick up–one button delivers quick sword strikes, the other a more powerful move that briefly depletes a stamina bar–but far from simple to master. These enemies are devious, with some trapping me in a corner and whipping me to death, while others would aim to shoot not where I was standing, but where they predicted I would be; they were about 50/50 in that regard. I found the trial challenging without being frustrating, and it felt great to get through the final wave and get the key piece.

The environmental puzzle, while fine, didn’t leave as much of an impression on me, but the platforming was the most challenging and rewarding part of the whole demo. It feels like the developers put a ton of thought into trying to predict how players would approach each level, and then they designed their obstacles around that, rather than just placing enemies and traps on each stage. This meant I had to strategize, think before moving, and approach each dangerous obstacle with care; the game actively punishes mindless traversal, and that’s how a game like this should be.

I also enjoyed the “D-Line” parts of the stage–or when my traversal turned into a small game of Pac-Man, and I had to travel on lines of light in order to proceed. These provided a welcome shot of variety during exploration, with a chaser of nostalgia for classic Pac-Man gameplay to boot.

Nostalgia is at the heart of Shadow Labyrinth, and it’s here that I’ll now address the absolutely bonkers story framing all of the exploration and fighting. As the Amazon Prime show established, the small yellow robot named Puck is trying to escape the world it’s trapped in, and he must recruit warriors to do so. I play as Swordsman No. 8, the eighth attempt at escape and victory, and together we explored and fought our way through.

That’s only scratching the surface, though, as there are layers to this tale that I never expected. For example, were you aware, dear reader, that every classic sci-fi game Bandai Namco ever made was part of a single canonical timeline? Before this preview event, I knew nothing of it, but Bandai Namco claims it has always operated on this timeline in secret–the veracity of this claim is up for debate, but damn if it isn’t interesting either way.

As Shadow Labyrinth sits toward the end of this potentially-decades-old story, it is filled with references and allusions to games that came before it. A few examples:

• The tribe of friendly human characters I encountered are called the Bosconians.
• The queen refers to my character, whose identity is still a mystery at this point, as a Galaxian.
• She also references a potential foe named Emperor Galaga.
• The Pac-Man robot’s name, Puck, is a reference to Puck-Man, which was Pac-Man’s original name.
• Enemies encountered during the demo included Pookas and Fygars from Dig Dug.

These are the less overt examples that some may not pick up on, while other references are much more obvious. I fought two different bosses during this demo, one at the end of the exploration part and the second from the specific save file provided by Bandai Namco. Both of them directly referenced a previous Bandai Namco project; first up was G-HOST, a small pink ghost-looking creature stuck to a machine controlling massive hooks that crashed on top of me. Pac-Man is pretty important to the lore, of course, so it’s not surprising to see one of his ghostly enemies appear here.

The other boss, meanwhile, blew the “self-referential” concept wide open. This was a hulking beast of a humanoid monster wearing a distinct Jason Voorhess-esque white mask and named Jen. If your horror bells are ringing, that’s because Jen was the damsel-in-distress of the Splatterhouse franchise, and her hero, Rick Taylor, wore a distinct Jason Voorhees-esque white mask as he tore demons and humanoid monsters in twain. Splatterhouse doesn’t appear on the timeline I shared earlier, so how deep into the Bandai Namco vault is Shadow Labyrinth planning to go?

There is no shortage of metroidvania games out there at the moment–and there are more coming with both Hollow Knight: Silksong and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond set to launch new entries this year. How, then, can a game enter this crowded space and stand out? Bandai Namco may have cracked the code with Shadow Labyrinth: Make the story so incredibly wild that it can’t be missed. It helps that the 2DAECP surrounding this bonkers tale is fun and challenging, so you’ll be encouraged to keep traveling deeper down this Pac-rabbit hole.

I didn’t know what to expect when dropping into Shadow Labyrinth for this preview event. After my time playing, I still don’t know what’s coming, and the game is all the more appealing for it.

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