When I first picked up Labyrinth of the Demon King, I immediately went into a pretty serious downward spiral of doubt and self-loathing. After all, I’ve been playing video games for over three decades, and the last couple of weeks are probably the least amount of time I’ve spent with my Switch since launch. This is because I’ve been mad at my Switch, reluctant and even angry at bringing it with me. After all, if I did, I would have two choices: play Labyrinth of the Demon King, or play something else. Playing Demon King would fill me with anger and stress, and playing something else would remind me that I didn’t have to play Demon King. But, thankfully, after talking to loved ones, I was reminded that I have the power to walk away, and to remember that this game is for some people. Those people just aren’t me.

Conceptually, it’s very cool: Labyrinth of the Demon King is the tale of a nameless soldier who watches as his Shogun master is massacred by a Demon King. Naturally, revenge is on the table, so he follows the trail of horror and foreboding to where the Devil must be hiding. The soldier quickly learns he has to get four MacGuffins in order to unlock where the King resides, and each key component is guarded by a demonic leader. It’s your standard quest for revenge that’s then locked behind a gamified approach of needing to solve some puzzles and not get killed by gruesome baddies on the way. Nothing wrong with it, and the backdrop is an interesting one, but it also doesn’t reinvent the wheel.

It’s apparent that our developer has a fondness for the ideas and aesthetics of old world Japan, and those are incorporated in with an interesting palette choice. Players coming into this first person dungeon exploration/Soulslike survival game will instantly feel either compelled or repulsed by the artistic direction. Everything is done, purposely, with an intense level of grain that lands the game with a mixture of pre-1960s celluloid film and early PlayStation 1 graphics. There’s a deliberate focus on making the game visually obscure in some instances, like poor lighting or angular, unclear entrances. Whether you’re above ground or below, within the castle’s rooms or in the caverns that honeycomb the landscape, you’re very aware of the oppressive nature of it all.

Yet, almost immediately, Labyrinth of the Demon King begins dragging the player down with its focus on atmosphere and ideology that, in turn, saps away gameplay. For example, entering into the first dungeon area requires a massive amount of traversal across a forest, into an underground cave that just GOES for a lengthy depth,and then up into a courtyard. This is followed by figuring out where the hell to find the single, semi-open doorway that leads to a long, outdoor corridor. For the duration of this time, you will fight almost nothing and feel like you’re doing something wrong because the game generates no stimulation. You will, thankfully, talk to someone in the courtyard who gives you a bit of direction, but even that is vague given how vast the landscape is. Oh, and I hope you figure out that you can save at the shrine near this NPC, because otherwise hell is coming in the worst way.

Once you get into the dungeons themselves, the atmospheric change is apparent, but now it swings in the opposite and equally polarizing direction. The walls are tight and narrow, but you still feel pretty directionless as to where to go or what to do. You might head upstairs or downstairs, on a quest to infiltrate further into the castle, and either is going to be fine. Either you go to the second floor where everything feels the same, or you delve into the creepy basement where everything feels the same. In all instances of this dungeon and further, you encounter the same problem time after time: meeting a monster and having about three seconds to figure out your attack pattern before you get murdered and need to respawn at your last save.

Labyrinth of the Demon King puts all the pressure in the world on you to maintain your health and stamina bars, and the pickups for replenishing either is pretty low. Stamina recovers gradually on its own and isn’t depleted by running, which is great since you’ll be doing that a lot. But blocking, parrying, kicking and swinging your weapon both suck up stamina, so you can’t just wildly attack and hope for the best. In theory, you encounter the monsters, learn from them by pain or by dumb luck, and then gradually build a catalog of attack procedures on how to survive and thrive. After all, people love Demon Souls or Elden Ring, so the thrill of gaining knowledge and kicking more ass should be just as rewarding in a different setting, right?

The problem lies in that every attack pattern of Labyrinth boils down to “kick, swing, kick, swing, kick, swing, die or run away.” For multiple, multiple interactions of faceless and creepy beasts, the song remains the same. Now, I should feel shame that I allowed myself to fall into a basic pattern of attacking in order to succeed, especially when the tutorial goes out of its way to make sure you can parry and block before setting you loose onto the world. But here’s the thing: there’s no good benefit from parrying or blocking, not enough to risk getting murdered in a locale far from the last save shrine. Sure, it can boost your stamina, but you can also run the hell away and recover. Plus, the tutorial also let us know that a heavy swing busts through defense, so why be clever when you can just be a brute?

Additionally, the combat of Labyrinth of the Demon King is hampered by its presentation and execution. The soundscape is important for hearing when some enemies approach you from behind, but the audio feels flawed and you can easily get disoriented. Plus the fact that the landscape itself suffers from familiarity blindness regardless of where you are makes charting your escape or rerouting difficult. Are you also pissed and done with the tiny lantern creatures with small hitboxes and serious shin stabbing abilities? Good luck trying to remember which way isn’t a dead end while you furiously pound sake to recover health. I ran in circles constantly because a.) the walls and corridors blend together, b.) the map is mostly static and just highlights where you generally are and not your exact location, and c.) the dev purposely made long hallways that lead nowhere just for fun.

Lastly, and this might be for the Switch version only, but there’s no way to adjust the game to my own liking. You can mess with the sound levels and remap the controls, which is excellent, but you can’t do a thing about the visuals. If you’re playing a game where levels of darkness and textures directly impact how well you can play or how much you enjoy your time, there needs to be some option for amping the brightness. The Switch Lite’s screen isn’t the best, but it’s a good contender under normal circumstances. I turned off the lights, drew the curtains and even threw a blanket over my head at one point, but I still just got lost in the constant grainy nature of walls, supports and tunnel markers that blended together. I’ve never put so much time into a game and felt like I accomplished so little.

It’s great for developers to try a new idea, and for a New Zealand dev to move to Japan, get inspired by the world and craft an original game in a unique setting is a feat, and kudos for that. Labyrinth of the Demon King is going to be fun for the right crowd who enjoy getting brutalized by things beyond their control and hoping for the best in what felt like an arbitrary generation of items and consumables. For me, though, this was a disappointing, frustrating and honestly exhausting waste of my time. Have fun storming the castle, I’m going back to bed.

Graphics: 6.0 The unique filter and purposefully archaic approach are interesting and have moments of real, artistic appreciation. More textures were needed to craft an environment that was too reptitious, and the horror of the beings wore off after a few encounters.	Gameplay: 3.0 Combat is slow and repetitive with little incentive to change your approach. Items felt too random in a game where you rely on consumables to live. Exploration was taxing and lead to a lot of missteps and retracing. It just never felt like it reached the level it needed to be.
Sound: 4.0 While the sound effects and creepy ambience were fine, the lack of audio direction when it came to dealing with enemies and beings unseen was very unfair and downgraded and already slipping experience.	Fun Factor: 1.0 I had such hopes for this game becuase it really did look interesting and compelling. This might be the title that convinces me to stop looking at trailers and, instead, just go into games totally blind so I don’t get disappointed.
Final Verdict: 3.0

Labyrinth of the Demon King is available now on Nintendo Switch, Steam, PlayStation 4/5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Labyrinth of the Demon King was provided by the publisher.