During the Nintendo Direct March 2025 event, Bandai Namco unveiled a new trailer for Shadow Labyrinth, a game that takes the colorful and child-friendly Pac-Man franchise and turns it on its head to create a gritty, sci-fi, side-scrolling 'Metroidvania' action game.
This trailer shows off Shadow Labyrinth's gameplay, glances at its story and characters, and its release date, which is confirmed to be July 17, 2025 for home consoles and July 18, 2025 for PC.
In Shadow Labyrinth, you play as a mysterious warrior known as Swordsman No.8 who wakes up at a mysterious location littered with ancient relics and bloodthirsty monsters.
To escape this planet and find out how you got there to begin with, you must heed guidance from a mechanical, yellow orb named PUCK (this universe's version of Pac-Man).
With PUCK's help, you will learn how to traverse treacherous landscapes safely, discover secrets, and gain powers that will help you survive, such as the ability to consume enemies and transform into a giant mechanical monster.
I admit that when I first saw Shadow Labyrinth's reveal at the 2024 Game Awards, I was skeptical at first. When a company gives a well-known cartoony videogame franchise an overtly edgy and dark reboot, it usually isn't executed very well and barely resembles the original source material (the biggest example being Bomberman ZERO).
However, Shadow Labyrinth seems to be putting a lot of effort into its crazy reimagining without forgetting the iconography of the Pac-Man franchise.
You still transform into Pac-Man to eat power pellets at certain points in the game and the whole game takes place in a dark labyrinth that you need to escape from, much like in the original arcade game.
It also helps that the gameplay itself looks insanely fun to play as it features classic staples of the Metroidvania genre.
These include a massive world to explore and unpack its secrets, a gigantic arsenal of cool abilities to unlock and mess around with, and epic boss battles to conquer.
The ability to transform into a cybernetic monster fused with a Pac-Man chest that fires laser beams from its mouth has definitely earned my attention, at least.
With the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong looking uncertain due to delays, Shadow Labyrinth could be a good alternative to fill your Metroidvania cravings on Xbox and PC, as long as it manages to execute its gritty reboot of Pac-Man well.
Either way, we will have to wait until Summer to find out when this insane upcoming Xbox title/upcoming PC title launches on 17 July 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch and July 18, 2025 for PC via Steam.
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