Labyrinth Of The Demon King Review (Switch eShop)

Retro-inspired games have reigned supreme for some time now in the indie scene, but one niche that’s been getting increasingly more attention in recent years is modern projects that aim to replicate the primitive 3D games of the fifth console generation. There’s something distinctly appealing about the roughness of releases from that key transition point in the industry, and few games showcase that appeal better than New Zealand dev J. R. Hudepohl's Labyrinth Of The Demon King. A dim and disturbing dungeon crawler, this fresh release offers up a potent blend of difficulty, action, dread, and intrigue.

Labyrinth of the Demon King is set in “the Age of Dharma”, a Feudal Japan-inspired period in which war and famine have utterly ravaged the land and demons torture humanity. You play as a lowly ashigaru foot soldier who’s taken it upon himself to kill the titular ruler following a ruinous battle where the Demon King slaughtered your army and lord in an ambush, leaving you as the sole survivor. Beyond this basic premise, there really isn’t much more plot to speak of, but the labyrinth is full of creepy and dubious figures whose assistance you’ll need to move deeper.

Gameplay feels a bit like a slightly more modern take on FromSoft’s cult classic, King’s Field, and we do mean slightly—Labyrinth of the Demon King is the sort of game that just dumps you in and expects you to figure things out with minimal handholding once it’s taught you the basics.

The main gameplay loop centres on you simply crawling through a few different themed and interconnected dungeons, solving puzzles, bashing baddies, and discovering secrets along the way. It’s slow, brutal, and unforgiving, and if you happen to make a big enough mistake, you’ll be sent straight back to the last shrine you prayed at so you can do it all over again with the freshly (and randomly) respawned enemies.

When you stumble across a foe, combat plays out in a very measured and simple melee-focused system that stresses the importance of timing and stamina management. It’s not quite full-on ‘Soulslike’ combat, but it has a lot of that energy as you carefully determine from moment to moment whether to push your foe hard or play things safe and hang back. Most enemies can kill you in a matter of a few hits, so learning how to parry and stun to break guards is absolutely critical, and even then, you’re almost sure to accrue some damage even when you perform well in a battle.

Though we certainly appreciated the weightiness and difficulty of the combat, it does feel like the stamina bar limits combat a bit too much. You can permanently expand stamina via limited pickups found while exploring, but even a fight against one relatively low-level goon will leave your hero absolutely gassed as he leans against a nearby wall to catch his breath. If more than one enemy jumps you, running away and hoping you can kite just one of them is effectively your only viable option because the stamina bar just takes so long to refill.

Some may enjoy this commitment to uncompromising old-school design, but this is one element that we feel could’ve been a little more forgiving without really taking anything away from the tense nature of encounters.

Combat aside, this still isn’t an experience for the faint of heart, as a lot of your time will be spent cursing as you try yet another locked or jammed door, wondering how on earth that cryptic key item could possibly be part of progression, and trying not to get lost as you roam yet another floor that you haven’t found the map for yet. It's clearly designed to be disorienting, anxiety-inducing, and mysterious, and it does a masterful job of doing so in a way that feels fair.

When you finally stumble upon the solution to that puzzle that had you stumped, or find yourself stealing your way down a hidden hall that doesn’t show up on your map, there’s a thrilling rush of dopamine as you feel like you’re maybe just starting to get the hang of this. Then it throws you another curveball with a new enemy type or yet another twisted and unmapped floor that you swear doesn’t have you going in circles.

If you like to get lost in your games, then Labyrinth of the Demon King is certainly one for you—its simplistic appearance hides a magnificently complex maze that’ll take you a long time to solve if you try to do so without any help.

As for its visuals, Labyrinth of the Demon King leans hard into the lo-fi PSX aesthetic, which it executes masterfully. The gritty, gloomy design of the labyrinth lends a tremendously oppressive atmosphere, and this is perfectly accentuated by the intentional roughness.

Between the 4:3 aspect ratio, the simplistic UI, animated FMV door loading screens, and heavy dithering effects, there’s a palpable sense of unease that runs through this experience as you creep your way through the halls and question every movement at the edge of your vision.

Complementing this perfectly is the sound design, which keeps you on the edge of your seat with all its environmental and atmospheric effects. It’s never completely clear whether the footsteps you’re hearing belong to you or an unseen enemy just out of frame, and all sorts of unnatural noises occasionally pierce the silence to remind you that you’re not alone as you shuffle through another bloody corridor.

There’s admittedly not much of a soundtrack here aside from the assorted strings and bells woven in along with the sound effects, but this works to strengthen the experience by giving the labyrinth halls that extra bit of immersive realism.