Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Game
Game2025
Shadow Labyrinth
Developer Bandai Namco Studios Inc.
Shadow Labyrinth is a 2025 action-adventure game developed by Bandai Namco Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It is part of the Pac-Man series, reimagining the franchise’s maze-based mechanics within a darker science-fiction setting connected to Bandai Namco’s UGSF fictional timeline, incorporating elements from the Xevious franchise. The player controls "Swordsman No. 8", who explores… From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
316 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon) · newest Oct 2, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
60
Fresh
112 positive · 76 negative
95% range 52–66%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 112 | 76 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
128 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Mixed
195 of 346 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 316 · most liked firstFirst trailer for the new #PacMan game ‘Shadow Labyrinth’ 🕹️
unlabelledView post →Bandai Namco Summer Showcase set for July 2, 12 PM PT -new My Hero Academia game -Code Vein II -The Blood of Dawnwalker -Death Note Killer Within -Everybody's Golf Hot Shots -Little Nightmares III -Patapon 1+2 Replay -Shadow Labyrinth -Super Robot Wars Y -Tekken 8 www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNFu...
unlabelledView post →The next game that I'll be playing is Shadow Labyrinth! ngl I haven't seen anything in terms of screenshots or gameplay, but I've heard from word of mouth that it's a Metroidvania featuring Pac-Man! Beyond that, I don't know anything else, but the concept sounds cool, so I'm excited to play it!
unlabelledView post →Shadow Labyrinth is a wrap! Took around 27 hours to beat. That was a cool game! It was interesting to see a new take on Pac-Man, and the gameplay was fun and satisfying! I loved the OST as well, it was full of bangers! That being said, the game did have flaws, but I enjoyed the experience overall!
unlabelledView post →My first impressions of Shadow Labyrinth are: it's pretty fun! The game is a Metroidvania featuring a Pac-Man like character, primarily focusing on combat and platforming! I'm really enjoying the combat, it's flashy and has punchy sound effects, it's super satisfying! It's a cool experience so far!
unlabelledView post →Shadow Labyrinth has classic Pac-Man maze levels in it, and they're fun! These segments play pretty close to the original Pac-Man, but often introduce mechanics that keep the gameplay interesting, like boost pads! The OST during these segments is bumping as well, I enjoy these levels in the game!
unlabelledView post →If you read this review, I might be able to save your soul. If you're like me, you will have to beat this game if you buy it, and that will not be fun for you. Unfortunately, it is extremely hard, but not in a good way. Its hard like the Lion King, not Sekiro. Having beat the game, the more I played it the more I began to despise it. I found myself saying almost every new level and boss "Why does everything in this game have to either suck or be terrible?" A great deal of work went into…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This track is called "Scar"! Shadow Labyrinth was an awesome game! The game was a fresh take on the Pac-Man series, it was a Metroidvania that had a darker tone to it! The gameplay was a ton of fun, and the combat was super satisfying! The OST was incredible as well, it was a fantastic experience!
unlabelledView post →This track is called "Mase Song13"! Shadow Labyrinth was a cool game! The darker take on the Pac-Man series was unique and interesting to see, and the gameplay was fast-paced with some really satisfying sound effects and visuals! The OST was bumping as well, it was a fun and challenging experience!
unlabelledView post →This track is called "Mase Song21"! Shadow Labyrinth was a cool game! The game took a new spin on Pac-Man by turning it into a 2D Metroidvania and giving it a darker tone, it was an interesting take on the series! It was a challenging game as well, and the combat felt great, it was a fun time!
unlabelledView post →I will open with Shadow Labyrinth! Yes, the edgy Pacman metroidvania. The one that had the Secret Level episode that confused everyone. And it was on a surprising number of Game of The Year lists despite being absolutely skewered by critics. It is huge, tough and has a surprising amount of heart.
unlabelledView post →JUST PUT A CHECKPOINT BEFORE THE DAMN BOSS ARENA!!!!!!!!! Such a frustrating experience for no good reason. My biggest issue with this game as someone who isn't good, is it's incredibly frustrating to git gud. Dieing to a boss fight a few times is expected but why the hell are there no checkpoints within a 2 minute run? Every boss feels like a gauntlet, which would be fine if every death wasn't a slog past 5 long ass empty hallways and 3 lifts that transition screens. This game would be so much…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Honestly one of the most deeply frustrating experiences I've had in recent memory. Up until around the last 5 hours of the game I would've considered this a high B-to-low-A-tier MV, but the last sections are so seriously unfun that it highlights all of the parts that were janky but tolerable in the game. I've spent 35 hours on the game and I just won't beat the final boss with the state that it's in. The game takes a major difficulty spike with its final boss rush, taking bosses and enemies…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Shadow Labyrinth is one of the better metroidvanias I've played in recent memory. Honestly, I felt the need to write this review simply because looking at these reviews kinda baffles me. This game deserves a lot more love than it's currently getting. Now I'm not going to act like it's a masterpiece. The menu is a bit sluggish to navigate, some cutscenes are unskippable, collecting materials is tied to your stamina for some reason, and the artstyle can look a little cheap at times. But I think…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Namco Bandai announced Shadow Labyrinth. A new action game that crosses over with Pac-Man. Coming in 2025 to all platforms.
unlabelledView post →…irrelevance (and a failure of mainstream games crit writ large, perhaps) but it doesn’t shake my conviction that the game is a masterpiece. Last year’s best game in my opinion was Shadow Labyrinth. The fact that I’m basically alone in feeling that way doesn’t make me believe it any less.
unlabelledView post →It's pretty poor. It's obviously a low budget game, the basic mechanics are not very tight but are serviceable enough, the main bosses are about on par with what you'd expect in your average metroidvania, not good but not bad. The main issue is the level design is atrocious. It's never ending abstract platforms in never ending identical looking caves with the same enemies you've been fighting the whole game but reskinned occasionally. This game is a epitome of quantity over quality. I got 8…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Seeing so many comments say the art stye in Shadow Labyrinth is ugly and all I can think is, am I crazy? I think the game looks good, distinct. It goes for a certain style and pulls it off.
unlabelledView post →Like many comments before I want to like this game so badly for its good character, monster and environment designs. as well as its mystery and surprisingly deep lore but; this games tries so hard just to make you hate it with its terrible delayed controls in combat, bad movement in its unique gimmick of pac-man mazes, that makes you groan more than be excited to actually wanna do them. but if you must buy this game because you're either A. A massive pac-man fan who must own everything pac-man…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Now that I've beaten the game I understand why it has mixed reviews but I think the game deserves a recommendation honestly. I haven't watched the Secret Level Pac-Man episode so I haven't gone into this game with any expectations based on that either. For starters, I'll go over the things I think the game does right. I feel like the swordsman controls well on foot and overall combat even if a bit simplistic feels good for the most part. It can be a bit finicky to try to parry or dodge right…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Shadow Labyrinth was clearly released in the wrong era. A lot of these so-called Metroidvania fans read more like tourists than veterans, because their complaints about movement and checkpoints? The math ain’t mathing. I've been mastering Metroidvanias since before the term even existed, and Shadow Labyrinth delivers where it counts- Challenge and mechanical depth. The movement system shines. Slide combos into jumps open up slick movement options that stiff handed players clearly aren’t…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →NEWS: Shadow Labyrinth has been unveiled via The Game Awards. This is a 2D Metroidvania-style action game based on the Pac-Man episode of Secret Level. Coming in 2025 for Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series, Playstation 5, and PC.
unlabelledView post →Happy July! Should be another banger month for gaming. 4 games I'm looking forward to the most, Shadow Labyrinth, Tales of the Shire, Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, and an easy GOTY contender in Donkey Kong Bananza. I think DK is going to be a very special game. Can't wait.
unlabelledView post →Welp, I'm a bit conflicted on a lot of parts, but overall I think is pretty good. The combat is cool, not much on feeling powerful but rather the focus is more on persistence and patience for each fight, you can't do much damage by each hit but you can maintain it while dodging, so it's important to keep that in mind because bosses can take quite a while to beat. The rest of the aspects are nice, characters and enemies designs are really good, in some cases you can even get what they are based…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →NEWS: Shadow Labyrinth is available now on PC via Steam. The game may have also seen its console release in certain regions, including Japan. International players will be able to get their hands on this dark Metroidvania-esque take on Pac-Man tomorrow.
unlabelledView post →Shadow Labyrinth is the first-ever Pac-Man game to be officially part of the UGSF (United Galaxy Space Force) canon First envisioned during the development of Galaxian 3, this timeline connects various Namco games over the decades to each other as one overarching sci-fi universe.
unlabelledView post →Kirby is putting a lot of recently percolating thoughts into perspective. The main thing I want from a game is that I start in one place and after X hrs am thinking in an entirely different language or ruleset. That the depth of a game enables a multiplicity of approaches. Shadow Labyrinth did this
unlabelledView post →There are some massive flaws in this game. The kind that you would commonly see in an Alpha Build, but never, ever, in a competent, or even mediocre, retail release. Sometimes contact with an enemy or boss damages you, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes contact with a projectile or attack from an enemy or boss damages you, sometimes it doesn't. When you actually take damage from a boss attack or contact, sometimes it does one damage, sometimes it does 3 damage. Then if you get hit the same way…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →These reviews are just weird. Boss runbacks? Backtracking? What genre did you all think this was? This is a blue-blooded metroidvania through and through, warts of the genre and all. Don't blame the game just because you don't like the genre. The game is good. There has been ONE boss that I thought was a little over-statted and on the silly side while the rest have been a fantastic challenge typically ending with no heals, minimal HP, and my transformation gauge empty. Maneuverability is…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Shadow Labyrinth aka a Pac Man Game Announced.
unlabelledView post →bro please, i'm a fan of the checkpoints existing in the new patch but breaking all disjointed attacks and projectiles from doing ANY damage to you regardless of difficulty is waaaaaaay too much, please, please god, someone notice this and fix this i will fix my review if they actually fix this i swear i genuinely want to play and enjoy the edgy pac man game edit: so I found out about the workaround involving turning off vsync and changing your fps to something that's not 60 and it worked FOR…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →After around ten hours with Shadow Labyrinth I expected to write a negative review. The world that Bandai Namco constructed was interesting, but the gameplay ranged from servicable to frustrating. This is a Metroidvania, yes, but the combat mechanics were too simple, the movement abilities too limited and the Souls-inspired checkpoint system maddening. I knew there had to be more, but this far into the game I thought I might have seen everything Shadow Labyrinth had to show me. I was,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I forced myself through this one, and if you don't mind a Metroidvania being back-loaded (It takes quite a while to even get a double-jump), you could get some fun out of it. But the main issue I have is that it doesn't really do anything that other Metroidvanias don't already do, and most do it better. I'd prefer to have this as a "Mixed" review, but since Steam doesn't have that option, I'm going to have to consider its price as well. And at the current (at time of writing: £24.99 or…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Games like this, and like Dark Souls, and—yes—like Shadow Labyrinth are not necessarily “hard”—they’re demanding. They demand focus, patience, and curiosity. These used to be the baseline for investment in the medium. www.endlessmode.com/article/shad...
unlabelledView post →Welcome Tour, Wild Hearts S, Hitman, Shadow Labyrinth, and No Sleep for Kaname Date. This is not a great practice, as users can’t configure these settings on a per game basis, and the inconsistency in game behaviour is bad for platform usability. Devs, please reconsider!
unlabelledView post →More and more people are saying "Shadow Labyrinth [...] is [...] the [...] best video [...] game [...] of the [...] year"
unlabelledView post →Update: The recent V1.1 patch has fixed many of the negatives I pointed out earlier and so I have edited the review to remove that stuff. While this is far from being one of the top ten metroidvanias, it is nonetheless the most underrated metroidvania on steam. Games with a similar level of quality have a score in the high 70s, this should be among them, the ~50% score currently on steam is utterly ridiculous and not representative of what you can expect from this game. Let's go over the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →look, my name in the credits for Shadow Labyrinth (gritty Pacman game)! give it a look if you're interested!
unlabelledView post →Reviewed after beating the game and doing most side content. This game is way better than it's being given credit. It really does take a while to get rolling, but it's enormous and way longer than it first appears. And you won't realize it until much later in the game, but this game is hard as nails and I suspect will get various nerfs in the first patches.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Yo, I have some demo(!) codes for you for the upcoming 'Shadow Labyrinth' Pac-Man game. The Demo runs until June 23rd. CRI6C-RFMWY-MFVWC X2GTY-YNXCR-6NIQD 'Shadow Labyrinth' launches July 18th on Xbox Series, PS5, Switch 1/2 and PC.
unlabelledView post →Games haven't come a long way from Pac-Man--in Shadow Labyrinth, at least. Bandai Namco's brooding search-action game mines the dark crevices of gaming’s past to posit suggestions about its future, @mads.haus writes. www.endlessmode.com/article/shad...
unlabelledView post →I'm still thinking about Shadow Labyrinth and namco space game lore in general. The amount of lore Xevious has that has apparently been public knowledge for decades is staggering
unlabelledView post →this game both looks like and feels like a game made by one guy in 2013 rather than a game made by a major triple A studio with a secret level episode to announce it, the concept was so interesting and had so much potential, but the game doesn't feel good to play or to look at, which is especially disappointing given its secret level episode
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →'Shadow Labyrinth' (The Pac Man Search Action game) - Maze Reveal Trailer youtu.be/YY843ObxW8o?...
unlabelledView post →I really don't understand the current 52% positive Steam rating. I'm a Metroidvania fanatic, and this is a great game. I've heard it gets better later on, but even just 4 hours in I'm having a blast. I really like the story, which I wouldn't expect to say in a PAC-MAN game. There are lots of nice touches, like Xevious music when you pick up an item. Lots of cool nods to other games as well. The combat is nice and fluid, same as the traversal. My favorite thing so far is probably the difficulty.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →NEWS: Shadow Labyrinth has received a patch update, putting it to version 1.0.4. The patch sees various fixes and adjustments made to the game, which you can read about here:
unlabelledView post →I think Shadow Labyrinth is fun enough so far, even if the highlight of the game is definitely just all the ‘I clapped when I saw it’ moments when something from an old Namco game is mentioned
unlabelledView post →the game play is fine, nothing that hasnt been done before. if your hoping to get more of the story that secret lvl did, its not that story.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Shadow Labyrinth is a solid metroidvania, but it requires some patience to complete. However, it is near flawless on the #SteamDeck. A copy was provided by Bandai Namco for review. steamdeckhq.com/game-reviews...
unlabelledView post →Last year—as my first map for Shackmaps—created Shadow Labyrinth map. We split them into different sections, since game has 18 maps in total—tough, but excellently crafted. If you need to find any PERKs, Sparkling Stones, Memories, Area Bosses, MAZE rewards, and more—please, be sure to use my map.
unlabelledView post →I have talked myself into Shadow Labyrinth as goty but it must be said that I think Kirby Air Riders is the best video game Nintendo has published in a decade and that is not particularly faint praise. I just think Shadow Labyrinth is too interesting to not champion
unlabelledView post →Really not what the episode from secret level went for. Feels like it was made by only one person or it was made very fast after the secret level episode got dropped. Its a basic metroidvania game, could have gone on some crazy paths with this pac man evil twist but they chose to made a basic flat plane boring slow game. So far my biggest disappointment of the year
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Oh, and to round this thread off to an even 10 games, I still reckon Shadow Labyrinth (especially after patches - it got a massive update just the other day) has a lot going for it. It looks and feels like a semi-obscure Xbox Live Arcade game, but it's an official, *HUGE* grimdark Pac-Man adventure
unlabelledView post →#Latex #Rubber #Vtuber #Twitch early VRChat stream! gonna chill and chatting a little, maybe gonna game some wow farm and playing Shadow Labyrinth Shadow Labyrinth later on! Link here www.twitch.tv/rinakovt
unlabelledView post →Shadow Labyrinth is easily the most interesting video game I have played/will play this year
unlabelledView post →They could have done far better with Bandai Namco money I really wanted to like this game. I think it was a super neat idea to take an established IP and throw it in the metroidvania blender with a fresh aesthetic, but I'd give Shadow Labyrinth a 6/10 on a good day. The narrative is serviceable, the music has some standout gems, and the sound design is excellent, but the mountain of gameplay pitfalls really drags the game down. It feels like the developers just didn't quite understand the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So, there's a lot of mixed opinions on this game, and a lot of them are understandable. However, being about 4 hours in, I dig it. There are a ton of weird choices. sluggish controls while climbing, and weird momentum while jumping from climbing, stiff combos, and Puck's movement on walls is strange. However, once you get the hang of these things, some of them make more sense the more you use it. Puck's movement is slow, yes, however its not meant for speed, its meant for collecting and…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I played Shadow Labyrinth — the game that turns Pac-Man’s adorable hunger into an insatiable thirst for flesh. There’s some frustratingly dated design in some parts and pretty great metroidvania bits elsewhere. Full impressions @rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com/culture/rs-g...
unlabelledView post →So apparently Shadow Labyrinth was being worked on before Secret Level's Pac-Man episode was even considered. I figured they both had to be worked on simultaneously, but previous interviews strongly suggested the liberties taken by Secret Level weren't influenced by Bamco much, if at all.
unlabelledView post →I need to see how this game's title is written in katakana if this game is related to Shadow Labyrinth I am going to throw up
unlabelledView post →
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