Shadow Labyrinth might just pull off its oddball elevator pitch

Business Mayor

17-05-2025

45 years after the release of Pac-Man, Bandai Namco is finally answering the age-old question: 'How would it play as a 2D Metroidvania?' Surely you've all been wondering that, right? Well, ask no more because we'll soon have an answer to that head-scratching question with Shadow Labyrinth on July 18.
At PAX East 2025, Digital Trends went hands-on with the upcoming game and chatted with Seigo Aizawa, producer at Bandai Namco, about Pac-Man's new look. Aizawa showed us how the oddball game is more true to Pac-Man's core tenets than it looks at first glance. It may be a gritty Metroidvania with intense boss fights, but this is still the same maze-navigating eat-em-up you've been playing for decades, albeit in a very different light.
In Shadow Labyrinth , players wake up in a strange world where everything is trying to kill them. The only thing aiding their survival is a Pac-Man-like creature that gives them abilities and guides them through a savage planet. Amazon's Secret Level episode starring Pac-Man serves as a prequel to Shadow Labyrinth , and watching it will give players a better understanding of what to expect.
'To expand our audience, we wanted to make something new,' Aizawa tells Digital Trends. 'We wanted to get people who never played a Pac-Man game to play [ Shadow Labyrinth ]. When we thought about the concept of the game, 'Dark Pac-Man' came up. When you think about a dark atmosphere and a maze concept, [the] Metroidvania [genre] matches it perfectly.'
Shadow Labyrinth is especially fast-paced for the genre. Every attack must be executed with a plan in mind. But that's not to say Shadow Labyrinth isn't a Pac-Man game at its heart still. There's still a maze for players to run through, you just won't see it from a bird's eye view. Instead, players navigate 2D environments and you have to figure out where they're going as they explore.
Pac-Man's tendency to eat everything in sight plays a role here too, though in much more sinister fashion. After players are done chopping up your enemies, they can perform an action that essentially turns you into a Pac-Man Kiju that lets them eat their foes to gain abilities. Aizawa revealed that this was by design, as the game needed three key pillars for which Pac-Man is known for: eating, mazes, and power ups.
That's not the only thing my Pac-Man companion can do. As I was making my way through mazes, I was presented with paths that had rails on them. The only way to cross them was to turn into that iconic yellow sphere from the arcade classic. The catch was that the rails were packed with all sorts of traps that were trying to kill me. If I wanted to make it through alive, I needed to evade them.
While the Shadow Labyrinth itself is a new location, it still connects to a familiar universe. Bandai Namco decided to toy around with the UGSF (Universal Gaming Simulation Framework), a narrative device that the company uses to connect many of its games. A clear example of this appeared towards the end of my demo. After defeating the main boss, I uncovered a Dig-Dug easter egg that played a bit of the game's music. Bandai Namco
Aizawa says that this is just one example of how all of the games are connected thanks to the UGSF. Shadow Labyrinth takes place in a distant future, whereas Dig Dug took place 3,000 years before this game. As players progress through the story, they'll find remnants of other beloved Bandai Namco properties. Sometimes these will be simple winks and nods to other games, and other times they'll play a bigger role in the story.
The overall gameplay doesn't disappoint based on what I've played so far. There's a clear sense of Metroidvania progression that gives players plenty of new abilities to unlock, changing their tool set. The boss fights are engaging clashes against larger than life monsters and the platforming almost feels like a game of its own. Every aspect of it is working for me so far, which is a pleasant surprise considering how left-field the pitch is.
Shadow Labyrinth is dark, edgy, and grim, but still very much a Pac-Man game at its core. As different as it is from anything else in the series history, I'm still having fun exploring mazes and eating enemies at the end of the day. Shadow Labyrinth is taking a big swing and hopes to capture a new audience with its latest iteration of Pac-Man. From what I played, Bandai Namco may just pull that off with something entirely new.
Shadow Labyrinth launches on July 18 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.