The Labyrinth of the Demon King

The PlayStation One era was quite magical for a lot of reasons. The major graphical leap from primarily 16 and 32-bit, to 64-bit and full-on 3d polygons brought new depths and perspectives to gaming. And horror in the mid to late 90s boomed with Resident Evil and Silent Hill, to name a couple. I love the aesthetics, that low polygon, low fidelity feel with all the grimy vibes that give you so much but leave as much to the imagination. You know another great horror game? 2005’s Condemned. I could discuss this game in an article, it’s great, and again elevates horror for the former Next Gen back in 2005.  

Imagine if Condemned meets PS1 horror vibes … and it’s set in Japan.

Here’s The Labyrinth of the Demon King.


Welcome to 1996

The Labyrinth of the Demon King is a primarily solo dev project that combines Condemned’s intense melee gameplay with PS1 horror vibes and influences from the original Resident Evil. It’s a very compelling concept, and in action, the game captivates with its low-res, grimy visuals, clunky movement, and twisted problem-solving.

Set in feudal Japan, which has been overrun by demons, infested by plague, and the populace has dwindled into a few, we play as a lone foot soldier Ashigaru, who is looking to track down and kill the infamous Demon King. However, this is no easy feat, as the Demon King is protected by an amazing compound, made up of several castles, each acting as a gate between you and them. Each castle contains unfathomable horrors, traps, tricks, and looping corridors that any sane person would soon lose their mind upon entering. Yet, Ashigaru ventures forth to kill the Demon King.

What I loved most, and what became the standout for Labyrinth of the Demon King, was the presentation. It’s not just the fact that the game is in low res and genuinely looks like something of a late 90’s From Soft dungeon crawlers (i.e King's Field, or the forgotten gem Shadow Tower). But rather, how depressing and unpleasant this game is, and the toll it takes on every fibre of your being. And that’s what I loved!

Every time I stepped into one of the four main hubs of the world, I wanted to bathe in bleach, just to feel some resemblance of cleanliness once again. From the gritty, pixelated textures, to the truly phenomenal and atmospheric sound design, right down to the loading animations between floors and certain rooms, being pulled right out of the old RE games. And lastly, the incredibly creepy cutscenes that introduce the monsters are some of the most unnerving, terrifying and fantastic scenes of the macabre I’ve witnessed in horror gaming for quite some time.

Labyrinth of the Demon King is just an icky game, one where you truly don’t want to be in the world at any time, and putting down the controller feels like a wave of relief. Even when the menu or save system asks, “Are you sure you want to do that?”, it just puts me on edge. And again, as a horror fan, I adore all these nasty little touches. Aside from these, enemies are grotesquely wonderous, from your smooth grey skin dudes who limp around and screech as though every moment of their existence is pain, to the living decaying ogre like creature who is covered in sores, bags of puss, and has dangling eyes from his head (god I love how sick this game is), to the weird, cult like figures who wear the same hat type as the three guardians from John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. All the enemies are amazing! The world is amazing! Everything about the presentation is amazing! It truly feels like a raw, punky 90’s horror game that gave zero s***s about your feelings and decided to go even further.

And I love that.


What is this?! Wow, what a labyrinth of despair!

Now, Labyrinth of the Demon King will certainly feel like a fever dream to those who’ve stuck to the likes of RE and other known horror games. It is quite a mash-up of a 90’s dungeon crawler, a bit of a Souls-like if you will, and drippings of blood from RE.

You will be tasked with venturing through four “Towers”, which are massive, multi-floored castles, where you must solve a main puzzle to progress forward, and usually require finding several key items to do so. For instance, the first tower has a locked door with four slots. There are four gems scattered in the tower, and you must find them. Doing this involves a lot of searching, backtracking, unlocking and unblocking doors, finding secret passages and solving the odd puzzle here and there. Plus, monsters to fight!

There is that classic vibe of survival horror, where you move forward, feeling quite lost, but soon enough getting a key here, finding an NPC there, unblocking a route to move onto another floor will happen quite often, as you figure out the environment, and where you need to go. Labyrinth of the Demon King nails that “bit by bit” chipping of the world, making those important discoveries, and bathing you in dense fear when you reach the next floor of the tower.

Things can get a little disorientating after a while, and while you have a map, important factors and locations aren’t normally marked down. You do get the odd hint, or big question mark in certain points on the map, but otherwise you’re on your own. There is a great sense of exploration and problem solving, be it filled with the odd moment of annoyance in getting toasted. But the game does a good job of looping you around and pointing you in the right direction. When it comes to the outside areas, which you venture to for the shop keeps, or going to another location, the walking speed and large ground to cover are a painful combo.

Just a small thing, but it was a very annoying small thing!

And while there were a great deal of “puzzle puzzles”, what was here was again, exceptional in execution. There is a hangman puzzle, a nod to Silent Hill 2 clearly, which has you twisting in order the corpses of a mother, a farmer, a young noble, and a very young boy, all the while they wriggle and once the puzzle is complete, you see them hang until that wriggling stop. I felt the cold sweat for a good 30 minutes after finishing that puzzle, and a few others were just as awful, yet highly challenging and rewarding to close.

Everything here is all sounding excellent, and Labyrinth of the Demon King does an incredible feat when it comes to the world design, looping level design, puzzle and problem solving. It’s effortlessly brilliant….

Then we get to the combat.



Kick, elbow, punch …. Out of breath … die

So, this is where the Condemned stuff comes in, and overall, where my thoughts don’t shine as bright as the remainder of the gameplay.

I will give a vast amount of credit to what was intended, and I feel that what was intended, and how it came to be, with combat, works. It just didn’t work for me, and I don’t feel it would for a lot of people.

Combat is often a gruelling test of endurance and an even more gruelling test of patience. As a trained soldier, you will know how to sword fight, use an axe, a club, bow and arrow, and even a firearm or two. You will walk the corridors of the labyrinth, come across a wandering creature and duel it out with swings, kicks, and a well-timed parry or two. You will fight to the bitter end, a fight that will take the breath from your lungs, and you will do so with the odds usually stacked against you. And when you manage to chop off the head of your enemy, you will feel so many emotions, from joyous rage to gleeful despair, as you know that walking forward, you have to do the whole thing again… and again.

The core of the combat is solid, and it would work, and I would praise it if it weren’t for a couple of things.

First, stamina. Now, stamina is a tricky thing, but most RPGS and Souls games get it right because you are not limited to it, nor does it feel like it runs out a little too much. In Labyrinth of the Demon King, I was endlessly out of breath, and even taking two swings left me unable to do much else, except to block or run away and be chased. It is a balancing act, and I did overcome my main gripe with the stamina with the neat kick mechanic. Kicking is great, I love kicking. It reminded me of Dark Messiah, just without much of the improv kills and fun.

Generally, it’s not a problem when you’re fighting on one, but in a group or against a boss, the limitations and stamina become a bigger issue for me. If the kick allowed me to do more interesting things, like in Dark Messiah (YouTube it, there are some great videos), or if the stamina was a little more giving, I wouldn’t have such a problem. Condemned did not have a stamina meter, and thank Jesus it didn’t. I get what the game was going for, and there is a workaround to the stamina issue… but that leads me to the second thing.

Combat does become tedious. Now this is mainly due to the stamina, and having to repeat the same tricks repeatedly, i.e. kick, kick, get a breather, kick again and repeat. If again there were interesting environmental interactions, more creative weapons, gadgets and so forth, I would’ve gelled with the combat more, I reckon. Even Condemned 2 expanded its combat and made it even more engaging.

The one interesting aspect is that enemies fight one another, which I love seeing! More games should do this, and glad that Labyrinth of the Demon King followed in The Suffering’s footsteps to incorporate enemies fighting one another. And also, the game is quite generous with health pick-ups and saving … Some part of me felt that maybe the developer knew the combat would become a little strenuous and decided to flush the pick-ups for a huge chunk of the game at least.

When the combat clicked for me, it clicked, and I liked it a lot. When the game started pushing me out of my comfort zone and didn’t offer much else for me to do, this is where it lost me quite a bit. The combat didn’t work for me, but it will for a lot of people for sure.


Overall?

This is where I find scoring Labyrinth of the Demon King a bit tricky… The combat was the constant tipping point between nintenselygood nd plain frustration.  I get that combat should feel this way in most instances, a challenge and test of your mettle. But the core should also not be hampered by annoying constraints and should grant some freedom to work outside the box. The stamina and lack of environmental interactions hold it back objectively, as much more could’ve been done for the survival combat gameplay. But I’m not everyone, and some will enjoy mercilessly using the kick button, and waiting for that bit of stamina to recover, so they can rinse and repeat the same fight.

But for everything else? Labyrinth of the Demon King is so darn awesome! I love everything from the grimy visuals, gruelling and depressing themes of the world and themes, and those low-res PS1 aesthetics are some of the most impressive I’ve seen on the indie gaming scene. This stuff was perfect, and I kept going back despite my gripes with the combat, and just how depravingly sad this game made me feel.

I love it. Labyrinth of the Demon King should be checked out by all horror fans. But word of wise, the combat will certainly test you.


+++ Aesthetics and presentation are immense
++ Great sound design, creepy horror vibes and good story
++ Survival horror gameplay is gratifying
+ Makes you sad, but in a good way

- Combat is very hit or miss (when it hits, it slaps … but it does miss for me)
- The world can be quite confusing with a lack of markers


The publisher kindly provided a review code of The Labyrinth of the Demon King