Labyrinthine

Labyrinthine is a first-person horror indie game that puts players to the task of finding their way through a spooky maze. Instead of focusing on a single player experience, Labyrinthine aims to appeal to teams of friends that will work together to solve the mystery that awaits them. Fans of Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Phasmophobia will love the mixture of horror and cooperative gameplay.

A-maze-ing

Like a trip to Disneyland gone wrong, Labyrinthine is set in the middle of a hedge maze that seems to go on forever. Players and a small group of friends will need to make their way through the overgrown maze, solving puzzles and avoiding the things that go bump in the night.

Navigating the maze is harder than it might sound due to the constant night that hangs over the player. To make things worse is that the maze is barely lit by a series of dim lamp posts, building a great amount of contrast between darker and lighter sections of the maze floor. Players can extend their view with glow sticks, which add a creepy and stylized feel for when players are feeling brave enough to venture into the darkness.

Fun With Friends

Not many games, be them horror or puzzle, offer a multiplayer experience. Labyrinthine manages to appeal to both camps by letting you and some friends hop into its overgrown world. What’s nice about the coop experience is that the game doesn’t restrict players to the same area. Players can choose to complete puzzles together or work on puzzles separately. The degree of separation between players also leads to some scary situations where players can get lost from one another and picked off by the monsters of the maze.

That said, the character models for players are quite poor, which can be a distraction since players will spend a lot of their time looking at their friends in the darkness of the maze. The same goes for the animations, which can be a bit of a distraction from otherwise atmospheric experience.

Speaking of atmosphere, the game does an excellent job at building tension even when you’re in the company of friends. It’s hard to deny how scary some of the game’s sections are, especially when you and your friends are struggling to find your way through the maze’s many pathways.

Petrifyingly Puzzling

As a puzzle game at heart, Labyrinthine boasts a massive amount of puzzles. Players who don’t enjoy puzzles should avoid Labyrinthine, as there are a lot of them to get through. Some puzzles are a genuine challenge, which can cause the game to lose a bit of forward momentum, especially when playing with others. This negative is helped when playing solo, but that comes with the cost of losing out on what makes the game so special to begin with.

The puzzles are incredibly varied and involve lots of different types of set pieces and horror cliches. Some have players exploring an abandoned house, while others require players to think carefully about their surroundings to solve a cryptic challenge.

PROS

• Unique blend of horror, puzzle and multiplayer
• Varied puzzles with nice difficulty
• Interesting premise with great set pieces

CONS

• Graphics are fairly poor
• Not much fun in single player
• Not recommended for those who don’t enjoy puzzles