Labyrinthatory is a 2D puzzle game. There’s a very light narrative about an eccentric relative that passed away. During the funeral you receive a call from said relative asking you to discover the truth to what “man’s greatest need” is. You go to said area, meet a robot assistant, and the game starts and then from there it kind of devolves into a series of disjointed puzzles.
While the puzzles themselves are OK and standard fare, there’s really no underlying mechanic or theme uniting them all together. Even the narrative backdrop is pretty much forgotten. Before I go on to explain, I am mentioning this from the spirit of offering possible feedback rather than taking a dump on the game. I enjoyed the game so I have no desire to put it down, rather I saw some shortcomings that could be improved upon for the developer’s next game.
As a casual enjoyer of puzzle games, I know fans of the genre all have their own games they consider to be the crème de la crème. Such games are masterfully made and stand the test of time. For some, it may be Myst, for others, games such as the Witness come to mind. There are so many fantastic puzzles games coming out; Cocoon, The Talos Principle 2, and Viewfinder are more recent examples. For me, personally speaking, I think Filament is quite possibly one of the best puzzle games of all time, followed closely by Superliminal.
I can’t speak for others but the criteria I use for judging a puzzle game is based on the ingenuity of the mechanics, the quality of the puzzle design, and there being a sense of either the mechanic or the theme of the game being at the core of every puzzle you encounter. These traits can be quite subjective but there is a degree of objective metrics used when judging these traits.
Superliminal does a great job of having the underlying mechanic tie in with the narrative beats of the game as well. Now the narrative element in Superliminal may not be everyone’s cup of tea and I understand that, but even if you didn’t like it, it’s hard to deny that the thematic elements of the narrative match up quite nicely with the actual game play mechanic, that is changing your perspective on things.
Both of these things coming together in harmony make for the ultimate puzzle game. If the narrative elements are lacking, at the very least the puzzle design has to be well done. This is where Labyrinthatory is lacking, quite a lot unfortunately.
I understand from a development perspective that a lot of work and love went into this game. I’m always dabbling with game development myself so I understand how hard it is to make a game. Designing and coding each puzzle takes quite a bit of work. Writing out each line of dialogue, which is quite wholesome and contains a lot of referential humor by the way, also takes a lot of work.
However, when it boils down to the essence of the game, Labyrinthatory is simply just a series of mini games. For example, in one area you play hangman, guess the answers to word puzzles, and then play a logic game where you assign traits to people. These are games most people would probably have encountered already and are used to playing. Furthermore there is no mechanic or theme in connecting these puzzles together.
The puzzles take place in a cornfield, it would have made the game feel a bit more cohesive if all the puzzles were related to corn in some manner. I’m just talking about something as simple as making the hangman answers relate to corn or making the word puzzles have rather corny answers. It would be a-maize-ing.
While the puzzles were enjoyable enough, since they were puzzles I played around with usually as a child, it already started to feel a tad repetitive. Furthermore, since there was no underlying mechanic to the game, the puzzles felt incredibly disjointed and isolated. The game lacked an identity. Games like Filament, Superliminal, Portal, insert any memorable puzzle game you’ve played, and you’ll find that most have a mechanic that left an impression and was enjoyable to use. It was either that or very unique and well made puzzles.
Now it may totally be the case that Labyrinthatory introduces such a mechanic later on but by then it may have been too late. In this day and age of short attention spans, the gamer’s attention has to be caught sooner rather than later.
I’m not mentioning this criticism expecting the developer to make changes to the game right away. I completely understand it takes time to learn and grow and get better at things so it’s just food for thought for whatever game they make next.
Also, I understand the possibility that Labyrinthatory was made that way because the developer wanted it done that way. I respect that from the perspective of an artist staying true to their own vision but in order to keep creating, one has to also produce a product that enough people will actually want to buy.
The harsh reality is that consumers have limited time and money so for them to support your product, it has to provide them a reason to pick that product over everyone else’s. Being able to provide that reason takes blood, sweat, and tears. I wish the developer the best of luck on their journey.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2132770/Labyrinthatory/
Review Score: 0 reviews as of this writing (11/29/23)
Developer: Unimposing Walrus
Publisher: Unimposing Walrus
Release Date: Oct 30, 2023
MSRP: $14.99
I received a key from keymailer. Thank you so much for the key!
Time spent: 1 hour
Achievement Score: 3/52
Ducky Obrien 