Here we go again. It’s no big mystery that Team Shuriken has been getting moderately to filthy rich on the teenage libido for quite some time. Well, I assume they’re making loadsamoney. Labyrinth X (80 MSP) is just the latest in the long line of probably a dozen or so similar ‘games’, and they’ve already made five bucks off me. Ask anybody; the business of boobs is a sure bet, and it’s why Al Gore created the Internet.

Look closely and you can see my dignity chained up next to her.

Labyrinth X plays like past Shuriken games (choose a path, guesswork ‘puzzles’, breasts, repeat), though its style this time around is a combination of the usual softcore bondage scenes (see above) and actual animation, chiefly as punishment for bad decisions, though the environments do feature some flair in motion if you stop to take notice.

And the gory scenes of your pixelized demise are the best part of the game, equating to ‘fatalities’, Mortal Kombat if it was done in Microsoft Paint-style. It’s comical, having your head punched clean-off or split open by a laser, and fun to purposely aim for, not that you’ll need to. With no let up in the number of ways you can fail (‘inane puzzles’ are a constant) you should get a chance to witness all the ways to die anyway.

I do give credit to the developer for putting in a little more work on Labyrinth X; the substance in the content, the chance to pick up ‘items’ or make an occasional selection that alters the playing field, albeit briefly. A few of the sequences vaguely reminded me of Shadowgate (NES-era), in that sort of ‘Should I do this?’, Curiosity Killed the Cat kind of way, but it’s still a coin toss so far as what will happen to you.

Hey, honest mistake. We’ve all been there after a long night of drinking.

‘Combat’ remains as baffling as ever. Why would I punch a group of bats, but kick a spider? Why wouldn’t the opposite work? What determines success and failure? Size, height off the ground at that exact moment, their place on the food chain? Where in the human manual of self-defense does it say that such attacks are and aren’t allowed? I’ll save you the Google research; it doesn’t, making this continued trial-and-error apathy towards logic all the more irritating…

…but short-lived. Even accounting for the game’s slightly-less linear path, slightly-more complex ‘solutions’, and the inevitable retries from checkpoints, you should finish in a half-hour with plenty of buyer’s remorse. Still, if you’re keeping score at home, I would place Labyrinth X ahead of both Ninja Priestess and the awful, turd sequel to Temple of Dogolrak. I don’t recommend any of the three, ultimately, but that Labyrinth X came close to changing my mind and ranks tops among its own internal competition has to count for something.

.

Bonus! Save your MSP, or just get a laugh out watching The Indie Ocean’s Alan navigate Labyrinth X in his multi-part series.