Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat, by Zombisoft

Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat is a classic, grid-based, dungeon adventure RPG in the style of Legend of Grimrock and Dungeon Master before it.

Featuring a single protagonist, Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat tasks this explorer with delving deep into a dungeon to find the titular master wizard’s cat. This quaint scenario serves as a simple but effective motivation for the adventurer’s search through monster-infested and treasure-laden corridors.

Labyrinth opens with a comparably pleasant setting, considering the dank corridors that will follow. A lush, sunlit forest provides a gentle area to learn movement, pick up a few healing items, and dabble in some light combat with insects and a couple owls (which I just learned do in fact come in diurnal varieties).

Kitty Quest

It’s not long before the aforementioned master wizard shows up and tasks us with finding his cat – last seen close to the nearby windmill. It turns out there’s a vast dungeon beneath that windmill, and the cat, rather typically, wanders into it just as we arrive.

There is some pleasing attention to detail in the dungeon, giving it a sense of progression and depth. I noticed on the first couple of levels that there are windows to the outside, providing that sense of “last glimpse of daylight” before treading deeper into the abyss.

The early levels are rather forgiving and provide lots of tips to help provide direction (and also armed me with knowledge of what to look for later when tips dried up).

Combat is very conventional for the genre: manipulate the grid-based movement to strike at foes before dashing away. Ranged weapons are also available, but I tended to lean into the higher damage of melee options unless I needed to strike at a target far away.

Enemies come in a delightful array of types, from slimes to zombies and some really rather unnerving spiders (something about them walking on the ceiling is just especially gyah).

These enemies are telegraphed by some pretty excellent sound design that always gives a keen-eared adventurer a hint about what might be lurking nearby.

A Less Laborious Labyrinth

The difficulty curve might be rather gentle for the tastes of some adventurers; food and other healing items are abundant and most enemies can be danced around with relative ease.

Labyrinth also features little in the way of traditional RPG customization; items that power up your stats are largely additive, requiring no real choices beyond which weapons to wield. Nonetheless, Labyrinth provides a solid sense of progression with its many upgrades and stat-buffing rings.

Labyrinth features charming pixel art-based design, and it’s clear a lot of love has gone into giving the environment and enemies plenty of personality.

Music is minimal, but the environmental noises are carefully considered, providing both atmosphere and information exactly when it is needed; the only constant is the gentle howl of wind passing through the dungeon.

There are a few typos here and there in the text, and this is a pity, but overall the presentation is strong.

The Verdict:

I had a good time exploring the depths of Labyrinth’s dungeon, and while it can be a little on the simple side, it provides a fun adventure and plenty of foes to dispatch.

This is easy to recommend to fans of classic, grid-based dungeon crawlers looking for a relaxed but engrossing exploration experience that comes with all of the treasure-hunting fun with none of the frustration.

Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat is available via Steam.

Check out the official trailer for Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat below: