I’m a simple man. Give me an old-school first-person dungeon crawler and I’m a pretty happy guy. Make one centered around rescuing a cat and, oh boy, now you’re really speaking my language. Throw in a really unique touchscreen control scheme that I’ve never seen in a game of this type before and we’ve got a winner winner chicken-that-you-found-in-a-barrel dinner. That accurately describes Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat from developer ZombiSoft, who appears to be just a single person named Anders Gustavsson. There are some rough edges here, and some negative things to note, but by and large I’m just having a super good time with Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat and I’m excited to see where it takes me.
So as the story goes, you’re an apprentice wizard who is tasked with finding the runaway cat of your mentor wizard, and you graduating to become a full-blown wizard hinges on you completing this mission. Just when you think you’ve cornered the adorable little feline you find yourself transported to a dungeon labyrinth filled with traps and enemies. You also spot the kitty roaming around and so your mission now becomes more difficult as you try to make your way through this dungeon alive as well as rescue your boss’s pesky little cat.
Now, Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat isn’t a highly complex game by any means. There’s some light RPG elements in the form of leveling up and finding cool new weapons and gear, but there’s no party system or any extensive character progression. It reminds me a lot of Questlord in that it’s a pretty simple affair mechanically but the story, the visuals, and the personality of the game compel you to keep moving forward. Also, just because this game is bright and colorful and has a fairly straightforward design don’t think it’s some pushover. The game actually gets rather difficult rather quickly, but thankfully you can save anytime and anywhere, which is something you should practice doing often.
The really neat feature here is the control scheme. You can choose between virtual arrows or swipe gestures for directional movement, which is pretty par for the course. But if you lay a second thumb down on the screen you can free look in any direction. It takes a little getting used to but the swipe gesture movement coupled with the free look gesture combines to make for a very satisfying touchscreen control scheme. It almost feels like you’re playing a first-person shooter at times, once you get comfortable and start zipping around to and fro, but you’re actually still playing a game with grid-based movement.
My small nitpicks are that I really wish this game had an option to play in portrait, and the swipe detection for movement is a bit finicky. It recognizes short, fast swipes as opposed to longer ones, and before I figured that out I was having a really frustrating time thinking the game wasn’t detecting my inputs. Probably something that can be smoothed out in an update. Overall though, despite being a bit basic overall and having some rough edges, Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat is a very enjoyable retro dungeon crawler, which is something we don’t get too many of nowadays. If that’s not worth a couple of bucks then I’m not sure what is.
