Developer: Bobby Wolfe
Released: February 2020
Price: $5.00
Platforms: Windows, Linux, Android
Available on: itch.io
Engine: Unity
Introduction
Luminous Labyrinth is a short, arcade game in development by Bobby Wolfe. In the game, you must navigate a glowing cube to exit a series of brightly colored mazes, whilst also searching and grabbing dots scattered throughout!
Gameplay
You control a cube, navigating it to the exit of the illuminated mazes while avoiding a slew of dangerous objects, rolling balls, pulse waves, and more. The labyrinths are filled with Pac-Man style dots that you can collect, rewarding you with golden stars if you can find them all. You can obtain “auras,” which are pickups that can grant your cube a color for a limited time, allowing you to destroy entities with the same color as the aura or access hidden areas. Each level can take about one to six minutes
Generally, Luminous Labyrinth isn’t a hard game. Checkpoints are scattered everywhere, oftentimes before dangerous areas, which makes dying a slap on the wrist. Even getting all the dots isn’t difficult, you just need to explore the whole labyrinth, which takes away the frustration of dead ends and encourages visiting them instead. The only frustrating parts I have met so far were the final levels of each “world,” because deadly giant objects follow your every move.
Artstyle and Audio
Luminous Labyrinth makes great use of glow effects and colors giving the stages distinct styles whilst keeping them dark enough. While most of the objects in the game are 3D geometrical shapes, this adds to the unique “bright but simple” styling of the game.
The music, composed by Matt Reeves, is a high point of the game, an earworm album of electro and chiptune. That said, there isn’t much in the way of sound effects apart from movement, death sounds, and other minor effects.
In Conclusion
The combination of simple controls, abundance of checkpoints, the general feeling of the visuals, and awesome music make Luminous Labyrinth an instant recommendation for fans of short, arcade games, especially on the go. Overall, I found the game to be a fun and non-frustrating maze escape experience, and I recommend it at full price. You can also try the demo from itch.io, featuring the first world!
Seeking other arcade games with levels? Here’s a small selection!
Duet – FutureGrind – Geometry Dash