My experience with:
Labyrinth of the Demon King
Posted November 2025
Introduction
You step into a dark room with nothing but a flaming torch and your broken katana. The coast appears to be clear but then you hear a familiar wheezing sound coming from the next room. The next second a humanoid figure runs at you brandishing a wall panel as a weapon.
This is what awaits you in Labyrinth of the Demon King - an absolute gem of an indie game developed completely by one person, a New Zealand based developer named J.R Hudepohl. If you like the sound of a first person slow paced horror title focused on combat and exploration, then this is exactly the game for you.
What you're getting into
Labyrinth of the Demon King is such an easy recommendation because it is superbly designed and has a relatively short run time, at roughly 10 hours for a first playthrough. It's definitely a good example of a game that left me wanting more at the end, although this feeling was mostly alleviated by an excellent New Game + mode which adds new content à la Dark Souls 2. If you're still unsure after reading this review, then there is also a free demo available on PC and consoles, which gives you access to a decent chunk of content.
At first, the most striking thing about Labyrinth of the Demon King was its aesthetic. More and more I find myself drawn to games that lean away from photorealism and into something more abstract. Labyrinth of the Demon King (let's call it Demon King for short) clearly aims to recapture the style of PlayStation 1 era classics. This pixelated style lends itself well to horror due to the fact it slightly obscures the environment and characters, leaving your mind to fill in the blanks. Whether you like this visual style or not will likely be a big factor in how much you enjoy the game. Also note that you do have the option to change the aspect ratio to remove the black bars from the side of the screen.
As for the gameplay, Demon King is a first person action RPG which appears to be heavily inspired by From Software's King's Field series and similar dungeon crawlers. If like me, you haven't played those games, think of vast dungeons with first person sword play akin to the Elder Scrolls series, except the combat is substantially better in Demon King. The world itself is a small hub area linked to 3 towers, each with its own enemies and boss fight at the end. The towers are maze-like and full of puzzles and secrets, not dissimilar to popular horror franchises like Resident Evil.
Lastly, the game can be brutal, with all enemy types able to easily kill you if you make the slightest mistake. Don't be deterred though, aside from respawning at your last save point there is no penalty for death, and you keep all items you found before dying. This makes for a experience that is very difficult but seldom frustratingly so.
Combat
10 minutes into this game and it's easy to feel like you have already figured out the combat system, as it is very simple on the surface but the more I played, the more nuances I discovered. This ultimately resulted in a thoroughly enjoyable combat experience, bolstered by a surprisingly varied enemy selection and generous amount of weapons - each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
The main factor that makes the combat so fun is basically the way the game feels to play, or 'game feel' so to speak. All actions have weight to them and your strikes feel suitably impactful with all weapon types. This definitely isn't a game where you'll see enemies not reacting as you slash away at them - some of them even have 'fake outs' where they reel from a strike only to immediately counter and mess you up. You also have a wonderfully cathartic kick attack which not only breaks enemy defences but also pushes them backwards, meaning you can kick them off ledges spartan style!
On top of the already enjoyable base mechanics, there are a lot of enemy behaviours that make them feel like more than just mindless drones. My favourite examples include:
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'Monster infighting' is present across all enemy types. Originating from Doom 1993, this mechanic allows enemies to fight each other as well as the player. This means you can trick enemies into attacking each other in group encounters and then back off while they fight to heal up and then take on the surviving, weakened enemy by itself. I cannot overstate how much this changes areas that would otherwise be a slog into balanced and enjoyable encounters. It also adds to the atmosphere in a setting where all of the inhabitants have seemingly gone mad.
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Enemies can pick up weapons off the ground and even take them from other monsters once they have killed them. Again, this makes your foes feel smarter and can also turn an easy fight into a difficult battle if you're not careful.
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Enemies flee when they have taken too much damage. Demon King has oppressive combat and an oppressive atmosphere, so seeing a monster cover it's face and run when you're low on health and stamina is always a welcome relief. Plus anything that reminds me of the original Halo trilogy is always welcome, with this feeling very reminiscent of the covenant grunts.
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This game does not shy away from gore. As a horror title you will see a lot of blood and bodies which are rendered in a low-poly style which stops it from feeling gratuitous. Combat with enemies often results in beheading them or even caving their skull in depending on your chosen weapon. This goes without saying but these kind of interactions really do add a lot to combat and make your weapons feel powerful.
Atmosphere
I would be doing Demon King an injustice if I didn't mention the atmosphere - simply put, I absolutely loved exploring every nook and cranny in this game! The visual style is a major contributor as it is excellently realised, with enough detail to feel modern but retaining the charm of 'old school' gaming. This isn't a case of style over substance either, the levels are meticulously detailed with loot to find and hidden paths to explore, shortcuts to unlock, and lore to uncover. Cutscenes are also well directed and are often used to introduce bosses or new characters. I enjoyed how an additional noise filter is added to these scenes which almost imitates the way the human eye adjusts to the dark in real life, where you can't quite make out something initially and it becomes clearer the more your stare at it.
The music is also excellent and ranges from the panic inducing (boss fights), to the serine calm of the tea shop which acts as your only safe zone (my absolute favourite music in the game). On a side note, I really enjoyed the process of virtually brewing matcha in the tea shop, which acts an additional healing item to those you can find in the world. It felt very calming in contrast with the main bulk of the gameplay and I could imagine many other developers omitting this process in fear of it getting repetitive. On the contrary I found it very immersive - little details like brewing tea, opening drawers, and destructible environments are always welcome in my opinion.
You will also uncover the story of the game as you come across notes and friendly NPCs, the latter of which also acting as merchants and smiths. It is worth highlighting that the notes in this game are actually very useful, giving concise information on how to kill certain enemies, and where to go next. This is a far cry from so many triple A games where there is an abundance of notes containing pages of lore, whereas everything here is actually worth reading. I want to give shout out to 'Nekotomic' on YouTube as she mentioned this topic on a YT Short talking about Fatal Frame 2, and this immediately made me think of the notes you can find in Labyrinth of the Demon King.
Finally, there is the level and world design which really ties everything together. Without spoiling things, you have to do the first tower before you can access the rest of the game, then you gain access to the tea shop and two more towers which can move freely between at any time. Each tower has it's own theme, enemies, and main puzzle(s) which you will have to overcome to progress. You will be frequently checking the map as the towers are very maze-like but be sure to buy the compass from the merchant when available as the map only tells you which room you are in. To equip the compass you must unequip your torch which makes for an interesting trade off and personally made me really get to know the levels like the back of my hand rather than relying on the map all of the time. Exploration is always rewarded and the levels themselves are seldom repetitive making for a real treat if you enjoy dungeon crawling in games.
The Negatives
My only major criticism of this game is the boss fights, which range from laughably easy to mind numbingly frustrating. There are multiple factors which contribute to this:
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Health and stamina recovery items are finite. This works great outside of boss fights, where resource management adds considerably to the desperation as you search for the next save point. However, for bosses this creates the same issue as games like Bloodborne where dying to a boss repeatedly leads to you running out of healing items and then the fight becomes even more difficult. You can buy items from the merchant, but there is no 'souls' style currency at play, so the only way to get money is to keep killing the enemies until you get lucky and they drop some. This ultimately leads to situations where you feel a bit stuck on how to progress, as there is no way to reliably grind for currency. For me, the larger issue was stamina regeneration as even if I learned how to block/evade all boss attacks, I would run out of stamina and be unable to attack or dodge. This isn't a problem when you're stocked up on items but you will likely use a lot of these as you explore the levels as you can burn through your supply very quickly.
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Multiple bosses spawn enemies to fight alongside them. This is the classic problem where an otherwise easy boss fight is made difficult in an annoying way by continuously spawning enemies. To be fair, you can interrupt some bosses from spawning enemies but if you don't have stamina recovery items then you won't be able to play aggressively enough to pull this off. This is especially irritating with the centipede enemies which require you to aim at the floor to kill them all whilst the boss fires projectiles at you from off screen. I found the best way to deal with such bosses was to stock up on ammunition for ranged weapons and burn through everything to put them down as fast as possible.
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All bosses can be circle strafed to death. On the other end of the spectrum, if you have enough stamina (or plentiful regen items) you can circle round bosses continuously attacking and interrupting their attacks until they die. This made New Game + easier instead of harder as my base stamina stat was much higher meaning I could be much more aggressive in boss fights.
For me personally, poor boss design is not a big issue as there are ways to plan around them and my favourite part of games like this is almost always the exploration rather than boss fights. That being said, for a game with so much combat it is important to consider how much poor boss design would affect your enjoyment of this game if you're considering trying it.
New Game +
I started playing this game in October 2025 and loved it but then was left wanting more upon reaching the final boss. I checked online to see if there was a NG+ mode and to my surprise one had just been added - amazing timing! I was then delighted to read that not only does the game get more difficult each cycle but there are also a suite of other changes to look forward to. Having now finished the game twice and spent a few hours in NG+1, I can say that this update to the game was a resounding success.
Mild spoilers for NG+ below.
You will notice the difference very early into your second playthrough as friendly characters are no longer in the same place, and the first room of the first tower immediately introduces a new enemy type. My favourite change is that the door to leave the first tower is unlocked from the start in NG+ (usually it is locked until you clear what is the largest level in the game), meaning that you can now play all of the levels in any order reminiscent of games like Demon's Souls. The key items that you usually find in the first tower have been replaced with something else, which I will let you discover for yourself.
There are also completely new weapons and multiple new enemy variants, along with an increase in the amount of enemies in each room. Thanks to the monster infighting system, this never becomes tedious, but rather feels like an excellent way to test out all of the weapons with a much larger stamina bar than in your first playthrough. The game also becomes much more generous with upgrade materials, making it viable to test out multiple new weapons despite the increased difficulty. There is also a new hidden boss, which I have to say I did not enjoy due to the same reasons as the other bosses, the process of finding it was very cool though. There were also new character interactions and I got the sense there was more to uncover upon further playthroughs which I absolutely look forward to.
Closing Thoughts
Labyrinth of the Demon King is my second favourite game that I've played this year, bested only by Expedition 33. The whole experience oozes atmosphere and is a very easy recommend for fans of both horror and action games. I recommend playing the demo (available on PC and consoles) and if you like that then just know that the quality only goes up from there.
I'll end by saying that I appreciated how much Labyrinth of the Demon King respected my time. Load times are fast, cutscenes are all skippable, save points allow for manual saving whenever I need to stop playing, levels are expertly designed and never feel bloated, and even the download size is very reasonable at only 3.02GB on PS5.
Small games like this are easy to overlook especially in a year like 2025 with so many big hitters, but Labyrinth of the Demon King is an excellent reminder of just how good indie games can be! Until next time.
Sources
Banner Image - https://gamecritics.com/ryan-nalley/labyrinth-of-the-demon-king-review/
All other images captured on PlayStation 5.