"It could stand to be a bit deeper."

Deep Labyrinth I guess would be what you call a 'hack and slash' RPG. The player must use their stylus as a sword to swing, which sounded quite interesting. But there was so much more they could have done to make this game more fun.

The story's a bit bland and cliche, maybe something you'd find in a really young child's fairy tale. Shawn and his family are on a road trip when their tyre bursts, stranding them on the side of the road next to a strange mansion. Shawn's Siberian Husky, Ace suddenly runs towards the place, forcing the family to go after him. Shawn suddenly finds himself teleported to an alternate world where memories are sorted out, where he has to find his family and escape. Personally I think it lacks any real depth and creativity. Deep Labyrinth has two 'games', the one I just mentioned is Chapter 1, and the second chapter is known as 'Wandering Soul'. The player does not have to complete the first to play the second, as it involves a completely different character and different story, which is a bit more mature and depressing, but unfortunately, also lacks any real depth.

As for controls, movement is executed by the directional buttons; up causes the character to move forward, back goes backwards, while left and right are used to turn either left or right. Pressing left or right twice is a short strafe. I've always found these controls clumsy and terribly annoying, especially in a fight. The stylus, not only for fighting is also used to open doors, speak to people and pick up items.

I mentioned before that to use the sword, the player must draw a path for their sword. However, not only is there a huge delay between drawing and when the sword swings, it seems that it is irrelevant where the player draws. Stabbing, or a sweeping attack will have virtually the same effect on any monster and therefore, I found myself just rapidly tapping the screen whenever I locked onto an enemy. Magic can be cast by drawing a pattern in a grid of three by three, and is the aspect of battling I found most interesting.

This game (the first chapter at least) also utilises microphone function, which I find very amusing, such as blowing to remove dust from a stone tablet. This too, could have been improved, for it was only relevant in key areas. For example, one butterfly enemy would move so close and attach itself to the screen making it near impossible to strike it. They could have easily added the blowing function here to push the butterfly away.

As for gameplay, it really does involve a lock and key type of approach to proceed through the labyrinth. Shawn will need to pick up items such as keys, or even need to learn spells to unlock spell doors. Battling is boring and repetitive.

The graphics are decent, but not great. It's a 3D environment, but really reminiscent of Bomberman 64; it looks very flat and very blocky. This contrasts with the beginning and ending scenes where it is fully animated anime style with full audio. Character design is quite simple, while the monsters range from the generic blob, fiery skull to the more whacky hovering grey cube to the flying pink anthropomorphic musclebound elephant god.

Characters will not speak out loud during the game, but with text, with exception for the opening and closing scenes, the quality of which can be dramatically improved. Music is quite fitting of each area, however I found sound to be quite lifeless with boring 'slash', 'bash' and 'explosion' sounds particularly when fighting.

In the end, it gave me a decent amount of gameplay, about 20 hours if you count both Chapter 1 and 2. The gameplay itself is a little mediocre and repetitive; at times I just wanted it to end already. I find myself lacking in things to comment on in the game, simply because there isn't much to it. It is very simple, very easy and again, not very deep.

As a summary, things I liked were:
+ Easy to pick up and play
+ Decent music
+ Nice opening and closing scenes

Things I didn't care much for were:
- Simplistic storyline
- Repetitive gameplay
- Too easy
- Poor sound

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/05/07, Updated 04/30/07