Shadow Labyrinth Update Adds Explorer Mode And Control Improvements

Shadow Labyrinth Update has delivered a substantial patch that reshapes the game’s early difficulty curve and revisits several control issues that defined its launch. The project’s core pitch—a Metroidvania wrapped around a grim, reinterpreted Pac-Man universe—was always unusual enough to court attention, yet discussion quickly shifted to the uneven difficulty, rigid inputs, and sparse save points that greeted early players. Bandai Namco now tries to address those concerns without steering the game away from its intended identity.

The centrepiece of the Shadow Labyrinth Update is Explorer Mode. It functions as a more forgiving option designed to make exploration and combat less punishing. The studio explained the intent directly, writing that this optional mode:

“significantly lowers the difficulty of combat and exploration, allowing you to better enjoy the story and world.” — Bandai Namco

Explorer Mode raises player durability, boosts outgoing damage, and shortens energy recovery time. It also adds more save points across the map, reducing the long stretches that once stood between checkpoints. For many players, this adjustment will matter more than any stat tweak, as dying far from a save point often forced lengthy repetition and drained momentum.

The update also revisits the maze-like sequences that most closely echo Pac-Man’s origins. Their difficulty has been adjusted to better suit the relaxed approach of Explorer Mode, encouraging exploration rather than punishing experimentation. The darker tone and dense layout remain intact, but the mechanical friction has been reduced.

Veteran Mode, which reflects the original launch difficulty, remains available. The Shadow Labyrinth Update allows switching between both modes at any time. That flexibility offers a practical compromise for those who want a challenge without committing to it across an entire save file.

Beyond difficulty, the patch focuses on the game’s movement. Mid-air control has been improved, making jumps less rigid and reducing the sensation that small errors stemmed from input constraints rather than timing. A dedicated vertical-jump button has been added as well, introduced specifically to reduce accidental diagonals. Bandai Namco framed the change as a simple matter of reducing unintended inputs, yet it also reinforces precision—an issue tied closely to the game’s overall readability.

The update does not overhaul Shadow Labyrinth’s narrative tone, which remains its most polarizing feature. In her review, Abbie Stone wrote that “the self-seriousness of the majority of it is as baffling as it is boring,” describing the script as “an overly-talky technobabble festival, rife with cliches and dull stock characters.”

That critique reflects a larger tension within the game’s concept. Pac-Man’s long history includes reinventions, but few have carried such a heavy dramatic frame. Earlier promotional trailers featured Swordsman No. 8 moving through a fractured world with Puck—the lone direct link to Pac-Man’s heritage—and Gaia, a mech that drives the combat in a more forceful direction. Bandai Namco signaled the ambition early: a moody science-fiction labyrinth with ties to the publisher’s wider back catalogue, not simply a side story grafted onto a familiar mascot.

The timing of the Shadow Labyrinth Update arrives in a crowded year for Metroidvanias. Much of the conversation has orbited Hollow Knight: Silksong, leaving smaller projects, including Possessor(s) and Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree, to push through stiff competition for attention. Shadow Labyrinth struggled with that same problem at launch, and the new patch reads as an attempt to give it another foothold—one grounded less in novelty and more in playability.

By softening its sharpest edges, the Shadow Labyrinth Update opens the door to players who were intrigued by the concept but pushed away by its initial difficulty curve and control issues. It does not rewrite the game’s identity, but it gives its world, systems, and odd premise a clearer chance to surface.