TouchArcade Game of the Week: “Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat”

I’m a straightforward man. Give me an old-school first-person dungeon crawler and I’m a reasonably comfortable guy. Make one where you rescue a cat and, oh boy, now you really speak my language. Throw in a really unusual touchscreen control scheme that I’ve never seen in a game of this kind before and you have got a winner, winner, chicken you present in a barrel. That just about describes Labyrinth: The Wizard’s Cat from developer ZombiSoft, who appears to be only one person named Anders Gustavsson. There are a couple of flaws and a couple of negatives value mentioning, but overall I’m just having a blast and may’t wait to see where it takes me.

As the story goes, you might be a wizard apprentice who’s tasked with finding your mentor wizard’s runaway cat, and your graduation and becoming a full-fledged wizard is determined by completing this mission. Just once you think you’ve got cornered the cute little kitty, you might be transported to a labyrinthine dungeon full of traps and enemies. You also spot a kitty prowling around, so your mission becomes harder as you are trying to get through this dungeon alive, while also rescuing your boss’s annoying little cat.

Now, this is not a really complicated game by any means. There are some light RPG elements in the form of leveling up and finding cool recent weapons and equipment, but there isn’t any party system or any extensive character development. It jogs my memory so much of that in that it’s a reasonably easy affair mechanically, but the story, visuals, and personality of the game keep you moving forward. Also, simply because this game is vivid and colourful and has a reasonably easy design, don’t think it is simple. The game actually gets pretty difficult pretty quickly, but luckily you possibly can save at any time and place, which is something it’s best to practice often.

The really cool thing here is the control scheme. You can choose from virtual arrows or swipe gestures to maneuver in a selected direction, which is pretty standard. But should you put your second thumb down on the screen, you possibly can freely look in any direction. It takes a bit of getting used to, but the swipe gesture motion combined with the free-looking gesture mix to create a really satisfying touchscreen control scheme. At times, it seems like you are playing a first-person shooter when you get comfortable and begin moving backwards and forwards quickly, but you are still really playing a game with grid-based movement.

My minor gripes are that I actually wish this game had an choice to play vertically, and the swipe detection for movement is a bit finicky. It recognizes short, quick swipes versus longer ones, and before I figured that out I had a very frustrating time considering the game wasn’t detecting my inputs. Probably something that may very well be smoothed out in an update. Overall though, despite being a bit basic and having some flaws, it’s a really enjoyable retro dungeon crawler, which we do not get too many of as of late. If that is not value a couple of dollars, I do not know what’s.