Dr. Kobushi's Labyrinthine Laboratory Reviews

This game is actually a lot of fun. It gets hard really quick, which i appreciate a lot. I'm definitely going to be playing more of this and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a challenging puzzle game.

A charming, nostalgic game. It has a few quirks, but they're not deal-breakers or anything. The characters are fun, and the puzzles can get pretty tricky. It's not the next Skyrim or anything, but if you're just looking for a retro-styled puzzle game to relax with, this one might be just what you're looking for.

This is your typical isometric puzzle game from the 90s that brings nothing new to the genre in terms of gameplay. In each level you are trying to reach the exit in a single screen (or more like a half-screen as the right side is take up by a rather unnecessarily enemy video feed) with familiar tiles (teleports, lasers, locked blocks etc) and enemies (that follow certain rules in their movement) blocking your way. The puzzles are typical trial and error variety that unfortunately lack the Eureka-moments that I love in this genre. Solving levels require little actual thought after the player has figured the game rules and quite often it is the execution that takes longer than actually figuring out how to win the map. The basic puzzles coupled with non-existent game settings (such as the possibility of turning music off or skipping the dialog at the beginning of levels) and uninspired soundtrack and visuals makes it difficult to recommend this puzzle game over other more revolutionary and more entertaining puzzle games such as Recursed, Toki Tori 2, Markov Alg, CHR$(143), Ittle dew 2+ and Tri: of friendship and madness.

A charming game with a lot of care. Played for the music, stayed for the creative ideas.

I get that some developers want to make games that look like the old classics but to be honest the game looks like crap. I am not the person who rants about how the puzzler looks BTW. There are no PC options, you can press F 10 to quit and that's all your options, you can't skip the boring monologues....nothing! zero options. I played similar games on mobile phone that look cleaner and play better than this game. No basic accessibility option of course but I have to mention this. The worst thing is that the puzzles are well designed but the other elements are not or they are completely missing. Could've been a good game. Sadly i can't recommend this game.

When the game is more trail and error than linch-pin puzzler, that delay when you move and having to wait for all the robots to move around makes, plus having deaths reset everything, adds a consistent slowness that builds into a malaise of frustration. If you can get past that it seems to have alot of puzzles to throw at you and quirky character dialogue if you like that sort of thing.

Pretty good little Chip's Challenge-style puzzle game by, oddly enough, a handful of folks at a small Parisian security research firm. I randomly stumbled upon this on sale a year ago and promptly forgot about it. That is, until the power went out and I needed something to play that was already loaded on my Steamdeck and didn't require an internet connection. After our power returned, I slowly made my way through it as time allowed. What you get is roughly 100 levels with a good ramp-up in difficulty and mechanics, a minimal story very blatantly in service of the puzzling (to the point they break the fourth wall on this repeatedly), and a small cast of fun characters that I genuinely liked. There's also some small Easter eggs in the dialog and musical score that I liked; for example, one of the tracks has sound samples reminiscent of Kirby that were a decent bop to puzzle to. I did have some minor red-green colorblindness issues on some of the later floor tilesets, but the undo features and fast restarts made this forgiving whenever it came up. The game isn't exactly going to surprise you: it's comfort food for puzzle nerds. But that's good enough for me, and might be good enough for you.

Solid recommend. As someone who's never beaten "Baba is You", the level of challenge to these puzzles feels just right. You won't instantly be able to figure out solutions, but you can either stop and plan out the order of steps in advance, or you can trial-and-error your way through the problem-solving process. The visuals are both enjoyable to look at and easy to understand (minus the occasional directional floor arrow being hidden by a wall in the foreground). The tiles and enemies make sense for what they're supposed to do. I like that the game doesn't have to spell out the order of different actions when you make a move - you can intuitively understand it yourself. The music is amazingly crafted with care, and worth buying the soundtrack for. In fact, I bought the game after becoming aware of it by following Fear Of Dark on YouTube. It seems impossible to get tired of any level theme, and I've occasionally listened to the songs outside the game. I only have a few criticisms for the devs, but they're not enough to overrule my recommendation to buy. -I know people don't play puzzle games for the story, but the writing for the 5th puzzle master wasn't impressive with the 4th wall breaking, and felt like it cheapened the quality of the other characters' roles in the overall experience. -The game still has no audio control settings, which is a problem if I'm on Discord with friends and can't hear them. At least this can at least be resolved with my computer's volume mixer, but I don't think I'm acting entitled to ask for this as an in-game option. -The gems and floppy disks are a tried-and-true way to give players a greater optional challenge. In the short term, they feel rewarding WITHIN each stage ("Yes! I SUPER beat this level!") , but they don't feel worthwhile in the long-run ("How much do I really want to go collect more?"). It'd be terrific if different amounts of collected gems or disks could unlock something fun like cutscenes, or secret dialogue with the Puppet Panics, or lore or backstory.

I mostly checked out the game because of Fearofdark's awesome soundtrack, and I quite like all the expressive pixel art and the devilishly hard puzzles are dang clever (if not a little prolonged). It's too bad that I'm not smart enough to be able to see much of the labyrinth.

After 4 hours of play, I can totally recommend this game to anyone that loves classic puzzle game. This game not only looks retro with its pixel graphics, it also FEELS retro, as if you're playing a modern port of a classic MS-DOS game, like Chip's Challenge or God of Thunder. I have not found the gameplay too difficult yet. It just takes some thought, and you may have to plan out your moves. Also, I initially bought the game solely because I've been a fearofdark fan for years. Needless to say: the soundtrack slaps. EDIT: after 50 hours.... I can confirm it's a blast! To those that are stuck on the early levels, just push through until like level 12. I found some of the earliest levels to be the most difficult, but that was mainly because I didn't understand the rules. Pay close attention to the introduction cards when each new element is introduced. The rules are key!