Labyrinth Of The Demon King

About Labyrinth Of The Demon King

Labyrinth Of The Demon King is a first-person dungeon crawler made mostly by one person, J. R. Hudepohl, and published by Top Hat Studios on 13 May 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It follows King's Field and Lunacid, and mixes their slow dungeon crawling with early survival horror and Buddhist folklore.

The world has entered the latter age of the Dharma: war, disease and famine have spread, and demons walk the earth. You are an ashigaru, a foot soldier of Lord Takeda Nobumitsu, the only survivor of an ambush a demon king led your lord into. Having vowed to kill the demon, you enter its labyrinth.

The labyrinth is split into four large areas of narrow halls and ruined rooms, with a few outdoor stretches through rain-soaked villages. You search them for limited supplies, armour and talismans, and for clues to the Demon King's puzzles, many of them written in scrolls you find along the way. Doors are jammed or locked, and some halls are blocked by breathing piles of gore. You start with a broken katana. Later weapons include naginatas, axes, spears, a heavy otsuchi hammer, a great dao, bows and a rifle, all of them upgradable and each with its own speed and stamina cost. Fights are slow and you tire fast: a second dodge within a few seconds drains your stamina, a parry has a tiny window, and a kick staggers an enemy long enough for a safe thrust. Saving happens at shrines, where essence can be spent on more health or stamina, and a tea house offers healing and merchants. Strange characters along the way may help or deceive you.

What frightens is the murk. The low-poly, dithered look is even more degraded than the 1990s games it copies, so the yokai and abominations read as wheezing, bloody masses rather than clear shapes. A stalking figure, the Nuribotoke, roams the halls much as Mr. X does in Resident Evil 2, and some scrolls describe the Buddhist Eight Hells in disturbing detail. Reviewers say the difficulty eases by the halfway point once you know the combat. It suits players who like King's Field, slow first-person exploration and survival horror's scarcity, and who do not mind demanding, clumsy-feeling combat at the start.

How to play Labyrinth Of The Demon King

1. Explore the labyrinth in first person, checking every corner for supplies, armour, talismans and scrolls.
2. Fight with your chosen weapon, watching your stamina bar, and use dodge, parry and kick to stay out of trouble.
3. Pray at shrines to save and spend essence on more health or stamina.
4. Read clues and use what you find to open locked doors and solve the Demon King's puzzles.
5. Visit the tea house for healing and to trade with its merchants, and upgrade the weapons you prefer.

Tips

• Use the kick: it staggers most enemies long enough for a thrust without a counterattack.
• When you raise your stats at a shrine, put stamina first; running dry mid-fight is what gets you killed.
• Do not dodge twice in a row; a second dodge within the cooldown takes a large bite of stamina.
• Learn where the roaming Nuribotoke walks, and run from fights you do not need.
• Read every scroll you pick up: many puzzle clues are hidden in them.
• Note where shrines are so you know how far you are from your last save.

Questions