Labyrinthine Console Edition Review: Co-Op Janky Horror For Spooky Maze Fans

When I first booted Labyrinthine Console Edition on my Xbox Series X, I was struck by how oppressive the darkness feels. Even with full brightness, the edges of your flashlight fade fast; you can barely see more than a few feet ahead in many corridors. Sometimes it’s spooky. Other times it’s frustrating, when you walk into a wall or miss a hidden book simply because you could not see it. That tension is part of the experience, but it also highlights the occasional roughness in the art and lighting design.

You enter the game as one of up to eight players (or solo, if you prefer), exploring hedge mazes, abandoned buildings, and twisted paths. Monsters lurk in the gloom. You solve puzzles, collect items, avoid traps, and try to survive long enough to escape. In Story Mode, there is a narrative thread following Joan and dark disappearances. In the “Case Files” mode, maps are procedurally generated to keep things fresh.

This is a game that shines when you play it with others though. Communication becomes crucial: “I found a clue here,” “Don’t go that way,” “I heard something behind me”; those moments where players whisper over mics are the heart of the fun. Alone, the experience is more daunting. The game occasionally expects you to find tiny, hard-to-see objects, or to wander back and forth until you find the right lever or code fragment. That sense of pixel hunting gels with the maze theme, though it sometimes leans a little too much into annoyance.

The puzzles are rarely deep. Many are more about trial and error or remembering the route than unraveling a brilliant riddle. That’s not necessarily bad, the threat of monsters looming means puzzles shouldn’t stall the flow but I did crave a few more “aha” moments. More often, I found myself retracing steps, marking paths with glowsticks, and occasionally bumping into dead ends. Backtracking is baked into the design, sometimes elegantly, sometimes painfully.

The monsters vary nicely. Some patrol and force you to hide or be quiet. Others chase you directly if you attract their attention. Each one feels different enough that your strategy must adapt. The sound design is excellent. Hearing footsteps, growls, or that distant gasp in the dark is genuinely unnerving. In some levels I leapt when a silhouette suddenly appeared. That said, because visibility is so low, sometimes you never see the monster until it’s too late, weakening the intended scare.

Labyrinthine offers a lot of ambient horror and co-op thrills for the price. Suppose you’re in the right mindset, willing to tolerate occasional rough edges, enjoy discovery and fear over precision, and have friends to play with. In that case, you’ll find those late-night sessions where every hallway echo sends chills. But if you demand perfect polish or precise puzzle logic, you may chafe at the inconsistencies.

It’s not flawless, but the core horror concept and cooperative interplay carry it. For the spooky, maze-loving, late night crowd, there’s enough here to justify the buy, especially on Xbox where console horror is always welcome.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Labyrinthe Console Edition is now available for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X.