Dr. Kobushi's Labyrinthine Laboratory

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!

Definitely recommend this game. It's not an easy one (like genuinely tough), but it's extremely satisfying to get through the puzzles. If you like games like Baba is You this right up your alley. The music is phenomenal, and the art, humor, and dialogue is top notch. There are some really cool critiques of every day elements. And for those of you with Steam Deck, happy to report the game runs great from the get go. Nothing to worry about on that end.

Great graphics -since I made them myself- but also throughout the development I had the chance to play & test a lot of the puzzles - and as an AVID fan of puzzle games I enjoyed them thoroughly. The attention on the music, the story, the concept designs, the puzzles, the sounds and even the programming ensures this is a top quality puzzle game that I'm 100% proud to be a part in the making of. And if you get to play this, don't stop until you meet all the characters, you'll thank me later.

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.

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.

If you saw the negative review: The dude that wrote the review couldn't even make it to stage 8. He missed out on everything this game has to offer and will never be able to enjoy it. It's a real shame, because there's so much to enjoy. I'm just gonna say the music is fantastic, the characters are charming and cute, and the puzzles are a challenge. If any of that sounds great then give it a shot. $9.99 is a great deal for a game like this.

Full disclosure, I mainly bought this game since I'm a huge fan of Fearofdark's music, but I also like to occasionally give puzzle games a chance. I feel like the difficulty curve on this one is a little bumpy in the beginning, but it smooths out after the first 10ish levels. I think what makes the first levels particularly frustrating is that they throw just a couple deceptively easy mechanics at you, but as a tradeoff, the puzzles are just about as hard as they possibly can be with those few mechanics. Some of those solutions felt like I was essentially just walking an invisible, predefined path until I got lucky and the robots got stuck in [i]just[/i] the right places so I could escape. Once a few more mechanics are introduced, things got a little easier for me. It wasn't so much about walking in [i]just[/i] the right places to manipulate robot positions, and I had the freedom to more leisurely wander about in each room and trial and error solutions. Many of those new mechanics are a lot more readable. E.g. you walk in front of a laser turret, you die. You can only walk in one direction on an arrow tile. These things make it easier to see when you're on the right track to solving a puzzle. Not, "oh man the robot is in coordinates (4,7), will it be in the wrong place 3 turns from now?" It's like playing chess with only knights—sure, every piece follows the same movement patterns, but those patterns aren't as predictable as other pieces that just move in straight lines. Anyway, enough ragging on those early levels, the subsequent ones are more tolerable. It took me half the time to beat the next ~15. I'm not too far, around level 25, but the difficulty has remained fair so far. I do recommend the game, but I'm not certain I'll be able to hang in there for its full duration. The few characters I've seen are fun enough and the music is of course excellent, but at the end of the day, it's just not my kind of game, I think. We'll see though, I've returned to it a couple of times already, and I'm curious to see what this Dr. Kobushi dude is all about. It's not an easy game for me to binge.

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 learned about this game through Fearofdark's music. I love their chiptune music and every song I'd heard from this game was fantastic, so giving this a try was an easy decision. These puzzles are no pushovers, but I was totally sold on the charm of this game. Really awesome package for the price, highly recommended.

This one's for all you Brain Geniuses out there who crave skull-bustin' turn-based puzzling, Smarty Skirts with a taste for smooth chippy tunes. Thought Colossi who can appreciate cute puppet banter. This numbskull thinks it's neat. but will have to wait for one of you kind abovementioneds to makes a level guide.