Last Labyrinth finds you lashed to a wheelchair, only able to communicate with your gaze and a laser pointer in a house filled with complex puzzles and lethal traps.
Luckily, a young girl seems keen to help you get through the house, silently following your instructions as you look around. Well, luckily for you, but unlucky for her. Because I don’t always have the right idea what to do to work the odd mechanisms in this place, resulting in some grim ends for the two of us.
The naturally-immersive nature of VR works wonders for this horror title, especially with the narrative setup. Being confined to a wheelchair makes sense within the framework of sitting down and wearing a headset, so there’s a kind of logic to it all. Still, it feels confining as you play. You want to go manipulate things yourself, but you can’t within the frame of the game, forcing a feeling of helplessness on you. This only gets stronger when some danger comes your way, which WILL happen soon enough.
To get through the gloomy mansion, you’ll need to communicate things to Katia, a girl who’s presumably trapped in here with you. Katia’s free to move around, and will help wheel you from room to room if you can help her with the puzzles. To do this, you’ll look at objects in the room and turn on a laser pointer using one controller. This pointer is mounted to your head in the game, so you’ll be controlling everything with your gaze. Katia will even ask if she has the right object, which you can affirm by nodding, or shake your head to show you mean something else.
No words were exchanged between us in the demo, which further increase my sense of isolation, and yet having such a bright, colorful friend in this lonely place also made me feel a sense of companionship and connection. I felt a bond was building quickly, although perhaps dependence might be a better word.
Whatever that connection was, I didn’t want either of us to die in grim fashion, but Last Labyrinth has some unsettling ends in store for you should you fail. And you will fail, because the game’s puzzles aren’t always solved in the way you think. I thought I had the right idea for one puzzle until a giant column of saws came descending down on us. Watching these blades roll toward me was a chilling sight in VR, sending my pulse racing even though I knew the crowd of BitSummit was all around me.
Even in this short demo, Last Labyrinth sent me through an array of emotions, making me feel lost, afraid, constricted, but hopeful with the help of my unlikely ally. It was a heady experience, one made all the more powerful by its chilling, vivid experiences of my own demise in VR. Definitely one of my favorite experiences of the show, and a horror title I am beyond excited to play in full.
Last Labyrinth is projected to release this Summer, but in the meantime, you can follow its creation on the game’s site.
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