Navigating The Labyrinth

The city of Pherae is in decline. It was once rich, but has been overshadowed by the Labyrinth Kingdoms and their Minotaur king.

Every year, brave adventurers venture forth to solve the mysteries of the labyrinths in order to return with treasure to save their dying city, but none ever return. This loss of healthy, skilled people only serves to accelerate the decline.

Can you succeed where others have failed? Test your mettle against the mazes and discover the secrets and riches that lie within!

Navigating the Labyrinth is a classic first-person party-based dungeon crawler RPG with grid-based movement and turn-based combat. It is a standalone sequel to Into The Inferno and Crossing The Sands and you do not need to play the previous games to enjoy this one completely.

STATUS

This game is currently in development with a planned release in April 2025. I'm planning on running a Kickstarer campaign in August 2025 to raise some funds for more 3D models. Follow here on Kickstarer to be notified of the launch.

DEMO NOTES

This is a very early proof-of-life (pre-alpha) demo meant to showcase and get feedback on the visual style, UI, and gameplay, and a lot will change between now and release day. It's Windows-only for now, but the release version will also support Linux.

The demo includes access to 6 of the 15 planned major zones.

These are:

• City of Pherae
• Southern Hills
• Northern Hills
• Catacombs
• City of Zakros
• Approaching The Labyrinth

The City of Zakros just has some placeholder shop buildings, and I plan to build out the whole thing after I get more 3D models (which is what the Kickstarter is for). I have a specific style in mind, but I can fall back to something else simpler if it doesn't get funded.

The catacombs are a chaotic mess because right now it's just a playground to experiment with various graphics and I haven't drawn the actual layout for it yet.

Once the game is farther along, I plan to release a demo on Steam. I don't have a specific date, just "sometime in the fall of 2024" and likely between the end of September and middle of October. I may or may not release additional updates to Itch.

Please share any comments and observations on this game, and what changes/improvements would make it more fun/enjoyable for you.

It's never too early to report bugs if you find them. The individual-turn-based combat system that replaces round-based combat is brand new, and probably has some issues. By all means, button mash and experiment to see if you can break anything.

KNOWN ISSUES

Sages do not have all of their spells defined yet, and some of the Sage and Oracle spells don't work yet (code not yet written).

Custom portrait selection is not done yet and only partially works.

There are not any quests or NPCs in the world yet. I have planned more of them for this game than the previous two, but I need to do more map building so I have somewhere to put them.

The late attack ability for hidden characters only makes sense in the context of round-based combat, so I'll need to rework or replace it for this new combat.

DEFINITELY NOT DONE YET

Only a small number of monsters have been added to the game.

I plan to polish the UI quite a bit more before release. This is especially true of things new in this game, like the one-at-a-time combat interface, and combat and magic sounds and indicators. Some of the GUI windows and user interface elements will change to match the newer style, and some will keep the classic style of the first two games.

I have not yet finished any of the soundtrack, so there's no music in the demo. I have a good number of songs in progress, but none are ready yet.