I really need to stop letting my eye get caught by shiny looking Kickstarters. Labyrinth is a great example of such a project that really doesn’t warrant my attention.
‘Once every 100 years, dark god Webenos bored with silence between stars and void starts his cruel ritual. For his own delight, he brings a tragedy to the world—Trial of Fire and Blood, which will emerge the mightiest of mortals. This time, the gloomy god reached for new weapon. He sent a meteorite from depths of space with a [sic] unknown, crystalline substance – Chaos Essence, able to distort bodies and minds of everyone who dares to touch it.’
I’ve no idea what that means. All I can really tell from the description and picture of the board is that it’s a 2–4 player game taking 15 rounds in which you’re roaming a somewhat randomly generated dungeon (I mean labyrinth), fighting each other and monsters. Oh, and there’s some unstated mechanism for causing the labyrinth map to change during the game. (I do hope the pieces in the picture above are temporary placeholders.)
The game ‘offers an advanced combat system with numerous status effects, broad choice of equipment and jewels along with unique character abilities.’ Sadly, the campaign description gives very few details on any of this, save that battles take multiple rounds and if you defeat a monster, you gain its ‘passive skill.’ There is one statement that I really can’t fathom: ‘players are responsible for calculating their own damage, once decided it cannot be changed after starting the next turn.’ I’m scratching my head about why you would want to change damage levels, apart from the case where you or someone else spots a mistake.
Apparently, ‘Labyrinth of Dimensions is far over its prototype stage’ – so, why are creators, Whip Studio, unable to tell us more about the game?! They do acknowledge that this is their first project and they’re still learning about the production process. Hmm: it strikes me that having a good understanding of that—everything about creating and delivering a game, in fact—would be a good idea before asking people to invest.
The game’s pretty expensive too: a lot for a 7×7 board, 37 floor tiles, 201 action cards, 12 character tokens and cards, along with a few other bits and bobs. The deluxe version includes an exclusive figure, a poster (!?) and a ‘premium’ version of the game, though what that means isn’t specified. Heck, it’s difficult to tell what even the basic game components will look like, as the pictures in the campaign are of something distinctly prototype-y despite the creators’ declaration above.
Labyrinth of Dimensions’ creators are clearly enthusiastic about their game, and have got a positive reception among independent gamers at ALEGramy 2025, a large game fair in their home country, Poland). However, the campaign leaves a lot to be desired.
This might be an interesting game, or it might not—I’ve ‘saved’ the campaign so I can check back before it closes, to see if Whip Studio can tell us more about it.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
