The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost

The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost is a deliberately old-school first-person role-playing game that wears its inspirations proudly, aiming to recreate the feel and structure of classic dungeon crawlers from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Developed and published by Steve Jarman, the game is clearly designed for players who appreciate methodical exploration, grid-based movement, and a slower, more tactical pace that prioritizes planning and survival over spectacle. Rather than modernizing the genre with streamlined systems or cinematic presentation, it embraces retro conventions almost entirely, making it a niche but sincere tribute to its roots. The game places players in the role of a four-character adventuring party tasked with descending into the sprawling Labyrinth of Andokost, an underground maze tied to the fate of the city above. Movement is strictly tile-based, with players advancing one square at a time and turning in fixed increments, reinforcing a deliberate rhythm that demands attention to positioning and orientation. This approach emphasizes careful navigation and spatial awareness, encouraging players to mentally map corridors, intersections, and dead ends as they…

When you start the game, the first thing you see is some broken HTML and an error message. After a brief party creation step, you enter the game, and are treated to some dialogue between your characters, which is a nice touch. Once you get going, though, you notice the sluggish and unresponsive controls that make just moving around, managing your inventory, and interacting with the environment a chore. Then, a little ways in, you encounter your first opponent: a rat, which you'll fight on a narrow platform with nowhere to go. These rats take upwards of twenty hits to kill (and your attacks can still miss), but they can easily kill one of you in just a few. That's not too out of bounds for Dungeon Master-likes, since you're meant to move around in combat to avoid getting hit - but here, you can't do that. While any of your attacks are on cooldown, which lasts about five seconds, you are rooted to the spot. You can deal extra damage from behind, you can attack from range, you can run away to recover, you can do this or do that - but all of these tactics are hindered by the fact that you can't move after striking, even if movement control itself wasn't already compromised. Thi…

Mods for Legend of Grimrock are better than this. If you don't know what you are doing as a developer don't try to innovate, you'd be better off just copying what other successful games do. Combat is unbearable, complete garbage, deal breaker.

To hard mobs, addictive secret walls, an alluring dungeon masters only door at the end of the game that i can't work out how to open!, and annoying lock you in place combat mechanics whenever someone attacks. Oh and balls to the wall opening menu theme (how could I forget). I really want to open that door but I never will. Such is the life of the pathetic non dungeon master gamer of the world. :(

Nice little crawler with good puzzles and a very addictive "find all secrets and collectibles" side. BUT there are one thing to keep in mind before starting out: Combat is based on littarly backstab, which means you have to stand sideways to the enemy and wait til they move, and then move yourself behind them. You may like this kind of combat or you might not - it does require a bit of patience and sometimes takes the fluidity of the game. I found it kind of relaxing, and -- if you don't like this kind of combat: The game offers a lot of ways to get rid of enemys via the enviroment (like trapdoors and impalers) and it's actually cool and funny to lure your enemy into a trap and then set if off.

A really good "dungeon crawler" with a good balance of exploration, fighting monsters, puzzle and trap solving problems plus a basic character progression system. It also has some interesting gameplay design features, and a basic but decent story. Similar in quality to the Legend of Grimrock 1 in terms of graphics and use interface but not quite as "polished". It takes about half an hour or so of gameplay to figure out the game mechanics as there is not much in the way of a tutorial, and overall it takes a few hours to really "get into the game". There are number of software "features" and / or bugs in the game, but no game breaking ones. However, there is a serious software bug that affects saving your game or where you up or down dungeon levels - which you do a lot of. It takes about 2 or 3 minutes every time you save a game, or go up or down a level which loads the dungeon level. Therefore, you need to be very patient as this happens a lot and it can be annoying! If you are the sort of person who would get frustrated by some of the above issues then the game definitely falls into the Steam category "Not Recommended". (I have fairly powerful Windows 11 system so I do not thi…