Game Journal: Labyrinth Runner / Trick Trap: 1771 (No Death Clear, Hardest)

I cleared Labyrinth Runner (a.k.a. Trick Trap: 1771), a 1987 top-down run 'n gun game from Konami, on the hardest difficulty with no deaths. No autofire was used.

Labyrinth Runner is short and simple. You run around and shoot in the direction you're moving, like in Commando. The A button makes you shoot, the B button cycles through your weapons, and later in the game you can find smart bombs that you use with A+B. Enemies randomly drop weapon upgrades; collecting several of the same type of upgrade (S: shot, L: laser, B: bombs) will upgrade that weapon, and collecting an "SP" upgrade makes you move faster.

Konami released this game the same year as Contra (game journal post here), and it is similarly short and forgiving. Personally I found it so easy/short that I didn't really feel like I'd actually learned a full arcade game, even when I got a no death clear on the hardest difficulty. Much like Contra, this game also gets significantly easier if you use autofire or can mash the fire button quickly.

The game still has lots of interesting ideas though. The two maze stages have random layouts, which is a cool thing to put in the middle of a run of an otherwise-static arcade game. The HUD even has a compass to help you find the exit! I get the feeling the mazes might just be picking between a few preset layouts, but I didn't look into it deeply. The first of the two mazes also has a short time limit and a low difficulty, which incentivizes you to quickly take out lots of respawning enemies in an attempt to farm bombs and weapon upgrades. It reminds me of the early areas in a lot of traditional roguelikes, but it's a dynamic I haven't experienced in many arcade games before.

Your bomb weapon feels very strange to aim at first. The bombs look like they're being thrown high up in the air, but their collision is based on the sprite's position in 2D space so they'll explode if they visually overlap with an enemy's sprite. So in effect it's like you're throwing a projectile that initially moves further upwards than you're aiming and will accelerate downwards as it moves. Bombs also fly faster if you throw them when you're moving, instead of standing still. Theydo so much damage against bosses (and groups of enemies before you get the spread shot upgrade) that it's worth learning how to aim them too. They're interesting!

Most of the game's bosses are very simple and easily exploitable, such as the laser wall and the centipede, and/or can trivially be burst down in a few seconds, like the cyclops pair and the bosses guarding the castle entrance. But because the entire game is already very short and easy, I mostly just find this aspect of it charming. If you like trying to figure out boss exploits by yourself, this game is full of bosses who will almost certainly crumble to any idea you can come up with.

If you play Labyrinth Runner yourself, bear in mind that you have a giant hurtbox and can also fall off the edge of bridges, which feels unusual for a top-down run 'n gun. So if you walk next to a bullet or if you stand on the edge of a bridge, you will die. Dying also makes you lose all of your weapons and speed upgrades, so recovery can be a struggle. Be careful!

All in all, Labyrinth Runner was far too short and easy for my taste but I found it charming nonetheless. I love how it mixes a few random stage layouts and a small amount of roguelike-style random resource farming into a regular arcade game, I love how simple and physical its bosses are (even if most of them are easy and exploitable) and I love trying to aim its weird bomb weapon. I'm glad I played it, and you should give it a try if those things appeal to you or if you just want a relatively easy arcade 1CC!