Labyrinth: The Computer Game is a 1986 licensed Adventure Game based on Labyrinth for the Commodore 64. Created by LucasArts and written by Douglas Adams, the game has a healthy dose of meta commentary and humor and uses a scroll wheel text parser.
After inputting your name, sex, and favorite color, the latter of which affects gameplay, you settle in to watch Jim Henson's latest film, Labyrinth, at the movie theater. But an annoying nerd heckling the film is the least of your worries—Jareth, the Goblin King, is very much real, and he pulls you into the world of the movie and his Labyrinth.
With only 13 hours to escape, plenty of characters to encounter, and the ever-present oubliettes threatening to waste time, you have your work cut out for you. Can you follow in Sarah's footsteps and escape the Labyrinth, or will you become just another of Jareth's goblin servants?
This game contains examples of:
- Author Vocabulary Calendar: Douglas Adams was really fond of the verb "adumbrate" and adumbrating the elephant provides another way to escape the oubliettes.
- Dungeon Bypass:
- Eating a peach will instantly free you from an oubliette at the cost of an hour of your time.
- Instead of going through the castle gates, which is an exercise in frustration, the player can find a side path to the Underground in the goblin city.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The game is the first Lucasfilm adventure game, developed before the SCUMM engine. Consequently, it features a lateral perspective and graphics similar to the original C64 Maniac Mansion, including a limited set of predefined verbs, but lacks point-and-click mechanics. The game also begins in a text parser mode before the player enters the movie theater.
- Foregone Victory: Once you hit Jareth with a crystal ball in the climax you've already won the game, with the confrontation afterward just rubbing it in.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Jareth refuses to let you into the castle if you're wearing a Goblin Helmet, forcing you to discard it elsewhere.
- Magical Mystery Doors: The wise man's garden, where all doors seemingly lead back to the same room. The player needs to ask the wise man for a cryptic hint, and follow the instructions on said hint (e.g. "Thoroughness is a virtue, but order is paramount." means go through every doorway, starting with the closest on the left and going clockwise.)
- Moon Logic Puzzle: One way to escape the oubliette is to call the annoying nerd, who "drives you up the wall" literally and allows your escape.
- Stereotypical Nerd: In the beginning of the game a nerd questions why Sarah eats the dangerous peach and rambles about the story's logic. The player can choose to complain about him/her or ignore him/her.
- Timed Mission: The player has 13 hours to escape the Labyrinth. In the final battle, Jareth turns your remaining time into minutes.
- Trap Door: Trap doors that lead to oubliettes are scattered all around the Labyrinth with the express purpose of wasting your time when you fall in.
- Trapped in TV Land: The game's plot is the player being pulled into the world of Labyrinth, the film, and working to escape before they're trapped forever.
- Zerg Rush: If you're unlucky enough to step into the Bog of Eternal Stench and don't have perfume to ward off the smell, every goblin in Goblin City will rush you at first sniff.