| Labyrinth: The Computer Game | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Lucasfilm Games |
| Publisher(s) | Activision |
| Designer(s) | David Fox Douglas Adams[2] |
| Programmer(s) | David Fox |
| Artist(s) | Gary Winnick Ken Macklin |
| Composer(s) | Russell Lieblich |
| Platform(s) | Apple II, Commodore 64/128, MSX2, PC-88 |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Graphic adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Labyrinth: The Computer Game is a graphic adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games and published in 1986 by Activision. Based on the fantasy film Labyrinth, it tasks the player with navigating a maze while solving puzzles and evading dangers. The player's goal is to find and defeat the main antagonist, Jareth, within 13 real-time hours. Unlike other adventure games of the period, Labyrinth does not feature a command-line interface. Instead, the player uses two scrolling "word wheel" menus on the screen to construct basic sentences.
Labyrinth was the first adventure game created by Lucasfilm. The project was led by designer David Fox, who invented its word wheels to avoid the text parsers and syntax guessing typical of text-based adventure games. Early in development, the team collaborated with author Douglas Adams in a week-long series of brainstorming sessions, which inspired much of the final product. Labyrinth received positive reviews and, in the United States, was a bigger commercial success than the film upon which it was based. Its design influenced Lucasfilm's subsequent adventure title, the critically acclaimed Maniac Mansion.
An unrelated game based on the same movie, Labyrinth: Maō no Meikyū ("Maze of the Goblin King"), was released in Japan for the Famicom and MSX in 1987, developed by Atlus and published by Tokuma Shoten.
- ^ "Computer Entertainer issue 5-10". January 1987. Retrieved 2024-03-12.
- ^ Lewis, Clovice (1986). Labyrinth: The Computer Game Player's Guide. Activision Entertainment Software.