By Drew Wilson
Garfield, a Jim Davis creation, is perhaps much more well-known in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s than he is now. One part of the earlier merchandising pushes was a Game Boy game called “Garfield Labyrinth”.
Released in 1993, the game features Garfield the cat falling through a hole and ending up in a large labyrinth. The main objective is to escape the crazy puzzle solving dungeon.
The game starts with Garfield landing in the labyrinth. He gets up and collects a drill bit, then uses it to grind down a piece of weaker flooring (???). Realizing the usefulness of the drill bit, Garfield walks through the first exit door, letting you start your adventure.
In order to advance from one level to another, you must collect floating flashing objects strewn throughout the dungeon. If you collect them all, the flashing objects will fly out of Garfield and a large key will float down, unlocking the exit door and allowing Garfield to escape. You must avoid several monsters that can be defeated by leaving mines where they are about to travel to. You can also collect health via items like coffee as well as different types of in-level keys that can open up trap doors.
As I’m sure you can gather from my rundown, this game is somewhat… strange. First of all, I’ve read Garfield comic strips for years. Garfield wielding a drill, to me, just doesn’t strike me as part what Garfield is. It’s like the game took elements from Fire N’ Ice and threw them in as an interesting feature, but the transition just jarred in the process and you got this strange mix of elements that makes little sense.
Another really odd part is the fact that the breakable parts magically reappear after a few moments. If they reappear while Garfield is in the way, you immediately die and have to start over. The collection of shiny objects made the game seem like it was thrown together quickly. Couldn’t the designers put together, say, pieces of an artefact Garfield must collect in order to advance one level? The vague shiny objects that you collect that turns into a key isn’t a very good implementation of the concept of finding a series of objects to unlock a door to me.
The graphics are OK for a game boy game, but they sometimes seem a little crude at times.
The audio is also hit or miss. Some of the music throughout the game is OK, but the music you hear once you collect the key eventually winds up being like nails on a chalkboard. You can stand it the first few times you hear it, but after that, you just want to throw the game boy across the room because the game is forcing you to hear that high pitched tune for the 8th time.
Overall, I can see this game being given to a very young gamer to play, but as an older gamer, this just isn’t for me.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Made it to the 10th level, but lost interest.
General gameplay: 10/25
Replay value: 0/10
Graphics: 4/10
Audio: 2/5
Overall rating: 36%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85
