That Pac-Man, but what if he was a little bit evil, Metroidvania now has a summer release date

Remember Secret Level, that Amazon show that came out last December? I wouldn't blame you if you already forgot about it, for the most part it was pretty forgettable considering how much of it could be boiled down to "damn… video games are violent, huh?", except positioning that as universally cool, actually (let's leave that whole conversation there). Easily the weirdest of all the episodes was the Pac-Man one, given that it was only Pac-Man in the sense that there was a floating yellow orb thing that kind of looks like the titular, iconic video game character.

Really, though, it's about some humanoid alien being told to eat everything it comes across by this orb, called Puck (get it?), resulting in something that's admittedly intriguingly alarming and grotesque, but also has such ridiculously high levels of edgy animated short film from the early days of YouTube energy. Three days after this episode came out, there came the surprise reveal that this episode is getting a Metroidvania video game adaptation called Shadow Labyrinth, for reasons I couldn't begin to understand.

Shadow Labyrinth - Release Date Announcement

Watch on YouTube

And now, thanks to the powers that be at Nintendo during today's Direct, a release date has been confirmed for the confusing game: July 18th. The release date announcement came with a snazzy new trailer that revealed you also get a mech? Honestly, the whole thing is unheard of levels of silly, I'm still struggling to believe that this is a real game that's been greenlit, but hey ho, perhaps we've got a new Hollow Knight on our hands.

Still can't quite tell if the story will be the exact same as the Secret Level episode, there's some big discrepancies (and a much bigger Nier: Automata vibe to it), so we'll all just have to wait a few more months to find out.