''Ken's Labyrinth'' is a

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the p ...

for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

published in 1993 by

Epic MegaGames Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Ma ...

. It was programmed by Ken Silverman, who later designed the

Build engine Build Engine is a first-person shooter engine created by Ken Silverman, author of '' Ken's Labyrinth'', for 3D Realms. Like the ''Doom'' engine, the Build Engine represents its world on a two-dimensional grid using closed 2D shapes called sector ...

used for rendering in 3D Realms's ''

Duke Nukem 3D ''Duke Nukem 3D'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by 3D Realms. It is a sequel to the platform games ''Duke Nukem (video game), Duke Nukem'' and ''Duke Nukem II'', published by 3D Realms. ''Duke Nukem 3D'' features the adventures ...

'' (1996). Ken's Labyrinth consists of three episodes, the first of which was released as shareware. An earlier version was self-published by Silverman.

Technology

''Ken's Labyrinth'' is graphically similar to

id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...

's ''

Wolfenstein 3D ''Wolfenstein 3D'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game '' Castle Wolfe ...

'' in that the levels were designed using a

grid Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Common usage * Cattle grid or stock grid, a type of obstacle is used to prevent livestock from crossing the road * Grid reference, used to define a location on a map Arts, entertainment, and media * News ...

-based

plane Plane(s) most often refers to: * Aero- or airplane, a powered, fixed-wing aircraft * Plane (geometry), a flat, 2-dimensional surface Plane or planes may also refer to: Biology * Plane (tree) or ''Platanus'', wetland native plant * ''Planes' ...

, resulting in

perpendicular In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle (90 degrees or π/2 radians). The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the ''perpendicular symbol'', ⟂. It can ...

walls and textureless floors and ceilings. Arguably its most astounding feature was the existence of interactive sprites and textures, like slot and vending machines. This move towards

engines An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power g ...

allowing greater interactivity was later elaborated upon by Silverman's Build engine. ''Ken's Labyrinth'' was released as

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

on November 16, 1999. Several different versions were released and are available for download from the official website. The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

followed on July 1, 2001.

Game versions

The first version is known as ''Walken'', the version which Ken Silverman sent to companies for evaluation. This was the first version created, and therefore it had very few features. There was almost no interactivity, and the code was mostly a test. The first version to be released was a modified version of ''Walken'' called ''Ken's Labyrinth''. Many changes were made, including interactivity, an early money system and music. It was sold by Ken directly, using the Advanced Systems company name, a company that Ken's older brother Alan Silverman was involved with. Following that was version 1.1, which featured 27 levels and an alternate final boss. New enemies, textures and music were added, as well as a money system with which the player could locate money and use it to purchase a random item from a

vending machine A vending machine is an automated machine that provides items such as snacks, beverages, cigarettes, and lottery tickets to consumers after cash, a credit card, or other forms of payment are inserted into the machine or otherwise made. The fir ...

. Slot machines were also implemented. The game was then submitted to fifteen different software companies, including Silverman's later employer

Apogee Software 3D Realms Entertainment ApS is a video game publisher based in Aalborg, Denmark. Scott Miller founded the company in his parents' home in Garland, Texas, in 1987 as Apogee Software Productions to release his game '' Kingdom of Kroz''. In the ...

, which appreciated the engine but requested considerable changes to the game. Released in March 1993 by

, the final version (2.01) featured 30 levels, and many new features that older versions of the game lacked, such as the ability to choose the item purchased from the vending machines, a difficulty option (on "easy" mode, or "Don't hurt me," enemies do not use melee attacks, while on "hard" mode, or "Ouch!" they do), an episode select, and also new enemies, textures and music with additional artwork made by

Misko Iho Misko Iho (born Mikko Iho; May 9, 1975, in Helsinki) is a Finnish film director. In the mid 1990s, he was part of the computer demo group, Future Crew, and later worked designing computer game graphics in the United States. He also worked in or ...

Future Crew Future Crew was a Finnish demogroup that created PC demos and software, active mostly between 1987 and 1994. History The group was founded in 1986 by PSI (Sami Tammilehto) and JPM (Jussi Markula) as a Commodore 64 group, before moving to the PC ...

. A ''Ken's Labyrinth'' port to modern operating systems such as

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

using

Simple DirectMedia Layer Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in sever ...

called ''LAB3D/SDL'' was created by Jan Lönnberg and released in 2002. A version of the port which includes new higher resolution textures and later adapted for SDL 2 was also created by Katie Stafford. A fork of that version also exists supporting Nintendo Switch.LAB3D-SDL for Nintendo Switch
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Reception

The game was reviewed in 1993 in '' Dragon'' #199 by

Sandy Petersen Carl Sanford Joslyn "Sandy" Petersen (born September 16, 1955) is an American game designer. He worked at Chaosium, contributing to the development of ''RuneQuest'' and later creating the acclaimed and influential horror role-playing game ''Call ...

in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 2 out of 5 stars.

References

External links

The official ''Ken's Labyrinth'' pageLAB3D/SDL
* * {{Build engine games 1993 video games DOS games DOS-only games DOS-only freeware games Build (game engine) games Windows games Linux games Video games developed in the United States Video games with 2.5D graphics Commercial video games with freely available source code Single-player video games Sprite-based first-person shooters