You’ve got to play my dark horse GOTY candidate if you too are a sicko for one of the ultimate RPG gimmicks: a trash level 1 sword that can be forged into a god slayer

Labyrinth of the Demon King is a must-play: It’s a first-person, survival horror dungeon crawler that feels like an unholy fusion of King’s Field, Resident Evil, and Condemned. When you do check it out, though, I’ve got one big piece of new player advice.

Actually four, come to think of it:

• Always be kicking
• Consumables (including talismans) are your friend
• Upgrade your stamina three or four times before you ever touch health
• And the big one: Wait even longer than you think you have to before upgrading the broken katana.

Mild location and item spoilers for Labyrinth of the Demon King ahead.

You begin the game with a broken katana, with Demon King’s first real weapon being a grody, rusted sword for the first act. You’ll soon meet a little blacksmithing Yokai who will upgrade your gear (+1, +2, etc.) in the classic FromSoftware fashion, but he’ll also offer to fix your broken katana⁠—he just needs an intact one to donate materials.

Here’s the rub: He explicitly says not to just use the first crappy sword you come across, and will even mock you if you use the first act’s rusted blade. It’s a one-time offer, and you’ll get what you pay for. With that in mind, I kept the katana hilt in my back pocket until I unlocked the main shop, bought the much nicer Royal Katana, and combined that with the hilt. Turns out, I should have waited even longer.

I messaged PCG Australia editor Shaun Prescott (who wrote our Labyrinth of the Demon King review) something along the lines of, “gee, I hope there isn’t a better katana down the line I should have used instead.”

“Yes there are multiple versions of the blade you can create,” Labyrinth of the Demon King lead dev, J.R. Hudepohl told me in an interview this week. “While the result will always be a Chrysanthemum Blade, the model and stats are unique based on the katana used for the repair.

“For example, if you’d used the rusty katana instead of the royal, you’d get a weaker sword with a slightly different look, and if you used the one found in the prison/bathhouse you’d get a repaired model that physically resembles them more and inherits some of their stats/applied status effects.”

Hudepohl then gave me a hint that now has me ready to take a second trip through the labyrinth.

“If you decide to replay it I’d recommend trying the prison sword to repair the broken katana as that’s my personal favorite result,” he said.

That really got me, because the prison sword in question is a bad ass cursed red blade in the spirit of Elden Ring’s Rivers of Blood. The good news is I didn’t even consider uninstalling the game from my Steam Deck after finishing it.

I love to be surprised by a game after the fact, to feel like I knew it so well and find out it had secrets and systems I never even engaged with⁠—it’s a hallmark of some of my very favorite games like Disco Elysium or Baldur’s Gate 3. The fact that many players, like me, might completely miss the sheer depth of Demon King’s weapon upgrades puts a big dumb grin on my face.

Shaun gave Labyrinth of the Demon King an 81% score in his review, calling it “the most potent weird horror we’re likely to see in 2025.” You can grab Labyrinth of the Demon King on Steam⁠—it runs flawlessly on Steam Deck⁠—for a launch price of $15, rising to an MSRP of $20 on May 27.