Ken's Labyrinth is a first-person shooter DOS game, released in 1993 by Epic Megagames (now called Epic Games), and was mostly coded by Ken Silverman, who went on to design the Build engine that was used in Apogee Software's Duke Nukem 3D. It consisted of three episodes, the first of which was released as shareware.

Ken's Labyrinth is graphically similar to id Software's Wolfenstein 3D in that the levels were designed using a grid-based plane, resulting in perpendicular walls and textureless floors and ceilings. Arguably its most astounding feature was the existence of interactive sprites and textures, for example, fruit machines. This move towards engines allowing greater interactivity was later mirrored by Silverman's Build engine.

The game has since been released as freeware, however there are a few different versions released, most of which have significant unique qualities.

The first of which is known as "Walken," the version which Ken Silverman had sent to companies for evaluation. This was the first version created, and therefore had very few features. There was almost no interactivity, and the code was mostly a test.

Afterwards followed version 2x, which featured 27 boards 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 them to purchase a completely random item from a vending machine. Slot machines were also implemented.

The final version (3x) featured 30 boards, and many new features the older version lacked, such as the ability to choose the item purchased from the vending machines, a difficulty option, an episode select, and also new enemies, textures and music.

Since the final version, a port named "Ken's Labyrinth SDL" has been released, rendering Ken's Labyrinth with OS, and 3D capabilities.

All of the versions (As well as the SDL port,) have been released as freeware on the official website, and are available for download.

Now here's something any true fan would appreciate. Epic Megagames shipped a small black hint manual with the full version of Ken's Labyrinth (see picture on right). In November 1999, I released the full version as freeware (see top of this page). As a bonus, I thought it would be cool to include the text of the hint manual. Andy Cotter wrote the original hint manual. Epic then edited it and spiced it up. On my website, I released the ORIGINAL unedited text written by Andy Cotter. In his original description to Episode 3, Level 8, there were a few extra lines:

"By the way, if you find a globe, save the game in front of it and ship the saved game off to us to win a prize (don't bother to if you used any cheat keys, we have ways of finding that out)."

I'm glad Epic removed this since I never had any prize planned. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it. I'm sure if this made it into Epic's hint manual, I would have remembered! Instead, it quietly slipped out in 1999. For the curious, the globe is still there on Episode 3, Level 8 (Map 28).

You could imagine my surprise when a fan by the name of Travis Rezka sent me his saved game on April 12, 2003 to claim his prize. At first, I had no idea what he was talking about - afterall, this was 10 years later! Because Travis was the first person to find the globe and point it out to me, he gets to have his name forever listed here on the official Ken's Labyrinth page. Yes folks, that's his prize. :) Nice job, Travis!