ShadowCaster

The player takes the role of Kirt, a human with powers of shapeshifting. Among other forms, Kirt can become a huge cat-like animal, a floating tentacle-wielding gazer, and a dragon.

Kirt – The default character. All abilities are weak, but has some fighting skill and is the only form in which magic rejuvenates. Health also rejuvenates but slower than magic does.

In the beginning of the game Kirt finds out that he is not in fact human, but comes from a parallel world where there was a war raging between shapeshifters for centuries. Kirt, and his grandfather, are the last of their kind, and now the evil ones have found them. Kirt's grandfather opens a portal back to the homeworld, and that is where the story begins. Kirt's mission is to stop the demons once and for all, but first he will need to awaken his innate shapeshifting powers, which is where the obelisks come into play. Going up to one of these and touching it will unlock a new form, and the first is the cat form.

The ShadowCaster game engine, a successor of the Wolfenstein 3D engine and a predecessor of the Doom engine, was written by id Software's John Carmack and licensed to Raven Software. Carmack wrote the ShadowCaster 3D engine during his technology research after id Software completed Wolfenstein 3D. The engine features diminished lighting, texture-mapped floors and ceilings, walls with variable heights and sloped floors. The engine was "about half as fast as that of Wolfenstein" but fit the exploration of ShadowCaster rather than the fast-paced action of Doom.

The game supported the Logitech Cyberman 6DOF controller. It used the vertical axis to control the player's flying height and provided tactile feedback when the player bumped a wall or was hit.

Reviewing the game for PC Gamer UK, Gary Whitta remarked that "Underworld fans will lap [ShadowCaster] up — as should anyone thinking of toying with the genre." The magazine later named it the 49th best computer game of all time, calling it "an admirable attempt to show that RPGs don't have to be boring, complex and number-heavy".

Ed Ricketts of PC Format praised ShadowCaster's "bags of atmosphere" and called it "the best role-playing game to appear for a long, long while". In Computer Gaming World, Scorpia wrote: "Those who prefer the regular Ultima style of role-playing will probably want to skip this one. But players looking for pure, no-nonsense hack-n-slash will have a blast." Writing for CD-ROM Today, Trent C.