
Although violent, the game had its own sense of humor and contained some sexual themes. The game's improvements included introduction of true room-over-room situations, the use of 3D voxels instead of 2D sprites for weapons and usable inventory items, transparent water, climbable ladders, and assorted vehicles to drive (some armed with weapons). Mark Adams ported Shadow Warrior to Mac OS in August 1997. Shadow Warrior was developed using Ken Silverman's Build engine and improved on 3D Realms' previous Build engine game, Duke Nukem 3D.

The shareware version was released for the PC on May 13, 1997, while the full version was completed on Augand released in stores on September 16, 1997. Shadow Warrior is a first-person shooter video game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive.
