The game is centered on Sylvester "Sly Boots" Bucelli, a down-and-out private investigator who looks for work in the slums of Anachronox, a once-abandoned planet near the galaxy's jumpgate hub.

The player controls a party of up to three characters as they explore a 3D environment (colloquially known as a "field map") of futuristic cities, space vessels, and outdoor areas.

[3] For playable characters and computer-controlled enemies, each attack has their number of hit points (a numerically based life bar) get reduced, which can be restored through healing items or MysTech slags.

Use of MysTech and equippable shield cells require Neutron-Radiated Glodents (NRG), a separate energy reserve displayed beneath a character's life bar.

To create MysTech, players place colored bugs (found on small hills in several game locations) in empty slots on an Elementor Host.

[5] The game takes place on Anachronox (a portmanteau of anachronism and noxious, meaning "poison from the past"[6]), a small planet floating inside a huge artificial sphere known as Sender One.

[7] Civilizations conduct business using currency like the one-dollar coin known as a "loonie",[8] while several people collect MysTech—shards of rock with markings, believed to be dormant weapons or art pieces created by an extinct alien race.

This race is obsessed with the ideal of democracy, and though they possess incredible scientific and engineering knowledge, they are constantly bogged down by their own ineptitude and the frailties of the democratic process.

Two further allies are the femme fatale Stiletto Anyway—a 25-year-old former companion of Boots known for being stealthy and aloof[16]—and Paco "El Puño" Estrella, a washed up superhero who's turned to alcoholism after his comic book series was canceled.

The heroes return to Sender Station's Lounge of Commerce; Democratus joins the party, the High Council having shrunken the planet to human height.

[22] While searching for equipment, Boots earns money as an erotic dancer and encounters Stiletto Anyway, an old flame who's become an assassin and plots revenge against Detta.

Ion Storm began developing Anachronox in 1996, funded by Eidos Interactive as part of a three-game deal alongside Daikatana and an unplanned third game.

"[31] Tom Hall announced that Anachronox would feature a "turbulent story with a roller coaster of emotion", and promised it would bring personality and humor to the role-playing genre.

"[33][38] Hall aimed to feature high-quality direction and camera-work in Anachronox,[36] reminiscent of epic cinematic themes in role-playing video games like the Final Fantasy franchise.

Games: Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, LucasArts adventures (Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer rock), Ape Escape (buy it now), Mario, Ultima III, Wizardry I, oh, I'm sure I'm forgetting some!

(a battle editor), ION Radiant (for level design, based on QERadiant), NoxDrop (for item and character placement), and Planet (a spline-based camera system coded by Joey Liaw).

So now I have to hit the guy three times..."[33] Hall also sought to ensure players knew their next goal, and invented the character of Fatima Doohan to keep track of missions.

[35] Ben Herrera completed several sketches of characters and worlds by August 1997, and the team hoped to achieve full engine functionality by September 2, Hall's birthday.

[65] Among the game's maps developed in 1998 were Hephaestus (polished by David Namaksy); Whitendon (Iikka Keränen); Democratus, "Matrix 0", and certain interiors of Anachronox (Larry Herring); and the city of Limbus (Rich Carlson).

[46] Computer Games Magazine afterward commented that Anachronox had "wider roots than a Banyan grove and more promise per square byte than a CD collection of political speeches.

[83] Though losing money, Eidos allowed development of Anachronox to continue due their high esteem of Tom Hall, as well as a desire not to punish the game's team for the delays resulting from assisting Daikatana.

[96][1] Joey Liaw set up a GeoCities website for reporting bugs and technical information after the game's release, and worked on a new patch in his spare time.

[59][119] The Evening Standard wrote, "Anachronox swaps puzzlement for humour while keeping the character interaction, deep storyline and strategic battles that make the Japanese games so good.

[49][122][123][136][137] The later levels were less well received, with one reviewer suspecting that Ion Storm ran out of time to polish the game, as some end-game locations were "hideously ugly, with huge slab-like polygons, dodgy backdrops and pixelated low resolution textures".

[110][119][125][132][139] The Advertiser summarized the plot as "a beefy storyline loaded with strong characters, powerful dialogue, outrageous humour, seemingly endless surprises and a wild ride around the galaxy.

[144] Sly was well-received, described as a "typical downtrodden B-movie private eye",[110] a "Mickey Spillane-style hero" in a cyberpunk setting,[145] and a "space-age Sam Spade".

[123] Reviewer Elliott Chin disagreed, evoking "a superb sense of timing, starting out small and slowly building to the main event",[126] while David Phelan stated that strong character writing would encourage gamers to play beyond the "pedestrian-paced" opening scenes.

[149] Though received well, the game did not prevent the closure of Ion Storm's Dallas office in July 2001; John Romero and Tom Hall departed after its release.

"[1] Cinematic director Jake Hughes independently combined the game's cut-scenes into a two-and-a-half-hour film titled Anachronox: The Movie,[152][153] released as 13 MPEG files on Machinima.com.

[151][162] Ion Storm's closure nixed plans for a continuation; Hall has unsuccessfully tried to purchase the intellectual property rights to the Anachronox universe.