Originally conceived as an arcade-style shooter for platforms such as Windows and the Sega Saturn, Sony's purchase of the developer evolved the game into a PlayStation title.

[2] In the year 1286, an evil sorcerer named Zarok plotted to take over the kingdom of Gallowmere with his undead army.

[5] It is told in legend that the champion, Sir Daniel Fortesque, led the King of Gallowmere's army to victory and managed to kill Zarok before he succumbed to his mortal wounds.

[5] 100 years later, Zarok reappears, casting a spell over Gallowmere to plunge it into eternal night, awaken his undead army and steal the souls of the living.

[6] However, in the process, he unwittingly revives Dan, who has over time become a skeletal corpse, missing his jaw which fell off and the left eye he lost in the battle of Gallowmere.

[7] After also managing to defeat Zarok's champion, Lord Kardok, (who also died from being struck in the eye in the battle of Gallowmere by Dan's crossbowman and second in command, Canny Tim) Zarok turns into a powerful monster (form of a dragon), but Dan manages to defeat him.

[8] As Zarok uses his last breath to cause his lair to collapse in an attempt to take Dan with him (inadvertently crushing himself in the process), Dan escapes and Zarok's magical influence over the land is thwarted, thus restoring the souls back to the living and putting the dead back to rest.

[9][10] With the magic cast on him also wearing off as a result, Dan returns to his burial chamber where he once again enters eternal slumber.

[13] As development progressed, lead artist Wilson pushed the game into more of a Zelda role playing game-influenced direction as opposed to the original arcade-style concept.

[12] Sorrell admitted in a retrospective interview that MediEvil presented "a mountain of challenges", since they, as many other developers at the time, were new to 3D gaming.

He also admitted that some members of the team spent long nights without sleeping in order to finish the game on time.

[12] During development, the Cambridge team played beta versions of successful platformers such as Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot which helped them understand how they might solve some challenges in building a 3D action game for the first time.

[13][15] Sony requested that MediEvil should support the PlayStation analogue controller, which Sorrell described as a "particularly fortuitous event" as it allowed them to capture much more fluidity and intuitiveness within the game.

New concepts such as camera and character control presented many drawbacks and required the team to try out a number of approaches before settling on solutions that seemed to work.

The team finally settled on the concept that MediEvil would support both analogue and digital camera-related controls for balance reasons.

[15] Sorrell stated that a spline camera view was the first attempt, but he disliked it due to the lack of freedom for the player to feel as if he was exploring.

[16] There were also many levels and ideas from the original concept that the team were forced to remove due to time or budget constraints.

The original soundtrack of the game was composed by Paul Arnold and Andrew Barnabas, the musical duo more commonly known as "Bob & Barn".

SCE Cambridge instructed them to compose a Danny Elfman-influenced score, similar to those of Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Batman Returns.

[22] The character of Fortesque proved unpopular there, because Japanese audiences considered the idea of a skeleton being the protagonist strange.

[28] Edge's reviewer believed the game is "well crafted in some respects, underdeveloped in others": the "ingenious" feel was praised, but many levels were felt to be simple cases of maze navigation.