The player navigates the pith-helmeted Sabreman through a 2D jungle maze while collecting amulet pieces to bypass the guardian at its exit.

The developers had finished Sabre Wulf's sequels in advance of its release but—in keeping with their penchant for secrecy—chose to withhold them for marketing purposes.

Ultimate hired outside developers to port Sabre Wulf to other computing platforms: the BBC Micro, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC.

[1] The player must reconstruct an amulet from its four pieces scattered throughout the maze to bypass the guardian at its exit,[2][4] a cave that leads to the game's sequel, Underwurlde.

[5] The maze's paths are bordered by tropical flora,[8] populated with attacking enemies and, on its outskirts, surrounded by mountains.

[9] The player swings Sabreman's sabre[5] with the push of the joystick's fire button[6] to defeat enemies that spawn in random on-screen locations.

[1][10] Enemies include spiders, scorpions, snakes, bats,[6] indigenous people, sleeping hippos, and a fast wolf (the titular Sabre Wulf[1]).

[14] After releasing Atic Atac at the end of 1983, Ultimate went silent until it ran teaser advertisements for Sabre Wulf in April 1984.

Ultimate withheld Knight Lore for about a year because they felt Sabre Wulf would not have sold as well once players saw the former's graphical advancements.

[27] Ultimate's new pricing strategy was a success[1] and Sabre Wulf topped the sales chart in the video game format.

[11] Personal Computer Games found one such tip: that the indigenous enemies make a sound when aligned with an amulet piece.

[6] Crash later reflected that comparisons to Atic Atac at its launch were unfair, similar to calling any two text adventures identical.

[9] Critics also noted a bug in two-player mode,[9] repeat screens from elsewhere in the maze,[8] and the frustratingly narrow window in which sabre swings register as enemy hits.

[24] While Sabre Wulf had some flicker issues, said Sinclair User, the game altogether met Ultimate's high quality benchmarks.

[25] A retrospective review from Retro Gamer reduced Sabre Wulf to "an interactive maze" packed with colour and hack-and-slash gameplay.

He described its colours as "glow(ing) like stained glass, and the effects of color [sic] purity are enhanced by contrast with the black background".

As an ordinary human with a hat and exaggerated nose, Sabreman fit the video game 8-bit era's character archetype.

[16] The last, unreleased game in the Spectrum Sabreman series, Mire Mare, was planned to have been similar to Sabre Wulf in gameplay.

[37] Elements from the original Sabre Wulf appear in other games, including Rare's Jet Force Gemini[38] and Killer Instinct, which features a character named Sabrewulf.