The player, as the "last of a great line of hero-kings", is tasked with saving the world by defeating the Warlock Lord, who is attempting to summon the demon Behemoth out of Hell.

Shadowgate is a point-and-click adventure game in which the player must solve a series of puzzles throughout a castle to proceed to the Warlock Lord's chamber.

If all torches are extinguished, the player soon stumbles, breaking their neck, and must then continue from a saved game (or the area where they died, in console versions).

The player may acquire various items such as a sword, a sling and other ancient weapons which can be used at the appropriate time to deliver a fatal blow to specific enemies.

The game has many instances of death, including being burned by dragon's breath, attacked by a cyclops, sucked into outer space through a broken mirror, dissolved by acidic slime, eaten by sharks, mauled by a wolf-woman, and suicide.

These deaths are often graphically described in the game's text (along with frequent sardonic and humorous comments), even in the NES version (in spite of Nintendo's policy of censorship at the time).

Shadowgate was originally released for Macintosh in 1987 and ported to other computers, including a color version for the Atari ST and Amiga later the same year.

The success of Shadowgate on the NES prompted ICOM Simulations to have Kemco port the other MacVenture titles to the console, including Déjà Vu and Uninvited.

The NES port was rereleased in October 2017 (alongside Déjà Vu and Uninvited) for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in a collection called 8-Bit Adventure Anthology: Volume 1, developed by Abstraction Games.

In 2006, Infinite Ventures licensed the rights to the ICOM Simulations portfolio to Zojoi, LLC, a company formed by Shadowgate's original game designers, Dave Marsh and Karl Roelofs.

[17] In the 2nd update of the Kickstarter campaign, the Black Axe, an item and quest that had been cut from the original game due to size constraints, was announced to be reintroduced in the new version of Shadowgate.

The novel acts as a prequel to the game, and featured contributions from Shadowgate co-creators Dave Marsh and Karl Roelofs, who provided important details and information to the book's author.

[20] In October 2021, Zojoi and Azure Drop Studios released Shadowgate VR: The Mines of Mythrok, an exclusive Oculus Quest title.