Its emerging shareware scene was one of the main draws towards the IBM PC platform for gaming in the early 1990s. Unlike the tightly controlled games console ecosystems, this platform gave smaller developers opportunities to make something against the usual conventions and consequently drew players as well.
Published by Epic Megagames, one of the "big 2" of the shareware market, One Must Fall gives a spin to the one-on-one fighting genre which had been tried a couple of times before, but got buried under the typical special move extravaganzas of the early 1990s. Namely, it puts a lot of focus on character development over the course of the game.
At first glance Arcanum looks like a role playing game full of great ideas: Its main attraction is its fantasy world, which is set at the time of an industrial revolution, that is about to turn it into a science fiction setting. It is a refreshingly unique place, full of whimsical magic and technical marvels, that has great potential for interesting twists to age-old cliches: How does an ageless being, like an elf, react to the rise of science, which is about to make the magic, that has kept him alive so far, obsolete? Is there a cheaper workforce than orcs, which can be exploited at will, for they are obviously evil and therefore deserve no less? Or what about safety: Should a wizard, whose magical power has an unpredictable effect on machines, be allowed to get close to steam engines or trains? There are so many new stories that could be told…
The time has come. The night of all nights has arrived, where I will dive into darkness. Evil awakens and a nightmare comes true: Dracula rules our city of New York and the lord of darkness is also the head of the local corporation for cyber-genetics, cyber-space, cyber-surgery, cyber-technology, cyber-weapons and cyber-surveillance. Appropriately, it has been a very long time since the city has seen any light; we are in an apparently endless night.