STAR WARS – Dark Forces uses the Jedi game engine which was developed for this game exclusively. At the time the game presented new features of first person shooter genre, one of which is the ability to look up and down and also it presented the new approach to level design with multiple floors.
The main protagonist of the game is a mercenary Kyle Katarn, who works for Rebel Alliance. The story takes place when he discovers the “Dark Trooper Project” of Empire. One of its segments is the development of a series of powerful battle droids and armored stormtroopers.
Critics praised the MS-DOS and Macintosh versions because of its innovative level design and technological advances, while the PlayStation version was highly criticized for bad graphics and low FPS rates. A sequel called Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II was released in 1997.