I used to play it as a kid, and have been trying to look it up. Here's what I remember about it:

-It came on a single floppy disk
-It involved timetravel
-It involved exploring a castle via sidescrolling screens
-One of the first puzzles was resolved by telling an executioner that the earth actually turns around the sun, and not the other way around, distracting him and giving your friend enought time to sneak up behind him and hit him in the back.

Could it be Future Wars - Adventures in Time?

Even if this game is not the one you are thinking about, it should be here. Great game!

That's not the one, I think it was more obscure. But yes, Future Wars should definitely be in GOG.

Arcanum?

No, it wasn't an RPG, It was an adventure if I remember it correctly. I think mine came in a magazine or a book. All the game was on the castle, at least what I've played of it back in the day. And the friend that saved you from the executioner was a masked weird guy. I think it was also a sequel to some other game, because when that character shows up, we're supposed to already be familiar with him... I wasn't.

I'm starting to wonder if this game was even released in the US... It may have been European.

When you say floppy disc do you mean the small hard square ones or the older actual floppy Apple// ones?

The small, hard, square 1,44mb ones. And it was my only gray floppy.

Edit: The most similar game i actually found was "The Ancestral Trail". Only that one has a forest instead of a castle, and the graphics seem less detailed than what I remember. Plus, there doesn't seem to be an executioner scene. My game had to be run on a Windows 95 PC (because that's what I had at the time) and to have been released by 1997 at the most (because i left my hometown by the end of 97, and I distinctively remember playing it with my cousins who stayed behind).

That's not that, but thanks.

Here`s a list of computer games from 1997, maybe you`ll find it here:

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1997_video_games]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1997_video_games[/url]

The game I'm looking for was a 2d indie game where I controlled a knight I think and you where descending a tower where you'd meet this little cloaked demon and buy equipment from him, at some point he would strart hunting you with a fork and a knife and u had to run away, this game also had a sequel (not sure if the name is the same though) where you had the same guy and you were a king/noble/hero or something and you would go around doing quests getting gear etc. The sequel had teeth as it's hp and in the end you would get tricked by being given a magic sword of air that did 0 damage ...
if you know anything about these bizzare games please let me know

Also I just realised that I'm supposed to try and answer the one who started this discussion and not post my own questiong but I'll leave this here just in case (sorry)

Could it be something from a game about a fox called Crash?