The player controls a stick figure who must collect all the gold in a level while avoiding guards who try to catch the player. After collecting all the gold, the player must reach the top of the screen to reach the next level. There are 150 levels in the game, which progressively challenge players' problem-solving abilities or reaction times.[8]
Levels have a multi-story, brick platform motif, with ladders and suspended hand-to-hand bars that offer multiple ways to travel. Guards can pick up gold bars by running over them, but any individual guard may carry no more than one bar at a time. The player can dig holes into floors to temporarily trap guards and may safely walk atop any who have fallen into holes. Should a guard be carrying a bar of gold when he falls into a hole, he will drop it and the player can pick it up. Holes dug by the player fill themselves in after a short delay. A trapped guard who cannot escape a hole before it fills is consumed, immediately respawning in a random location at the top of the level. Unlike guards, the player's character may not climb up out of a hole, and he will be killed if it fills before he can escape by other means. Floors may contain trapdoors, through which the player and guards will fall, and bedrock, through which the player cannot dig.
The player can dig a hole only to either side of his position and may not dig directly beneath his own feet. In order to dig through multiple layers of bricks, the player must create a gap whose width is at least equal to the number of layers. However, exceptions to this rule arise when the player digs from the position of standing on a ladder, or hanging from a hand-to-hand bar, which allows the player to repeatedly dig and descend one row. This kind of digging is involved in solving many of the levels.
The player starts with five lives; each level completion awards an extra life. Should a guard catch the player, one life is subtracted, and the current level restarts. The player's character can fall from arbitrary heights without any injury but cannot jump, and players can trap themselves in pits from which the only escape is to abort the level, costing a life, and begin again.