9 Dragons Charm is a bubble-popping game that features Dungeon Crawl, Tower Defense and Zuma elements. The 9 Dragons need the player's help to defend their castle and protect their world from Phantom Gate zombie marble trains crawling along tracks toward vortexes. The player completes this task by popping three or more marbles with color-matched projectiles.
In each stage, the 9 Dragons character stands with one foot forward and a marble projectile raised up in their hand to toss at the enemy. The player uses the character's foot to point at a color-matched target. They then prompt the character to toss the projectile at it.
The zombie train rolls at a fast pace. The player must direct the character to pop the zombie marbles as quickly as possible. If a projectile doesn't match, they can direct the character to toss it away from the train and off the screen entirely.
9 Dragons Charm helps the player by providing the character with three lives under the score in the upper-left area. If the player fails any stage, they can try again two more times. If the character loses all lives, then the player must start over from the first stage.
The game also randomly provides lower-right booster items in special non-zombie marbles. The player can use an aiming guideline, a time-slowing hourglass, a zombie-freezing lock, a two-sided zombie-killing cannon, a blasting red bomb, and a behind-the-target mass zombie cross. They must reacquire these items in each new stage.
