Tomb of the Mask is an infinite, dungeon-crawl, maze game with nostalgic, classic arcade music and a black background. It features a cute, pixelated yellow character navigating short and long labyrinths by wearing an ancient, magical mask that allows it to cling to and climb walls.
The player's primary objective is to help the character tour each labyrinth without dying while the game makes the mazes increasingly difficult with a variety of deadly challenges and obstacles, including spikes, enemies and traps. At times, the game fills the screen from the bottom with a wall of water or energy, a light field, to kill the character. The player must also take care to not move the character too quickly or risk slamming into a wall at too high a speed, which also causes death.
The game offers two modes: Map (Stage-Based) and Arcade (Endless).
In the Map Mode, the player moves through levels or stages. New stages only unlock after the player finishes a previous stage. Similar to Pac-Man, Tomb of the Mask requires that the player navigate the masked character through paths made up of pellets called dots and collect coins. If they perform well enough during each level, the game awards them with three gold stars and gives them access to a spin wheel that supplies additional coins as treasure.
In the Arcade Mode, the player starts playing and keeps going for as long as possible until the character dies. Their stats are added to a leaderboard. This version is incredibly difficult because a light field moves vertically up the screen immediately instead of at later stages. The good news is that the game doesn't reset back to the beginning if the character dies. Additionally, Arcade gives the character access to a Freeze treasure that temporarily stops the deadly light filling the screen.
