Basement Crawl is a multiplayer game similar to Bomberman. The players take on the role of macabre toys, visiting places such as creepy carnivals or butcher shops, and try to gain score by blowing each other up with traps in grid-based, maze-like arenas. The players can lay down traps that explode in straight lines in four directions. The characters are also able to kick the traps out of their way. Power-ups sometimes appear, such as more powerful traps, landmines, and traps which can be detonated remotely.
There are four characters to choose from, each of which has slightly different stats. Each round lasts for a limited time, and – depending on the game mode (deathmatch or team deathmatch) – the winner is the player or the team with the highest score.