Fortress is an exploration game with different enemy and weapon types, puzzles, secrets, unique dialogue, and more. There are 57 different rooms in the game for you to explore. Your character starts with no weapons or items and you progress through the game by finding items, solving puzzles, and interacting with NPCs. The game uses the D-pad the vast majority of the time as you navigate a large fortress filled with monsters, people, stories, and traps. The game utilizes the crank for one of the puzzles. You receive scores at the end of the game based on how many treasures you collect, how many gems you find, and how many times you die in the game. The main objective of the game is to escape the fortress! There is no save functionality, but you can lock your Playdate and start where you left off later on. An average playthrough takes about 30 minutes. It takes most players more than one playthrough to achieve the top rank in each category.