As in the original, players progress through levels by destroying swarms of aliens. The creatures hover at the top of the screen and slowly descend on the player's ship. Besides the ability to simply shoot back at the enemies, the ship can grab various power-ups such as shields or missile-like objects that scatter in a given direction upon hitting one of the aliens. Because of the power-ups, Space Invaders feels almost like a puzzle game, rather than just a reflex-based shooter. As with many puzzle games, the player needs to execute combos in order to truly survive. Simply firing at the opposing creatures with the main gun will work in the earlier levels, but its effectiveness soon wears off. To truly win, players must utilize the bonus weapons' patterns to destroy the largest number of enemies with the fewest shots. As such, Space Invaders plays almost like an inverse Tetris.

Long time gamers as well as players who own one of the many classics compilations on the market know how the original Space Invaders' graphics looked. As with all games at the time, the blocky, low-color graphics did their job back then, but now look extremely primitive. Fortunately, Activsion properly updated the graphics so the game looks recent but simultaneously does not go overboard with distracting special effects. Indeed, just as with the gameplay, the overall look of Space Invaders also resembles a puzzle game. While the characters and levels sport a rendered 3D look, the gameplay remains strictly 2D. The environments also consist of single-screen backdrops that change when the player passes a certain number of levels. As for music, the game's light techno soundtrack sounds fine, although most gamers probably won't pay much attention to it.