Temporal is a puzzle-solving game set in a platform environment. Players control a quirky robot that awakens in an unknown complex. It needs to be guided (only by using the arrow keys to move it around) to escape different rooms. Next to movement, it can also fly up using the propeller on its head, but only for a short distance.

Rather than a regular platform game, the focus is on the puzzle-solving with a background story that runs through all levels. To reach the end of a level, the robot needs to push boxes around, destroy floors, manipulate chemicals, use guns and activate terminals and trigger beams. In later levels, similar to the game mechanics explored in such games as Braid, Chronotron, Cursor*10 and The Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom, time can be bended in various ways. The robot can create different instances for itself and determine their time of movement, and then cooperate with these copies to progress through the levels. Some of these situations require precise timing.

The graphical style has a comic book-style feel to it, with thick black outlines around all characters and objects. During the levels, the robot is assisted by TPU-X76, its technological processing unit. It provides hints but also makes for humourous sequences through the conversation or when it accidentally powers itself down, rendering the robot blind. The base game includes 30 episodes that are unlocked gradually, but at the end there are actually a few more as the story is further explored. For each level the best times are tracked and the gameplay is saved as a replay that can be reviewed or shared online.

The player is rewarded for avoiding temporal paradoxes, sequences during the game where one of the past selves does not reach the end of the level.

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