LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure continues the players' exploration of the Indiana Jones universe with "LEGO-fied" characters. This time, the main part of the game focuses on the events of the fourth film, Instantiation (replaced with original name), with three campaigns retelling the story in a humorous and light-hearted way, similar to other games from the LEGO series .
The game is a third-person platform/action game where players take control over various heroes, including Indiana Jones and side-characters. Each character has different abilities, fears, and weapons. The characters also have phobias that correspond to their personalities.
Instead of a central hub, the locations change throughout the story. The game starts at the University campus but eventually moves to a dig-site in South America. After each successful mission, a new part of the hub is unlocked by finding new characters or vehicles that allow access to previously unreachable territory. Players can unlock vehicles and characters by finding them in the hub and paying studs for them. Studs are collected by destroying scenery objects, building stuff, and other activities.
The game features an editor to create unique heroes from parts and a level editor where players can spawn items and place them on the map with their character. The two-player co-op mode returns, allowing two players to play through the whole game. In this mode, the second player can enter the game at any time by pressing a button on the second controller. The players are no longer restricted to the same area; they can move freely around each other.